"Amphicoelias" fragillimus and the Knowledge of Armchair Paleontologists

   There could not have had a better paper to kick of the first content post of this blog than the present Dr. Kenneth Carpenter gave us last Sunday when redescribing "Amphicoelias" fragillimus and naming a new genus to make it separate from the type species of the genus. Not only that but he also formally publishes something many of us in the internet have been saying in the last 4 years, "A." fragillimus is a basal rebbachisaurid.

01-The Birth of Rebbamphi:

The first person to suggest "Amphicoelias" fragillimus  might have been a rebbachisaurid rather than a diplodocid was Andrea Cau, Italian Theropod specialist, in his Blog in 2012 (link N°-01). He did not entered in much detail there but shows that "A." fragillimus was in a polytomy at the base of Diplodocoidea and they had similar characters regarding the neural arches and lamination of the vertebrae, so it might have been a basal rebbachisaurid. In the end he just said it was just a provocation, though if true it would be more reasonable than the diplodocid-like size estimates.

02-Popularization of Rebbamphi:
 
Though Cau was the first to propose such possibility the guy that actually popularized the idea of Rebbamphi was Zachary Armstrong (aka: Zach Armstrong), an independent paleoblogger, in a journal posted in his Deviant Art in March of 2014 (link N°-02). There he presents a reconstruction of a fragillimus vertebra with the unknown parts being filled by Rebbachisaurus and Limaysaurus rather than a diplodocid like Diplodocus as was usually done, and show the know bits were indeed more similar to those of rebbachisaurids than the more derived diplodocids.

In a similar way to Cau, Armstrong showed that the neural arch of "A." fragillimus is actually similar to the one of rebbachisaurids than to diplodocids, looking especially like Limaysaurus. He also notes that if it was a  rebbachisaurid-like animal, we could explain the fragility of the specimen being in fact a result of the pneumaticity of the skeleton; very common on rebbachisaurids. His size estimate for the animal was around 28.6 meter long.

*Also it is very nice that Carpenter did recognize Armstrong suggested this 4 years ago.

03-Carpenter's paper:

Finally we get to Dr. Carpenter's paper, during the first part of the paper he focuses on the history of the specimen and in the latter segments (past Systematic Paleontology) he focuses on giving the species a redescription and the biogeographic and evolutionary implications for Rebbachisauridae and Diplodocoidea (if his hypothesis that "A." fragillimus actually was correct).

But the most important part is in the middle of the paper (pages 7-11) where he presents the arguments behind his hypothesis; and those were the same ones used by Cau and Armstrong:

• Neural arch morphology
• The fragility of the specimen may be caused by the fact that rebbachisaurids have highly pneumatic skeleton.
• I honestly did not understand very well one of them, but I think it is the same thing Cau said about lamination of the vertebrae

In the end the 3 researches suggested/got to this same conclusion independently, and what is especially important (and reason why I choose this as the subject of my first post) is that Armstrong does not have an academic degree in biology/geology. However he did nailed that "A." fragillimus could have actually represented a rebbachisaurid instead of another kind of diplodocoid and used the same arguments that now were used by Carpenter to support his hypothesis.

What can we learn with this? That we cannot immediately discard anyone opinion because he/she does not have an academic degree for paleontology, the real basis of a scientific opinion is not the curriculum behind the author of it, but actually the solidness of its arguments. Finally it proves that there are many talented "armchair" paleontologists hanging around in DeviantArt, Discord or in various blogs in the internet; and it's worth at least giving a chance to their opinions as they may actually be correct.

I could not have asked for a better subject for the inauguration post of this blog; now that you are aware of this story you may give my page a try and listen to my opinions because some of us armchair/self-thought paleontologists do actually know our stuff.

Link N°-01:
https://theropoda.blogspot.com/2012/01/amphicoelias-fragillimus-e-un.htm
Link N°-02:
https://www.deviantart.com/palaeozoologist/journal/Was-Amphicoelias-a-rebbachisaur-440611550

Introduction Part 02 - Motivations and Inspirations

Continuing with the introduction process of this blog this post will focus on my motivations and inspirations for this project; without wasting much time:

01-Motivations:

   The "paleontology lab" of my institutions is very small; it technically does not exist and fossils are housed together with the sedimentology and mineralogy collections of the university. I heard quite a few  colleagues saying they wanted to work with paleontology but gave up because of the size of the laboratory and lack of perspective for the future. This seems to be a recurring theme in other universities, even those with big labs and world-class researchers, with few graduation students choosing paleontology as their research area.

   I imagine this is not exclusive to Brazil and in many other places people gave up on working with science based on lack of perspective for future/success. And this is one of the prime motivations I'm launching this project, reach the maximum number of people especially young paleontology enthusiasts and try inspiring then to follow a career on the area (hence why this is in English not in Portuguese).

