Dinosaurs Again Thunder into the Pages of <i>The Anatomical Record</i> in a Special Issue Exploring their Hidden Worlds

The authors of this editorial have a small secret: both of us have always wanted to study fossils, even be paleontologists. Indeed, when we would hold our annual Anatomical Record Board Meetings in Kurt H. Albertine's (KA's) base at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, arrangements would be made for us to visit fossil sites in the magnificent Utah mountains and the surrounding badlands. We particularly liked going to Fossil Lake (ancient Lake Uinta) near Kemmerer in the neighboring state of Wyoming (the region is part of the Green River Shale formation), where we would rapturously explore the rock formations for fossils (Fig. 1). What a glorious experience! Perched high on a mighty bluff with the wind blowing through our hair (those of us with hair that is), we overlooked the majesty of Wyoming that seemed to go on forever. (Jeffrey T. Laitman [JL] notes: While all save KA “searched” for fossils, all we ever found were little broken tidbits; KA, to the contrary, had a most knowledgeable native American guide who would lead him to “special” rock formations wherein KA would tap the sediment to expose the most magnificent, imbedded schools of fossil fish (Fig. 2)! KA would then present before the non-chosen commoners holding the treasured slab of fossilized fish on high like Moses displaying the tablets from Mount Sinai for the Israelites to see. The rest of us would roll our eyes as we looked down on our 1/8 of an inch of a broken, partial tail of a something, and growl in annoyance and disbelief; KA would later give JL a “sympathy” fish in order to keep JL quiet. The latter has not worked.) In the world of paleontology, the “Holy Grail” for fossil-finders (sorry for mixing metaphors or mixing something) is indisputably dinosaurs and their kin. If one is honest, who has never fantasized about unearthing the next great star of a Jurassic Park movie? What excitement must accompany descending into a hidden grotto or climbing up an escarpment and sighting an odd fragment that, when followed and meticulously freed from its clutching sediment, would lead in turn to the remains of a gigantic femur or bizarre skull fragment of some long-gone behemoth? What little boy or girl has not fantasized such when staring at some mighty T-Rex or ponderous-looking brontosaur reconstruction at a museum? That surge of awe can again be felt when one examines the very special collection of studies in this month's Special Issue on “The Hidden World of Dinosaurs,” guest edited by Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania together with his former graduate student Bandon Hedrick of Louisiana State University Health Science Center (LSUHSC) in New Orleans (Hedrick and Dodson, 2020, this issue). As Dodson and Hedrick emphasize, this issue explores the “paleobiology” of dinosaurs, the subfield that expands beyond the fossils themselves to include reconstructed anatomy and function, their biology and interactions with each other and the environment, and assessments of macroevolutionary trends. Taken together, the science presented offers an extraordinary peak into the dynamic world of studies on dinosaurs. A few words about our Guest Editors are in order. First is the junior partner of the team, Dr. Hedrick. Hedrick is a poster child for the dynamic breed of comparative anatomists/paleobiologists who emphasize integration of multifield knowledge gleaned from different taxa in order to know, really know, the species under their lens. Accordingly, Hedrick began his path by doing his dissertation work with Dodson at the University of Pennsylvania, studying the paleontology, anatomy, and biology of Psittacosaurus (our new favorite dinosaur name; literally “parrot lizard”), an early ceratopsian (the dudes with horns) dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous, largely from Asia. Subsequent to his sojourn in Philadelphia, Hedrick spent the next five years doing postdocs to learn new skills about different species in laboratories at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Harvard, and Oxford before landing in the best-eating city in the United States, N'Orleans, in the noted Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy at LSUHSC. Here, in between crayfish etouffee and Mardi Gras, Hedrick will undoubtedly continue to integrate his knowledge of comparative anatomy and biology with the fossil record he adores. The senior member of the team is this journal's long-time friend and frequent contributor, Peter Dodson. Peter, we know him too well for scholarly distance, has long been one of the great dinosaur anatomists of our world, indeed being universally acclaimed as the “king” of ceratopsian dinosaurs (e.g., Dodson, 1996). The Special Issue that he guest edited in 2009, “Unearthing the anatomy of dinosaurs” (Laitman, 2009; Laitman and Albertine, 2009; Dodson, 2009a), was the most popular and requested special issue in the history of Wiley (our publisher) and required them to do additional printing runs to meet requests