Feather or tissue? Not a feather-weight issue

It has gone intriguingly without notice that my beloved profile picture has actually received no published legend, such that to date I still receive such unwitting question as 'why is that dinosaur's arms drawn so damn small?' Alright, let's set it straight: an adapted except from Sham (2000, unpublished thesis):

From bones to flesh - the new Tyrannosaurus rex

The late Maastrichtian Montana. Dawn on the tropical lowland floodplains. The air was warm and humid. A thin veil of fog failed to disguise the dominance of angiosperms: ancient laurels, magnolias, sycamores and water lilies studded the bank of the unbraided stream channel. Palms were thriving, albeit ferns and herbs, on which dews dropped, were still ubiquitous, with conifers vying to fill the canopy. The solitary Tyrannosaurus rex patrolled along the overbank, jerking its huge head in rhythm with its pace, and pausing to sniff the air. A familiar odor drifting in a breeze prompted him - a gracile male but still powerfully built - to investigate. Downstream nearby, a vigilant Troodon formosus was gnawing at a Triceratops horridus skull that rested on the muddy sandbar (the post-crania was long gone - floated downstream during a recent flashflood). Suddenly the tyrannosaur caught the long awaited low-pitched bellows: the first herd of Parasaurolophus sp. entered his territory after a three-month migration along the epi-continental shoreline. Exhausted, they traveled upstream for fresh water and the lush ground foliage. The tyrannosaur gauged the herd - worn out enough to warrant an ambush. It cautiously closed in within striking distance, its stereoptic eyes locked onto an unsuspecting juvenile. Then... an exploding roar. It charged straight across the water with tail raised for balance, jaws agape calculating where to land the bone-shattering bite...

Commentry
The gracile Tyrannosaurus rex was restored in an active, endothermic pose with avian musculature layout, modelled after MOR 555 (Horner et al, 1993). That this morph belonged to male gender is actually debatable (Brochu, 2002 contra Larson, 1994, 2008). Stereopticity in tyrannosaurs was proposed by Stevens (1998, 2006). Unlike the kung-fu rex (DMNH), the swing-phrase leg was restored with digits closed as per my personal observation on cursorial birds. Troodon formosus was redrawn after Doug Henderson's earlier work, seen here without a maniraptoran wrist. Its footprints was constructed with reference to Gatesy et al (1999). Interestingly, Holtz's (1995) interpretation of the arctometatarsalian clade (Tyrannosauroidea + Bullatosauria) outside of Maniraptora had led to the restoration of both dinosaurs without feathers, while currently the presence of at least some downy integuments is seen as the orthodoxy (as phylogenetically bracketed by Sinosauropteryx prima). Parasaurolophus sp. was based on Greg Paul's illustration on P. walkeri, albeit its presence in the Maastrichtian is actually questionable. Putting in an Edmontosaurus regalis or Anatotitan copei might be more appropriate. It is notable that Triceratops sp. skulls are highly polymorphic (Forster, 1996). The Lancian flora is restored according to Johnson (1997) although later references e.g. in CJES (2002) also existed.

© Leo W Sham, MMI et MMVIII

Laser surgery for the Asian skin – a conceptual treatise [1]

Abstract
It remains un-elucidated whether the Asian skin mainly demonstrates homogenous racial characteristics or exists as a heterogenous band across the Fitzpatrick phototypes. Whilst this has profound implication on the selection of treatment modalities and parameters for laser surgery, the literature has failed to address laser surgery with respect to the Asian, confer ethnic, skin. This paper seeks to review the current state of knowledge in this aspect and discern areas of ambiguity that serve as directions for future research. It represents one of the first major reviews based predominantly on Asian data and literature.

Plain-language summary
Research on laser surgery has traditionally been conducted on white people. Scientists, however, do not really know what lasers (and what settings) to use for treating Asians. Besides the lack of research on Asians, two other problems remain: first, researchers have previously just lump-summed non-white people into a confusing single category - ethnic-skinned - which is of course not equal to or representative of Asians. Second, we do not even know whether Asians are themselves a lump-sum of people differing in their skin characteristics, or rather, have some skin properties in common. In this paper we try to answer the abovementioned questions and find out areas that need more study in the future.

