Back at the start of September, I noted that Tschopp and Mateus (2016) had published a petition to the ICZN, asking them to establish Diplodocus carnegii as the type specimen of the genus Diplodocus — a role that I argued it already fulfils in practice. I wrote a formal comment in support of the petition, which I submitted on 7 September;

So I came across this tweet from Laurent Gatto, who’s head of the Computational Proteomics Unit at the University of Cambridge, UK: https://twitter.com/lgatt0/status/802189887860592640 My immediate reaction was not to retweet . Why? Because I am not comfortable recommending rejection (or acceptance!) of something I’ve not seen.

The question of whether sauropod cervicals got longer through ontogeny came up in the comment thread on Mike’s “How horrifying was the neck of Barosaurus?” post, and rather than bury this as a comment, I’m promoting it to a post of its own.

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The interview that I did for Jisc was conducted via Skype, by the very able Michelle Pauli. We talked for some time, and obviously much of what was said had to be cut for length (and no doubt some repetition). To my pleasant surprise, though, Michelle prepared a complete transcript of our talk before the cutting started. So in the tradition of DVD movies, I am now able to offer the Deleted Scenes.

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A few years ago, we started the web-site Who Needs Access? to highlight some of the many ways that people outside academia want and need access to published scholarly works: fossil preparators, small businesses, parents of children with rare diseases, developing-world entrepreneurs, disability rights campaigners and many more.

It’s open access week! As part of their involvement with OA Week, Jisc interviewed me. You can read the interview here. A brief taster: Read the full interview here.