for the issue (and all those we had in our cabinets were quickly taken as well by our grubby graduate and medical students!). Peter has been at the center of dinosaur research since his days as an undergraduate at the University of Ottawa in the late 1960s and, subsequently, as a graduate student at Yale under the great John H. Ostrom, who himself revolutionized thinking about dinosaurs, particularly showing that many were active and dynamic animals, more like birds than many reptiles. Indeed, in Peter's paper in this Special Issue entitled “Generations” (Dodson, 2020, this issue), the master recounts his ties to the many students who preceded him and the many he helped birth, in essence creating his paleontological genealogy. It should be noted that, while the article describes the advisees he has had and those of his students, it does not mention the countless others that Peter has “unofficially” mentored through the years. Indeed, JL, also a graduate student at Yale during Dodson's time (we were table mates in Gross Anatomy Laboratory, the wise Dodson during his last year of study guiding the fumbling JL during his first months). Peter was to JL, as he has been to so many, a big brother, advisor, and always-positive cheerleader who lifted one up when they were down (see Laitman, 2017, for discussion of Peter's influence). Not only was Peter a mentor to JL, he later served as an advisor to JL's son, Ben, who was an undergraduate at Penn. Peter has been an uplifting and caring voice for many in the field for over half a century (Fig. 3). The Anatomical Record, and our parent body, the American Association for Anatomy (AAA), has long had deep ties to the world of dinosaurs. Indeed, the first President of the AAA in 1888 (then called the Association of American Anatomists) was the extraordinary polymath Joseph Leidy (Warren, 1999). Leidy was one of the great scientists of the 19th century and the first to recognize and describe dinosaurs found in the Americas, paving the way for the raptors of dinosaurian paleontology, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel C. Marsh (see Laitman, 2009; Dodson, 2009b for discussion). Our own journal has been pleased to be the vehicle for disseminating numerous studies on varied features of dinosaurs ranging from biomechanical models, to reconstructions based on comparative anatomy, to insights and new interpretations on taxonomy and systematics. These studies have been authored by a virtual “Who's Who” in the dinosaur community, including such fine scholars as Emily Rayfield (e.g., Rayfield, 2005), Eric Snively (e.g., Snively, 2007), Larry Witmer (e.g., Witmer and Ridgely, 2008), Ali Nabavizadeh (e.g., Nabavizadeh, 2015; 2019), and, of course, many publications by Peter Dodson and his students (e.g., Dodson, 2003; Smith et al., 2005) to mention but a handful. Although not yet accomplished, the allure of finding great dinosaurian remains still beats strongly in our hearts. While our wanderings through the Wasatch mountains, the Green River Valley, or even the shores of the Great Salt Lake have not yielded our hoped-for bounty, we have each had finds that have whetted our appetite to continue the hunt. After arduous sifting through sharp and potentially injurious shards, JL found a partly preserved tooth of a late cretaceous mosasaur (extinct, large marine reptile) in Moab, Utah (ok, Scott Miller actually found it; ok, ok, it was in a fossil store, but JL was still there and had to look hard for it!). KA, of course, found a real treasure and one that may prove to be previously unrecognized: a fossil angiosperm leaf from the aforementioned Fossil Lake in the Green River formation in Wyoming. Given the rock strata and related fauna (i.e., fossil fish; mostly Knightia alta and Diplomystus denatus, both related to modern herring but without any sauce), the leaf may be from the Eocene Epoch (maybe 50 million years ago (Fig. 4). Being a perpetually good citizen, rather than mounting the leaf in his living room along with moose heads and antlers (like KA would ever be allowed to do that!), it was given to paleobotanists at the Fossil Butte National Museum who gave it the morphotype number “FOBU11749 Leaf 12a.” While the leaf has been submitted for taxonomic identification—and if, indeed, it is deemed to have been of a previously unrecognized and undescribed taxon—a formal description will be required at which time the leaf will receive its official taxonomic binom. “Albertinei” has been requested (by guess who?) to be included in the name. It is actually quite exciting. Depending on its actual age, these leaves may have been directly related to those eaten by herbivorous dinosaurs or their kin. While we are still hoping to find our first dinosaur fragments, this Special Issue will more than amply serve in the meantime to keep our interest alive. It will also continue the great tradition of The Anatomical Record in serving as the source to advance new knowledge about the most remarkable animals that have ever thundered on our globe. Joseph Leidy would heartily approve!

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