© Leo W Sham, MMVIII

[1] SHAM, LW et al (2008). Laser surgery for the Asian skin - a conceptual treatise. Australasian Journal of Cosmetic Surgery, 4(2):68-74.

Homo voce - our solo choice?

This is the original unpublished article entitled 'Homo voce – our solo choice?'. The chinese version appeared on The Hong Kong Economic Journal Monthly (V31 N5 p164-5) in August, 2007. I wonder if I would have been one of the youngest author ever to write an article in HKEJ Monthly!

A short discourse on the suitability of adopting speech as a diagnosis of human

To the Editors,
Hong Kong Economic Journal Monthly

Dear Sirs,
Contra Linnaeus (1758), who circumvented the diagnosis (or, in vernacular, definition) of human by stating 'Homo, nosce te ipsum' – human, know thyself – biologists have been keen to suggest uniqueness of humanity, albeit this being 'one of abandoned claims' (de Waal, 2005). In a review of The Talking Ape (Burling, 2005) in your esteemed journal, the author seemed to evoke the emphasis on syntactic speech as the smoking gun, asserting that Homo sapiens could be distinguished from traditional 'pongids' [1] by their uniquely enlarged brain and descended larynx, which allowed the development of syntactic speech, which in turn allowed that of culture (HKEJ Monthly, number 363, page 163-5).

None of the claims are, in reality, particularly true. Wherefore, I would seek to discuss this issue from a broader anthropological and paleontological perspective. This supplement, I hope, may further benefit your learnt readers.

Culture, for instance, is not a uniquely human phenomenon if it is not judged from a language-and-writing basis. 'The cultural label befits any species whose communities can be distinguished from one another by their unique suite of behavioral characters' – learnt and propagated through generations (de Waal, 1999). In fact, extensive, multiple behavioral pattern variations among chimpanzees have been documented in a synthesis of observation from the seven best studies of which in the field (Whiten et al, 1999).

Syntactic speech is not a prerequisite for culture, nor does it totally eclipse other behavioral and chemical signals for animal communication. Nowak et al (2000) suggested that syntax emerged as a result of human having to handle an increasing amount of signals exceeding a threshold value. That 'pongids' do not experience such a natural selection (i.e. living in habitats that demand the use of a threshold-flooding number of signals) does not speak of their incapacity of inventing syntax.

The neural and gross anatomical substrates for speech, as they turn out, preceded the origin of human (Carroll, 2003). The frontal cortex (involved in emotion and 'higher' cognitive functions) is actually not disproportionately larger in humans compared with 'pongids'. Left hemisphere-dominant communication process (required for speech production) has been demonstrated in chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas as well. A distinct area housing the mirror-neuron system, architectonically comparable to the Broca's area for speech generation in human, has been identified in the macaque (Petrides et al, 2005). Recent discovery of the enigmatic fossil hominin Homo floresiensis, with an endocranial volume of only 380cc (e.g. Brown et al, 2004; Morwood et al, 2005) further refuted the oft-assumed correlation between brain size and intelligence [2].

Despite the initial euphoria shrouding the 'gift of gap' theory (e.g. Leakey et al, 1992; Cartmill, 1998), the descended laryngeal condition, which supposedly allows for pronunciation and speech, is fading in its uniqueness as are neural marker of humanness. It has been shown that, as in human, both the laryngeal complex descends relative to the hyoid (Nishimura et al, 2003; Nishimura, 2003) and the hyoid descends relative to the palate (Nishimura et al, 2006) in chimpanzee infants. Any proponent of the 'gift of gap' theory, in fact, must consider the truth that evolution is not purpose-driven. Laryngeal descent is more a result of facial heterochronic changes in hominins than responding to the need to produce speech. It may only be that humans have made more utilization of this resonation chamber.

It may thus be obviously concluded that the most parsimonious [3] scenario is that all neural and anatomical foundations for syntactic speech – and the corresponding trait known as culture – are present in the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of humans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas and all descendents thereof (Carroll, 2003). The assumed human uniqueness can be inferred from quantitative modification of plesiomorphic (i.e. primitive) characters rather than invoking qualitative evolution novelties!

