The Amazing Adventures of Australia Man, Part II: Aliens vs. Australia Man!

Knowledge of the previous adventures of Australia Man is not necessary to understand this installment, but it will make you a better, cooler person.

Gigantic Dinosaur Expo 2006

If you happen to get to Chiba City (an hour southeast of Tokyo) between July 15 and September 10, check out the Gigantic Dinosaur Expo 2006. The centerpiece of the expo is a mounted skeleton of Supersaurus. Unlike most of the 'gigapods', including Bruhathkayosaurus and my own beloved Sauroposeidon, Supersaurus is actually represented by decent material (gasp!) from more than one individual (you lie!) from more than one quarry (GET OUT!!). So a skeletal reconstruction is more than a pile of guesswork. The mounted skeleton is based on the type material from Dry Mesa Quarry in western Colorado, which was collected by Jim Jensen in the 1970s, and a new skeleton from Wyoming that is being described by Scott Hartman and David Lovelace of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. Check out Scott's bitchin' skeletal reconstructions of Supersaurus and other dinos here. And, uh, in the next paragraph.

If you can't get to Chiba City, not to worry. The Japanese newspaper Nikkei gave the expo some double-page, color-photo love. If you have sharp eyes and you've spent a lot of time at SVP lately, you might just make out a tiny Scott Hartman and Dave Lovelace in the photo with the mounted Supersaurus skeleton. Unless I miss my guess, Dave is third from the left, and Scott is fifth, with arm extended while he shows off his baby.


Naturally, I have an ulterior motive in posting all this. These folks at Nikkei are pretty sharp; when they do a story on giant dinosaurs, they go right to the experts. Namely, me. Get a load of my bad self, expounding on the mysteries of evolution in front of the VSLB tyrannosaur.


And in case you haven't had enough, here's one for the road. Not being able to read Japanese, I have no idea what the caption says. Possibly "fat dork shows the size of the hoagie he ate for lunch".

I can live with that.

Possibly the biggest bone in any museum anywhere...

Said Nick Pyenson in the subject line of a recent e-mail. He sent this picture and description, and gave me permission to post them here.

...for comparison, a full grown humpack skull (to the far left) would fit entirely within the mandibles of this blue whale. Long Marine Lab's mandibles are a full meter shorter than this one. No TL was recorded for this specimen. I think the circumference of this mandible, at max, comes close to 2 m. Our guess is that these mandibles probably belonged to a 95+ ft individual.

The Amazing Adventures of Australia Man

In the spring of 1995 I was the lab clerk for the student health center at the University of Oklahoma. I had a lot of spare time. One afternoon, just over 11 years ago, I drew this comic.

If you think it's the coolest thing you've ever seen, you're right.

Unfortunately, the promised follow-ups never arrived. I did draw about half of issue 2 the next year, but I pooped out. Maybe I'll finish it. If I do, you'll see it here first. And, probably, nowhere else.