New Horned Dinosaur Discovered

Triceratops has always been my favourite dinosaur, it's just so freaking awesome looking. So I was very excited to come across a new paper in PLOS ONE by the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History giving the details of a new member of the ceratopsids. The venerable old lady pictured below has been named Wendiceratops after Wendy Sloboda, the veteran fossil hunter who discovered this particular fossil bed in Alberta in 2010.

Just like triceratops wendiceratops would have been a herbivore cropping away at medium length grass, much like rhinos today. The horns would have been used for defence from predators and for competition when mating, the frill could have been used for display and perhaps also to keep the animal cool like an elephant's ears. The interesting thing about this find is that it actually pre-dates triceratops by several million years and represents a second independent evolution of a conical nose horn in this family.

365 Project: Photo 199

I don't have a musical bone in my body but I do, nonetheless, have a passionate love of music. Some of the most moving musical experiences of my life have been in this building, The Royal Albert Hall. Known most commonly for classical performances, most notably the Proms, it also does the odd pop and rock concert, ballet and sports and circus type events. My two favourite events I've attended here have been the Classical Spectacular and Mozart By Candlelight; both of which tend to be regular gigs on their calendar in the month of December; I highly recommend you take a look.

Four years of construction resulted in what has become one of the most iconic buildings in the capital. Originally it was to be called The Central Hall of Arts and Sciences but, upon laying the foundation stone in 1867, Queen Victoria rather hijacked things and decided to name it after her deceased husband, the Prince Consort Prince Albert. Albert was a true champion of both the arts and science in an age when the two were not as opposed as they sometimes seem in more recent times. You might be able to see that there is a frieze running around the top of the elliptical hall, it goes by the name of The Triumph of Arts and Sciences. In an anticlockwise direction there are 16 scenes glorying in the joy of said subjects.

The £200,000 it took to build was taken from the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1851 which was very much the pet project of the Prince. It was one of the wonders of the age that showcased Britain's world leading grasp of science and engineering. In 1951, to mark the centenary of this landmark event, we had The Festival of Britain which was very much the kickstarter of the regeneration of south London; the cultural goldmine that is the South Bank wouldn't exist without it. Good work Albert.

Oh yeah, and the theme today was Source of Happiness. You can probably tell this place makes me pretty happy.

Cenotes and Dinosaurs

This cenote had the roots of a tree hunting out the fresh water

Natural wells.

That's the closest translation I can find for the Spanish word cenotes. A cenote, then, is a naturally occurring underground aquafer or reservoir. So far so boring. Where it gets interesting is that these water courses can sometimes work their way through the soft and highly permeable bedrock of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula to form large, freshwater cave systems. As the rock is so permeable all the rivers in the Yucatan have burrowed their way away from the surface so that, unless you know where to look, the whole region appears to be devoid of any drinking water; but before I continue with caves I have a slight digression.

The Yucatan peninsula is quite a place, not just historically and culturally as I have begun to explain in my previous post, but geographically and geologically as well. Let me explain via the medium of dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs, for those that have never seen Jurassic Park, are super mega cool giant lizards that mostly went extinct approximately 65 million years ago at the end of what is known as the Cretaceous period. I say mostly as all birds are evolved from dinosaurs. But what caused this extinction? Volcanoes? Meteor impact? Climate change? Disease? Well, the answer is that it was probably a bit of all of these but the single most significant of them has now been shown to be a massive strike from a meteor 10km across. And where did this most monumental of meteors strike the Earth? The Yucatan. You would think that the crater left by such an impact would be huge, and indeed it is, measuring some 180km across, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to see. If you were to wonder along the north coast of the Yucatan you would walk right through it and never know you'd been inside one of the planet's largest scars. It was only discovered in the late '70s and it was many years before it was even established that it was a crater, nevermind the most likely candidate for wiping out the dinosaurs.

These little fellows were abour 6 inches long but kept to themselves

In the years since it's discovery the crater, known as Chicxulub after a nearby town, has given up a wealth of evidence including a layer of impact dust covering the Earth and a gravitational anomaly at the site. You can see a review of this evidence along with several cool pictures here. But what, you ask, does this have to do with today's topic of discussion? Nothing really, I just wanted to write about it. Actually that's not strictly true; if you look at the third image in the link above you'll see dozens of little white dots that rather nicely help demarcate the boundary of the crater. Each of these dots represents a cenote. The two cenotes in my pictures here are on the very right hand edge of the picture just over half way down.

These cenotes were the lifeblood of the Yucatan and wherever one was discovered a habitation soon sprung up; today, Valladolid is the nearest large town near these two particular remarkable structures. We had made our way there from the next town along specifically so that we could go for a swim..... and take a few photos. These caves are basically the local swimming baths and very popular in the summer; on a weekday in spring, though, they were all but deserted. The temperature was in the mid 30s Celsius and we were clad in our finest sun hats and shorts, slathering sun cream onto our pasty forms at every opportunity; some locals were still wearing heavy coats and gloves. So it was with tangible relief that we descended the thirty or so metres into the cool darkness of the first cave down a higgledy piggledy staircase hacked out of the bare rock.

The lines through the water are ropes there to help anyone that gets into trouble

Straining eyes and ears we began to see and hear the bats that make up half of the permanent population of the subterranean grotto we were about to enter. Sympathetically placed lights around the edge of the cave both above and below the water line changed colour every minute or so altering the atmosphere of the cave in a mesmerising sequence. The main feature of the cave was very much the 30m wide almost circular pool of crystal clear freshwater, but it wasn't long before the eye was inevitably drawn upwards to the mass of stalactites that hung almost menacingly, like the Sword of Damocles, from the roof. One area was so thick with the formations that the stalactites had congregated into a tight formation that put me in mind of an organ from one of the worlds great basilicas. This wasn't the only feature that gave this great cavity the feel of a cathedral; the coolness, the respectful quiet, the mass of stone and faint echo of hushed voices all added to the effect. Further, the small opening in the roof through which poured a single perfect shaft of sunlight could almost be a typical rose window so popular in medieval Europe's Gothic masterpieces.

The water was cool, perfectly so. I'm a keen swimmer, I'll be in the Thames again next week, and I have swam in many beautiful locations but none, I think, as tranquil and captivating as this. With the bats and stalactites above and the shark-like fish, the other permanent inhabitants, as black as jet, gently swimming below this was an experience that will stick with me forever. After we'd had our fill we went across the road to the neighbouring cenote; this one didn't have such an impressive array of stalactites but it did have something to make up for it. Hanging straight down from one edge of the hole in the roof there was a mass of  tree roots eagerly seeking out the precious water below; and instead of bats this cave had lots of little birds flitting in and out chirruping as they went. Somehow, perhaps because it's easier to envision the growth of a tree than it is the incremental elongation of a rock formation, this cave felt even older than the first one although they're actually contemporaneous.

I've never seen anything quite like these underwater lagoons and I'm not surprised that they were often considered sacred places in times past. Hundreds of offerings and sacrifices have been found in some cenotes, not just ceramics and jewellery but human remains too, thought to be an attempt at appeasing the gods in times of drought. Before the Europeans built their churches and cathedrals it is easy to see how these caves could have served a similar purpose bringing an air of sanctity to proceedings designed to make the participants feel closer to god. I don't care for gods, but as I swam in the cool waters I certainly could appreciate the elemental nature of this most imposing of pools.