Your article however, akin to many enthusiastic discussions on the diagnosis of human, has neglected one fundamental fault: many of the striking differences between human and chimpanzees remain valid only when extant species are considered (figure 1). Paleontology has largely put this naivety into question (Carroll, 2003). It is known that the evolution of hominins involved multiple radiations, poly-specific co-existence with the possibility of genetic and cultural exchange, and dead-end extinctions (Wood et al, 1999; figure 2). Peculiar as it may be, the mono-specific existence of Homo sapiens in the Holocene is none the norm. The implication of such a picture on the discerning of humanness is two-fold:

1 The evolution of 'modern' traits was not a linear, additive process (Carroll, 2003). Various hominins might have independently evolved an assortment of 'advanced' anatomical and behavioral characters, mostly in response to local environmental stress, which might be lost with the lineage. Any claims of 'smoking guns' must be carefully correlated with existing fossil evidence while bearing in mind that theories may have to be revised in face of new fossil findings.

2 The level of synapomorphy [4] of any candidate morphological or genetic characters must be stated in phylogenetic sense to make research meaningful. Even if a character is shown to be present in modern human (Homo sapiens) and absent in chimpanzees, it may yet be debatable whether it was present in Neanderthals, 'archaic' Homo species, australopithecines or other 'stem' hominins. In addition, characters supposed to be unique to Homo sapiens do not necessarily equate to human superiority – as Finlayson (2005) argued, the colonization by linguistic, technologically advanced Homo sapiens was not the cause of extinction of Homo neanderthalensis.

In conclusion, the qualitative evolution novelty that may provide the diagnosis of humanness remains obscure under current anthropological and paleontological evidence. While the current draft-PhyloCode (Cantino and de Queiroz, 2006) does not govern the definition of a species, future research on the diagnosis of Homo sapiens should in fact address and be conducted under the framework of hominid phylogeny. One should abandon to seek the potential difference between human and traditional 'pongids', but view ourselves (and our phenotypic traits known as speech and culture) as a quantitatively advanced species in the continuum of hominid evolution.

Yours faithfully,
Leo W Sham

Notes
[1] Pongids traditionally denote the great apes. It is an invalid paraphylectic grade (incomplete group of organism comprising an ancestor plus only some of its descendents) in current scientific understanding.
[2] The discovery of multiple specimens suggested that Homo floresiensis is unlikely a microcephalic modern human. Although its brain size is roughly that of the chimpanzee's, archeological evidence supported that it could butcher stegodons and use fire – behavior only expected of modern human.
[3] In science, the simplest hypothesis (necessitating the fewest assumptions) is preferred.
[4] In phylogenetics, only synapomorphies (shared derived characters) are considered useful in determining the uniqueness of a (group of) organism.

Figure 1: cladogram of extant hominids

Pongo pygmaeus (orangutan)
Gorilla gorilla (gorilla)
Pan paniscus (bonobo)
Pan troglodytes (chimpanzee)
Homininae (see figure 2) - Homo sapiens (human)

Figure 2: cladogram of extant and extinct hominids

'Stem hominids' (see figure 1)
Unnamed fossil chimpanzee KNM-TH 45519-45521 (McBrearty et al, 2005)
Homininae - Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Orrorin tugenensis
Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba
Ardipithecus ramidus ramidus
Kenyanthropus platyops
Australopithecus anamensis
Australopithecus bahrelghazali
Australopithecus afarensis
Australopithecus africanus
Australopithecus garhi
Paranthropus aethiopicus
Paranthropus robustus
Paranthropus boisei
Homo rudolfensis
Homo habilis
Homo erectus (including Homo ergaster)
Homo floresiensis
Homo antecessor
Homo heidelbergensis
Homo neanderthalensis
Homo sapiens

References
Brown P et al (2004). A new small-bodied hominin from the late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature 431: 1055-1061

Burling R (2005). The talking ape: how language evolved. Oxford University Press, 296 pages.

Cantino PD and de Queiroz K (2006). International Code of Phylogenetic Nomenclature. Version 3a Part I: clade names. http://www.ohiou.edu/phylocode/

Carroll SB (2003). Genetics and the making of Homo sapiens. Nature 422:849-857

Cartmill M (1998). The gift of gab. Discover November 1998, 56-64

Finlayson C (2005). Neanderthals and modern humans: an ecological and evolutionary perspective. Cambridge University Press, 255 pages.

Leakey R et al (1992). Origins reconsidered: in search of what makes us human. Little, Brown and Company, 375 pages.

Linnaeus C (1758). Systemae Naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis.

