Comments on: Ichthyostega Party Time!

By: Particle accelerators and your inner tetrapod’s vertebrae « What's In John's Freezer?

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 18:02:21 +0000

[...] New Year just right, our tetrapod team has a new paper in Nature, following up on last year’s Ichthyostega not-so-good-at-walking study (also see here), but with a more anatomical and “evo-devo” twist to it. For brevity, [...]

By: John of the Freezers

John of the Freezers — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 05:13:53 +0000

Thanks April! Multituberculates, cool! We haven’t blogged about how the rigging was done, no; I figured most readers would find that too boring. But the Supp Info of the paper does detail it a bit. You could also email Stephanie Pierce for her thoughts on the procedure (spierce at rvc.ac.uk). Happy modelling!

By: April Isch

April Isch — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 00:38:04 +0000

This is really excellent!!! I casually started reading your blog about a month ago and was so excited to see this! I’m doing similar (though far less ambitious) research, examining current hypotheses about multitiburculate movement using 3D modeling. Out of curiosity, do any blog posts exist about how this model was rigged and in what program? I would be curious to compare notes!

By: John of the Freezers

John of the Freezers — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:54:57 +0000

Glad I could contribute to your lexicon! I issue such squeals probably way too often for my own good.

By: Jenner Bestor

Jenner Bestor — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:40:15 +0000

‘Squeal of geeky joy’ has entered my vocabulary and auditory memory and has left me smiling all day.

By: John of the Freezers

John of the Freezers — Thu, 24 May 2012 05:58:08 +0000

Thanks! Computers definitely have been a big part of our ongoing palaeo-renaissance.

By: John of the Freezers

John of the Freezers — Thu, 24 May 2012 05:57:23 +0000

Thanks! No idea why the filter would be blocked, although I may have flagged part of the blog as adult or something.

By: John of the Freezers

John of the Freezers — Thu, 24 May 2012 05:55:49 +0000

Yes, the usual suspects of excellent science bloggers have done nice stories on this: Zimmer, Switek, Yong and others:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/a-new-twist-in-the-tetrapod-tale
and
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/05/23/virtual-resurrection-shows-that-early-four-legged-animal-couldn%E2%80%99t-walk-very-well/
and
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/05/23/in-the-beginning-was-the-mudskipper/
also:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120523-tetrapod-walk-flopped-nature-science-ichthyostega/
and
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18177493
and much more…

By: Mark Robinson

Mark Robinson — Thu, 24 May 2012 05:03:47 +0000

a²+1

This is the stuff that I find fascinating. The bleeding edge of palaeo tetrapod research. This and sauropod necks and speed-walking dinos and pterosaur flight and all the rest of the “how things work” that’s going on at the moment. Yay for modern computers, I say.

By: HP

HP — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:02:15 +0000

I’ve been following this story all day and was really happy to see your post show up in feed reader. I clicked over to the story, and apparently your site is blocked by the filter at work!

What’s really weird is that your work is directly relevant to the work I do with FEA and kinematics software. Is your blog flagged in some way because of the dissection images? It’s not like you’re posing flayed crocodiles with swimsuit models or anything.

Anyway, congratulations on the terrific paper and the huge impact. Off to read what Brian Switek has to say.