cool sea turtle!

Tidgy's Dad

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When I was a young boy, one of my first fossil books was 'The Fossil World', by Richard Moody who was the world's leading authority on fossil turtles at that time. Later, I became quite interested in fossil turtles and their evolution and studied them extensively. Even collected a few pieces from the phosphate deposits in Tunisia and Morocco. Never found an Archelon, though.
Magnificent creatures, they must have been.
 

tortadise

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When I was a young boy, one of my first fossil books was 'The Fossil World', by Richard Moody who was the world's leading authority on fossil turtles at that time. Later, I became quite interested in fossil turtles and their evolution and studied them extensively. Even collected a few pieces from the phosphate deposits in Tunisia and Morocco. Never found an Archelon, though.
Magnificent creatures, they must have been.
I was gonna ask you. Being in morocco (the fossil Capitol of the world) have you found or seen any for sale over there? I watched a documentary a while back on morocco and fossil trading.
 

Tidgy's Dad

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I was gonna ask you. Being in morocco (the fossil Capitol of the world) have you found or seen any for sale over there? I watched a documentary a while back on morocco and fossil trading.
Goodness gracious, the place is swarming with 'em. As a paleontologist by training and vocation, the place is a paradise for me. Don't buy them,but collecting, especially down south is wonderful. Planning my next expedition for a months time or so.
 

tortadise

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Ahhhh I remembered now . Spinosaurus was the theme of the documentary. Was quite cool. Big ol dinosaurs. Archelon is awesome too. We have a complete skeleton here at a museum. Massive
 

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When I was a young boy, one of my first fossil books was 'The Fossil World', by Richard Moody who was the world's leading authority on fossil turtles at that time. Later, I became quite interested in fossil turtles and their evolution and studied them extensively. Even collected a few pieces from the phosphate deposits in Tunisia and Morocco. Never found an Archelon, though.
Magnificent creatures, they must have been.
Not Eugene Gaffney or Roger Wood? Not even Richard Owens? LOL
 

Tidgy's Dad

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Not Eugene Gaffney or Roger Wood? Not even Richard Owens? LOL
Lol indeed.
If you mean Sir Richard Owen, he died considerably before the time of my youth, I'm not that old, no one is, I was a child and though had heard of him, didn't study him till my teens.
Gaffney became famous later, in the 80's, I believe and i'm afraid I was not aware of Wood at that time in Europe before these internet days.
It"s not nice to mock childhood heros who helped guide me into the marvelous world of paleontology, and encouraged me to study at Kingston University where he was professor, as well as working with him in the field in the Sahara and doing a bit of TV with him. He is still Professor Emiritus at Kingston and a wonderful paleontologist.
 

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Lol indeed.
If you mean Sir Richard Owen, he died considerably before the time of my youth, I'm not that old, no one is, I was a child and though had heard of him, didn't study him till my teens.
Gaffney became famous later, in the 80's, I believe and i'm afraid I was not aware of Wood at that time in Europe before these internet days.
It"s not nice to mock childhood heros who helped guide me into the marvelous world of paleontology, and encouraged me to study at Kingston University where he was professor, as well as working with him in the field in the Sahara and doing a bit of TV with him. He is still Professor Emiritus at Kingston and a wonderful paleontologist.

I had hoped to do a thesis project on Meiolania from the South Pacific, Roger Wood was my potential mentor for that project and of course Gaffney is the authority on them. Roger is the guy who dug up Stupendemys in south America among other fossil turtles around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupendemys First published in Brevoria 1976.

I read an interesting book, "The Bone Sharp" about the relationship Owens had with E.D. Cope. The book's author was a speaker at a Philly Herp Society meeting. She brought their conflict to life. It was a good lecture and an interesting read.

Just having fun, no mocking. Marlin Perkins and Jacque Cousteau are my childhood heroes.
 

Tidgy's Dad

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Meiolania would have been an interesting case study. So nearly made it, but declining before we finished them off,
Did you do a thesis on something else?
I ended up drifting away into the echinodermata and particularly early blastoids,cystoids and carpoids and their taxonomy.
Years and years at uni and the British Museum, but well worth it.
Not read that book, must check it out.
The British Marlin Perkins is David Attenborough, of course, who I had the honour of working with also.
Jacques Cousteau was a great man, though a little irritating at times. ( I never met him, just the way he came across.) probably just the accent, though that shows my bias!
 

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Cool, I never met either Perkins or Cousteau, but did meet Attenbourough, he spoke at Fresno State University (CSUF) and was very welcoming to hang out and talk to everyone. At the time he was up on Birds of Paradise and artifacts from Easter Island.

I did not do the Meioloania study, but in my looking at what might be interesting for me to sort out with them I came upon distribution modeling, so modeled the distribution of living tortoises in southern Africa. I found distribution modeling as a way to locate, statistically, likely places to find where Meiolania may have nested on some smaller islands just west of New Caledonia. The transportation costs would have overwhelmed at the time. I hoped to locate nests, and maybe subfossil eggs. David Steadman has written so much on island ecology and extinction all his publications are a series of advanced studies on these topics and basically a blueprint for more such work. I hoped to follow his work, but more herpetologically oriented than birds. The other thesis interest was turtle egg ecology.
 

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