   Because of this, I proposed earlier in the year to my boss if she could let me teach and assume some classes about paleontology, with the objective of trying to pass my passion to those students and  understand the value of our work and want to preserve the rich Brazilian fossiliferous record. I still have yet to lesson my first class but together with my boss we gave a small speech and convinced 6 students to follow and have an experience working with us, giving me even more support and desire for making this blog.
   Summarizing I wanna make people valorize the field of paleontology and inspire some to work in the are, I'll only have access to 30-40 students each semester doing this only in college but the internet can spread this message to a larger level, reason for the existence of this blog.

02-Inspirations:

   The idea of making a blog/page for scientific talk is not unprecedented; there is Witton's Blog; Motimer's Theropod Database; Cau's Theropoda; Wedel's, Taylor's and Naish's SVP-PW or Naish Tetrapod Zoology. All of those have their importance and are the inspiration for the layout and content of this blog; but not direct inspiration for me to make move and inaugurate this page. This honor goes to some of my professors that by their work and are my inspiration for this work:

• Camila Neves Silva: my adviser/supervisor/boss (I don't know the correct terminology) for the opportunity of working with her and giving me all the support I need for starting this kind of project. Coincidentally we both got convinced that we need more work done in education about paleontology independently, I hope our work in class can indeed catch more to our boat.

• Roberto Juinio Pedroso Dias: he ministered to me the Protozoa subject; lets be honest it is not the most exciting subject for someone that loves dinosaurs. But he is so in love with his work and me me also like Protozoans (I still prefer my dinosaurs). You proved to me that a good and passionate teacher can have a large positive influence in his students, you are my inspiration for teaching and hence one of the main inspiration for this work.

• Larisse Faroni Perez: though we work with very different subjects (she works with polychaetes) she is my career inspiration. She studied this group since her graduation and with dedication during years she presented the best student work in International Polychaetes Conference in 2016 getting recognition of all researches she admire since her graduation. I wanna be just like you when "I grow up"; when I get the same honer in SVP-202X I promise I'll remember of you. (Hope we can be friends now)

You are kind of the "parents" of this project so I wanna at least have a part of it dedicated to saying thanks to you.

Introduction Part 01 - Me, and how I got here

   People say the first step is the hardest; so imagine writing the post to kick of the blog I intend on using for a scientific outreach project for at least the rest of my college graduation; yeah it is pretty hard, so I'll be going with a safe bet in:

Hello readers,

   Before I introduce you to this blog and the project I intend on developing here, I need to introduce  introduce myself; my name is André de Oliveira and in summary I'm a 19 year old Biology college student in Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil.
   Since I was a kid I always was fascinated with dinosaurs and other extinct fauna, and as expected, the interest faded during most of my teenagehood. Only coming back in late 2014 because of the recent discoveries of the time about Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus that made me go and look stuff on the internet and that made my passion for those creatures to bloom once more.
   During 2015 and 16 I mostly followed the subject from far away with quite a passive approach, checking into new species I looked up at some blogs or Wikipedia, but nothing very deep. But while looking for pictures of various species I entered frequently in contact with the DeviantArt paleontology community till one day (September 29 2016) I decided to create my own page there. This was the "start of my paleontology internet career". For most of 2016 and 17 I was just there enjoying the art till I decided to start posting some of my drawings, positive reception of members of the community made me keep posting those consistently.
   During the second semester of 2017, I was doing a subject/course in college named "Topics on Geology and Paleontology" and in the end of the semester I decided to show some of my work to my professor. She was quite supersized and invited me to help her at her lab and work in a project with her (where I'm still working).

   In February, I needed to make a trip to São Paulo and driven by such success in my institution I decided to visit the paleontology lab of São Paulo University. There I talked with Dr. Max Langer and show what I was doing, he was not impressed, and said to me something around the line of “You are still very fresh and barely finished your first graduation year; when you reach the penultimate year of college come back here and if you are still interested I can help you”.
   To be honest this was not the answer I expected to hear; for the rest of that day I was quite miserable, on the ground and even questioned if that was the career I intended on following for my life. But as some say "successful people are those who rise up after they fell", so I needed to rise up once more.
   The next day I reevaluated my work and saw I was drawing too much but producing very few technical paleontology contempt. Realizing so I changed what I was doing; I stooped drawing constantly and transformed my DA into a mini blog where I made reviews and commented recent papers and sometimes congresses abstracts and resumes.

   I liked that work and felt it was much more in line with a graduation student than my old gallery with mostly drawings. However, I always felt Deviant Art was not the right place to do such; I had a blog in a platform supposed to be an art gallery. Because of such I am here today inaugurating this blog and transfusing that work into a more appropriate platform.

   This is just a brief story of myself so everyone can understand how I got here and the origins of this project. The rest of the introduction: proposal, objectives, motivation and my inspirations for this project are in the other posts of this Introduction series.