McBrearty S et al (2005). First fossil chimpanzee. Nature 437:105-108

Morwood MJ et al (2005). Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia. Nature 437:1012-1017

Nishimura T (2003). Comparative morphology of the hyo-laryngeal complex in anthropoids: two steps in the evolution of the descent of the larynx. Primates 44:41-49.

Nishimura T et al (2003). Descent of the larynx in chimpanzee infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 100:6930-6933.

Nishimura T et al (2006). Descent of the hyoid in chimpanzees: evolution of face flattening and speech. Journal of Human Evolution 51:244-254

Nowak MA et al (2000). The evolution of syntactic communication. Nature 404:495-498

Petrides M et al (2005). Orofacial somatomotor responses in the macaque monkey homologue of Broca's area. Nature 435:1235-1238

de Waal FBM (1999). Cultural primatology comes of age. Nature 399:635-636

de Waal FBM (2005). A century of getting to know the chimpanzee. Nature 437:56-59

Whiten A et al (1999). Cultures in chimpanzees. Nature 399:682-685

Wood B et al (1999). The human genus. Science 284:65-71

Adapted © Leo W Sham, MMVII

Why didn't Jurassic Park make a millionaire

It cannot be taken lightly that – as the Chinese saying has it – money is in the books. Well, if you disagree, go ask Michael Crichton, whose best-selling novel, Jurassic Park, gave him a world of bucks and us, a world of book. Fortunate enough, not content with such orthodoxy, some of us devised an alternate way of striking a fortune – a game called 'who want to be a millionaire?'. The catching point is that, of course, the starting question sprains our brains much less than reading a book does. Say for example: who wanted to become a millionaire in Jurassic Park? Easy: poor old John Hammond. How? Again easy: to churn out a Jurassic Park from a Holocene paradise of an island. But why didn't he? In a nutshell, he didn't know much about the true Jurassic, wherefore as a somber consequence much of what had been John Hammond ended up as dinosaur dung, or so the story goes...

Now comes our challenge. We know that dung can also be called dropping, excreta, guano... not to mention the s-word, but what should it be called if it happens to be fossilized?
1A Gastrolith
1B Oolith
1C Coprolite
1D Stromatolite

Maybe, though, old Hammond could have his fate twisted had he chosen to clone less of a raptor. Which of the following is not a true raptor, then (for which I mean of the clade Maniraptora)?
2A Bambiraptor
2B Foxraptor
2C Microraptor
2D Velociraptor

To Hammond's misfortune (sigh...) there are a lot more raptors to choose from! Which of the following is a true raptor, now?
3A Utahraptor
3B Megaraptor
3C Eoraptor
3D Archaeoraptor

To double the trouble, there seems to be as much a bunch of tyrannosaurs as that of raptors. Which of the following is not a tyrannosauroid dinosaur that Hammond might have wanted?
4A Tyrannosaurus
4B Siamotyrannus
4C Nanotyrannus
4D Eotyrannus

Ayah, this goes on and we'll have real problem giving a name to all these dinosaurs found (if not resurrected). For one thing, many dinosaurs like to boast some form of ornamentation – take a crest (lophos-) for instance – but other animals seem to adorn the same as well. So wait, which of the following is not a dinosaur?
5A Monolophosaurus [single-crest]
5B Dilophosaurus [double-crest]
5C Trilophosaurus [triple-crest]
5D Cryolophosaurus [frozen crest]

Give you a fair warning, though, this is not a game of 'odd-animal-out'. Well, below is. Henry Wu, chief geneticist of Jurassic Park, declared: 'dinosaurs are not reptiles'. Or are they? If so, which of the following is not a reptile?
6A Canis (a.k.a. Snoopy or Goofy)
6B Crocodylus (crocodile – a local heat now)
6C Cygnus (swan – kind of a bird, not stars)
6D Carcharodontosaurus (this long name can be reduced to a 'dinosaur', if you like)

Simple enough? But why didn't I ask 'which is a reptile' or, were Hammond's team correct, 'which are not reptiles'? In fact, if Hammond wished to fool his business rival, he had more nomenclature armament to employ. Here's an example: which of the following is the name of a dinosaur?
7A Eater
7B Drinker
7C Singer
7D Dancer

