Hello and Introduction

Howdy all!
I'm new to the team here at the Prehistoric Pub and to blogging in general. I figured I would introduce myself to you all and let you get to know me!
I'm Rob Gay and I am a paleontologist in Arizona. Ever since I was a kid I have loved dinosaurs and other prehistoric wildlife and knew that this is what I wanted to be. Flash forward to the present and here I am - living the dream as it were.

Here's me, contemplating the dream.

My research has focused on the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic of the Colorado Plateau (you can look at some of my publications here). I am particularly interested in how the terrestrial faunas of what is now the American Southwest were structured 50 million years after the Permo-Triassic extinction (the largest in the history of the world) and how this structure changed and adapted to the "new world" of the Jurassic after the Triassic-Jurassic extinction.

I am currently engaged in several projects related to this overall line of research. I am doing a study on collections biases in the Kayenta Formation to see how our view of this ecosystem may be skewed. This may in turn impact our understanding of how these ecosystems actually functioned. This might seem a minor point but if we want to see how biological systems recover from extinction then we need to know what the systems actually looked like and how they functioned.

I also have been working for several years now in the Chinle Formation of southeastern Utah, both with a team from the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm and the Natural History Museum, as well as with a team from my high school paleontology program - the only one at a public school in the country. The Chinle Formation is well known in Arizona (at the Petrified Forest) and in New Mexico (at places like Ghost Ranch) for the amazing variety of life from the dawn of the age of dinosaurs. Utah is also well known for its prehistoric life, but the Late Triassic Period has been rather underrepresented. Between work in Lisbon Valley and at Comb Ridge we are starting to piece together just what this area looked like 203 million years ago. We have identified new and unusual types of reptiles as well as documenting the presence of a plant-eating crocodile-like reptile known as Crosbysaurus. In the case of Crosbysaurus, this is the first time it has been reported from the state of Utah.

The tooth of Crosbysaurus from Comb Ridge. Abbreviations: Ap, apex; DD, distal denticles; MD, mesial denticles; RP, resorption pit. Scale = 1 mm. Image is from Gay and St. Aude (2015), CC-BY 4.0

I am very pleased with our Comb Ridge work in general because it is all with my high school students. They get a chance to experience real-world hands-on science by being involved in all aspects of vertebrate paleontology - including publication! I know I will blog a lot more about this in the future so I won't belabor it here!

In addition to all of my paleontology work I am also a dog-parent of two awesome beasts. I like playing video games. I enjoy craft beers; I am on a saison kick right now due to it being summer, but IPAs are my thing generally. I'm looking forward to letting more people know about my students' research, my research, and generally interacting with folks on here. Cheers!

Do LEGOs Dream of Electric Dinosaurs?

This Monday was shaping up to be a Monday: administrative duties, extra workload to get ready for the Geopark inaugural events this weekend, and on top of it, general thesis writing freak-out. What I was not expecting this morning was this:

Here's LEGO Jurassic World unlock codes for palaeontologists @DavidEvans_ROM @ShamanSciences & Phil Currie http://t.co/mFjJx6prSR

— Kris Abel (@RealKrisAbel) June 22, 2015

Time for straight-up honesty:

1. I have not yet seen "Jurassic World" (GASP!) From what I have seen of released clips and trailers, I agree with Dr. Victoria Arbour and Dr. Angelica Tories on their assessments of the tired female lead themes in their reviews here and here, respectively. I also agree with their and Dr. Darren Naish's review of the movie-monster style versions of the theropods that could have been so so so much more fun and creepy (our heroes encountering a Velociraptor gently cleaning the blood and tissue of its latest human kill off of its feathers to the gently sounds of the forest, anyone?) I'll see Jurassic World one day, but it's likely not going to be until after I defend my doctoral thesis.

2. I do not play video games and did not grow up playing video games. Our idea of a video game was when the Pong machine was hooked up to the TV. After that, we inherited an old Commodore 64 and played "Tanks" and text-based games on the sepia-toned screen. I am not the person to ask technical questions of when it comes to "How can I access X, Y, and Z features?" I don't own a PS-Anything. Dammit Jim, I'm an avian anatomist and ichnologist, not a video game person! (I just finished watching Star Trek TOS.)

All that being said, it was pretty cool to discover that I was LEGOed! LEGO-Lisa even has the right colored field shirt!

Oh yes, I get to ride the Parasaurolophus. I'm not sure about flying the helicopter, but in a choice between dinosaur and chopper, the dinosaur wins. Image from Gameslingers at Dawn.

Kris Abel, author of Gameslingers at Dawn, was able to customize some characters for the Jurassic World LEGO game. Kris went for Canadian paleontologists. These characters are available for anyone to play (from what I understand). I'm in good company as I get chased through the park by Indominus rex and her like. Running from (Towards? With? We all know it's either towards or with) the dinosaurs is Philip Currie (University of Alberta) and his theropod pack, as well as David Evans (Royal Ontario Museum) and his ceratopsian troop. Follow the above link for the unlock codes for the characters!

If you play the LEGO video games, you'll have to let me know how LEGO-Lisa fares on her adventures with her buddy hadrosaur (we have an unofficial name for the airlifted specimen, but it's too geographically specific, and we are still keeping the site location under wraps for the time being until we can get the proper excavation funding.)

Riding off into the LEGO sunset,

LEGO Shaman.