SVP part 1

 Recently I got back from a trip to Cincinnati Ohio and wanted to share with you all some of the stuff I saw during my trip.

The reason I was in Cincinnati was because I was able to attend the yearly Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) conference being held there. The SVP conference being an event where paleontologists from around the country gather to share and talk about their various research projects. It is a chance for colleges to converse with each other face-to-face, for recent students like myself to meet new people and start developing relationships with fellow paleontologists, and to participate in the various events sponsored by the SVP organization that hosts this conference.

The SVP is a bit strict about pictures in certain areas where the conference was being held due to the risk of a researchers project being put on display on the internet before it is ready, so I was really only able to take pictures in one area where their were multiple booths maned mostly by Paleo artists trying to sell their merchandise to attendees. It was a very dangerous room for your wallet to be in.

These drawings are from a Paleo artists who my advisor from Graduate school actually knows personally, I believe they attended the same school together at one point. I wound up buying one of his drawings.



These two pictures are of a life sized model of a Mosasaurs skeleton another artist made. Mosasaurs were not actually dinosaurs, they lived side-by-side with them. Instead they were a group of reptiles that were completely aquatic. And this particular skeleton is actually an example of one of their smaller members.


These next two pictures are of statues of various prehistoric animals made entirly of bronze. Not much to say about them other than they just look good.

This picture is of a graduate student visiting the conference who brought with her the head of dinosaur that she made herself. She said that the head is that of Utahraptor, one of the largest members of the dinosaur family that included the infamous "Raptors" from the Jurassic Park movies. The mouth of the head could actually open and close with the push of a button on the inside, and its maker said that she was planning to eventually make a full body costume to go along with the head.

These last two pictures are of drawings I bought while at the conference. The first is based on a recent research project on the body heat that dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles would have given off while alive. The second is of a dinosaur called Carnotaurus, maybe not the most well known of dinosaurs, but it is a personal favorite of mine if only because its name can actually be translated as "man-eating bull", which my inner 10-year boy can't help but love.


 

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