You might not have noticed one more infamous scandal behind all this Park-gate fiasco: namely, most of Hammond's dinosaurs were not inhabitants of the Jurassic. Which one was?
8A Tyrannosaurus
8B Velociraptor
8C Triceratops
8D Dilophosaurus

Make a bet, but all can stage a Mesozoic [age of middle-life] road kill. Dinosaurs were dangerous, weren't they? The prefix 'deinos-' itself can mean 'terrible', but piss... quite a few animals ended up in the paleontologist's mind as dangerous too. Which of the following is a dinosaur, then?
9A Dinofelis
9B Dinotherium
9C Deinochirus
9D Deinosuchus

The truth: he who coined the name 'Deinosauros' had actually intended it to mean 'fearfully great, a lizard'. Oh, who would Hammond have cursed?
10A Carl von Linne (Linneus in disguise)
10B Charles Darwin (no introduction needed)
10C Arthur Conan Doyle (but Sherlock Holmes didn't go to The Lost World!)
10D Richard Owen (whose walking stick, as it is joked, was a femur of a giant moa...)

Well, you'd say 'I have had enough' of this freaky dinosaurian challenge. Sure, and you wouldn't get mobbed up by a pack of Velociraptors this way (partly, but not-so-gleefully, because in the movie the kind of raptor employed was actually Deinonychus – a bigger and more vicious thug). Just that you don't get the million either. If you wish to, in such case that you wouldn't like to read books, write a book or (for personal security) get written about in a book, pray you have a way out: and count there is – in the form of our coming articles, where we will try to explore the Jurassic (plus the rest of the Mesozoic) in a systematic and decidedly safer way.

No more books – and forget (or would you) about what Crichton might have to preach...

Adapted © Leo W Sham, MMV

A joker's view of the phenerozoic geologic timescale

Cords decap American MP!
Tragedy for John Kennedy...
Person's name?
Paleo MP, pighead!

Ages ago I was trying to devise a user-friendly mnemonic for the phenerozoic [visible life] geologic timescale, which unceremoniously ended up, though, not unlike a petty joke. The lines, however, survived my college-induced (read: hyper-mnemonic) amnesia (a-mnesia, please). Fine, so it struck...

The first line codes periods from the paleozoic [ancient life]:
Lower paleozoic - Cambrian, Ordovician, Siluvian
Upper paleozoic - Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian
Whereas, American geologists traditionally divide the Carboniferous into the lower Mississippian and upper Pennsylvanian stages.

The second line codes periods from the mezozoic [middle life]:
Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous ('K' because it originated from kreta [German for chalk])

The third line denotes the idea that the traditional Tertiary period of the cenozoic [new life] is replaced by Paleogene and Neogene (the next period being Quatenary, no joke and no more).

The fourth line codes epoches from the cenozoic:
Paleogene - Paleocene, Eocene
Neogene - Miocene, Pliocene
Quaternary - Pleistocene, Holocene

Hope these jots help! (well, a stolen line from Peter Wolfe, paleobotanist, in his generous e-mail correspondence)

© Leo W Sham, MMVIII

Requiescat In Pace... Down Under [1]

Down under... the land called Australia
Where only the brave dared to tread
Or add the convict, to whom life is dead

Down under... the ocean called Pacific
There in nature an ecosystem subsist
Or add the human, in whom London's call [2] insist

Down under... the destiny called Hades
O' come ye faithful, led but by thy interest [3]
Art thou Hercules not [4], ye've gotta take a rest

© Leo W Sham, MMVI

In memory of this croc Dundee Steve Irwin –
Your aspiration, your fate, your destiny...

[1] The theme of this poem is to explore the three tiers of meaning of 'down under' in Steve's context.
[2] This is to paraphrase Jack London's 'the call of the wild', which was (actually) the wording used in the published version.
[3] The choice for Hades, confer Heaven, is totally by artistic license and should not be interpreted to carry derogative meaning. Likewise, the word interest should not be linked up with profit-making.
[4] Hercules, as the legend had it, went to hell and came back out; we mortals (thus Steve inclusive) cannot.

A muse on luck

Bless me if your grant is granted.
Curse me if you're granting a grant.

luck comes and goes like nothing
but (give and take) a strange string ---

of beads that come in a seamless row
and breaks that cut in a creamless blow

dawn may I ride a trend
... a splendid day

dusk could I side its end
... a candid nay

here comes the time I realize
my wait for a friend ---

there goes the charm she materalize
my hope for the trend!

