This Friday and Saturday (20th and 21st September, 2013), the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, is hosting the Jehol-Wealden International Conference. This event – titled Celebrating Dinosaur Island – features an impressive list of talks and events relating to the Lower Cretaceous biota of Europe and Asia. More info (and booking advice) here.
Items on the schedule include Hugh Torrens on the early history of dinosaur research (newsflash: a crucial historical specimen will be present at the meeting), Pascal Godefroit on Jehol iguanodontians, Mark Witton and Michael O’Sullivan on pterosaur faunas, Paul Barrett on the overall diversity of Jehol dinosaurs, Mark Young on another(!) new metriorhynchid, Pam Gill and Steve Sweetman on Wealden mammaliaforms, and much, much more.
Regular readers may know that I specialise on the Wealden: this is the famous Lower Cretaceous lithological unit, deposited across a series of connected floodplain environments, and best known for its exposures on the Isle of Wight and in the Weald of south-eastern England (must-have volumes for those interested: Martill & Naish 2001 and Batten 2011). I’ve published extensively on the Wealden’s theropod dinosaurs. As a Wealden-jockey, much of this meeting looks especially awesome to me. My own talk is on the Isle of Wight tyrannosauroid Eotyrannus. We named this animal back in 2001 (Hutt et al. 2001) and additional bits and pieces of information have been trickling out ever since (Naish et al. 2001, Naish 2011). The promised monograph has yet to appear but is now complete (co-authored with Andrea Cau). More on that in time.
Oh – I’m hoping to livetweet from the conference (ha. I’ve promised this so many times but have never been able to do it… a consequence of technological and financial constraints). If you’re on twitter, follow #JeholWealden2013.
Of course, I also have a paper out today in Nature Communications (I think. I haven’t seen it yet). But no time to blog about it. No time to do anything. Time time time. Did I mention that time is an issue? ARGH. Back to work...
For previous Tet Zoo articles on Wealden animals, see...
- The world's most amazing sauropod (Xenoposeidon)
- Of Becklespinax and Valdoraptor
- Where the scelidosaurs and iguanodontians roam
- Oh no, not another new Wealden theropod!
- My dinosaur colouring book # 2 (Wessex Formation dinosaurs)
- Concavenator: an incredible allosauroid with a weird sail (or hump)... and proto-feathers?
- The explosion of Iguanodon at Scientific American
- Goodbye super-inclusive Iguanodon, hello Mantellisaurus, Owenodon, Dakotadon, Dollodon, Barilium, Kukufeldia, Hypselospinus, Sellacoxa, Proplanicoxa etc. etc.
- A truly tiny Cretaceous theropod... from England?
- The Iguanodon explosion: How scientists are rescuing the name of a “classic” ornithopod dinosaur, part 1
- The explosion of Iguanodon, part 2: Iguanodontians of the Hastings Group
- The explosion of Iguanodon, part 3: Hypselospinus, Wadhurstia, Dakotadon, Proplanicoxa …. When will it all end?
- The Wealden Bible: English Wealden Fossils, 2011
- In pursuit of Early Cretaceous crocodyliforms in southern England: ode to Goniopholididae
- In pursuit of Early Cretaceous crocodyliforms in southern England (part II): of Vectisuchus and Leiokarinosuchus, Bernissartia and the hylaeochampsids
- Plesiosaurs and the repeated invasion of freshwater habitats: late-surviving relicts or evolutionary novelties?
- Daisy’s Isle of Wight Dragon and why China has what Europe does not
Refs - -
Batten, D. J. 2011. English Wealden Fossils. The Palaeontological Association, London.
Martill, D. M. & Naish, D. 2001. Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight. The Palaeontological Association, London.
Naish, D. 2011. Theropod dinosaurs. In Batten, D. J. (ed.) English Wealden Fossils. The Palaeontological Association (London), pp. 526-559.
- ., Hutt, S. & Martill, D. M. 2001. Saurischian dinosaurs 2: Theropods. In Martill, D. M. & Naish, D. (eds) Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight. The Palaeontological Association (London), pp. 242-309.