Adapted © Leo W Sham, MMIII

The action potential rhythm!

Or, the earth-pig anthem...

Anytime I am in the dark... would
Anyone please gimme a spark... from
Anyhow a lepton and quark... in
Anywhere just not the heart... but
Anymass the neurons of us... aardvark!!!

Adapted © Leo W Sham, MMII

Prolog: a life of dreams - and dreams-come-true - at HKU

I had a dream... Well, never mind the paraphrase. Call me Leo (gosh, another paraphrase).

I dreamt of becoming an expert - he who speaks not in vernaculars but jargon, and entertains not truth but hypotheses.

Say, a scientist - he whose lofty prowess can be solidly substantiated in the age of publish-or-perish.

And say, a vertebrate paleontologist - he who seldom failed to look smug each time he saw a deinotherium skull in the University museum being mislabeled 'glyptodont'.

Alas, so much so for this childhood trance.

I was surprised when, you know, once upon a time grandma showed me a pack of toy dinosaurs, but really got flabbergasted when I flipped through the pages of Jurassic Park. Back then, none of us dinosaur-o-kids here had a touch of this dinosaur-renaissance hype - eh, which actually kick-started two decades ago! I yearned to devour all about dinosaurs, but more quickly did dad learn that paleontology is one of the poorest funded sciences (this, aka dinosaur heresy... or dinosaur hear-say). Oh gee.

So I got into the University's medical school, if only for her fine collection of skeletal materials (save the formaldehyde). Time flew and I thought I had mastered all I have to - only to have BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs ground my arrogance flat. Dinosaurs were not heaps of bones! I swore to make a really scientific study in vertebrate paleontology. Just as I regretted that I missed the mentorship program, Professor PW Lucas kindly agreed to tutor my research. To my further astonishment, the very first question I received was 'what do you know about dinosaurs?'

The story naturally ran so on and so forth. I still savor that summer study [1], Newton-under-the-apple-tree style (by the way, I ended up as a medic, no fairy tale). Professor Lucas set a role model of what a real expert is - he who will transform the cryptic broths of knowledge into chicken soup for the public. One magic wond I discovered is illustration, and another, writing.

That's why this memoir. Should a dream spark off in your mind, it looks another dream come true at HKU.

[1] Sham WH (2000). From bones to flesh - the new Tyrannosaurus rex. Unpublished thesis, HKU.

© Leo W Sham, MMIV

Preface: even tyrannosaurs need a pen (and some penmanship) too...

Dear folks,

I labor a (bloody) decent job in daylight but enjoy being a paleo-artist in moonlight, which has shown me the present unpleasant dichotomy between the Arts and Science. Wherefore, the average Darwin must forego and forget the alphabets; he must get slurry-tongued at press conferences; and his papers must look like the alchemist's mix of English words. Across the street (or the aisle under the same roof of the ivory tower), every Dickens must now detest if not demonize science; he must pretend never to have heard of Nature or Science or Cell; and his scripts must be on Middle-Earth rather than The Lost World.

I think we need not be like that. While I'm not the last man who knows everything (let Joseph Leidy of the Hadrosaurus foulkii fame claim the title) and I cannot prove, CSI style, that the current rapid specialization in science would have murdered any budding naturalist, I do recall the joy of awing under the whale skeleton hanging on that ivory tower's museum roof when I was a young kid.

And I'll bet you'd feel the same. Wouldn't you too be flocking there if you hear it has a tyrannosaur skeleton in exhibit? Well, what about a single tyrannosaur scapula that is equally spectacular to the scientist's eye?

That's the problem. When nature comes in as science nowadays, you need a lens to look through individualized disciplines and refocus on the holistic picture. Having survived the ivory tower days, I realize scientific essays and illustrations offer the best peep - as presented in this selection of examples. The info herein represents the state of knowledge current to the date of their original publication, but please remember to lean a magnifying glass upon the footnotes and commentaries. A line or two, admittedly though, is just for plain fun.

Lo! This memoir is of course not peer-reviewed - it's not even meant to be classified as science-and-tech - but come on, it doesn't take an Einstein (nor an Aesop) to see that tyrannosaurs need a pen, too!

© Leo W Sham, MMVIII