I was struck by a Mastodon post where classic game developer Ron Gilbert quoted film critic Roger Ebert as follows: The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don’t wait for her. And Gilbert commented: I am constantly forgetting this as I procrastinate writing only to discover her again once I start.

I said last time that Jisc’s feeble transition-to-open-access report was the first of two disapointing scholarly-communication announcements that week. The second was of course the announcement that PeerJ has been acquired by Taylor and Francis.

In the first of two disapointing scholarly-communication announcements last week, Jisc announced its report on progress towards open access in the UK. The key finding is: Despite improvements – rapid growth in transitional agreements, sector savings and high levels of funder compliance – a full transition to open access will not happen soon.

My friend Toby Lowther wrote to me back in December to ask this question: As far as I understand it, the general rule for extant species is that it’s much easier to get much bigger underwater than on land, due to the role that water plays in supporting large bodies.

Long-time readers may remember that back in 2013, Matt and I played a game where we each designed a cover, in half an hour, for a book whose name was randomly generated.

The best thing about collaborations is that I get to work with amazing colleagues from around the world.

MWC 861 in bone (left) and in bronze (right). Here’s a cool comparo.

Fig. 2. Rebbachisauridae indet. (MDPA-Pv 007) from the Sierra Chata locality (Candeleros Formation) Cenomanian (Upper Cretaceous). Anterior caudal vertebra in anterior ( A1 , A3 ), posterior ( A4 , A6 ), and left lateral ( A7 , A9 ) views.

Eoneophron , Parapropalaehoplophorus , Ia io , and friends The other day Mike wrote to me about the new Hell Creek oviraptorosaur Eoneophron (Atkins-Weltman et al. 2024), commenting that he liked the ‘eoneo’ — old new — part of the name. That sent me down a little etymological rabbit hole.

Just a quick post about the genesis of the Brachiosaurus rib paper (Taylor and Wedel 2023) that I wrote about at the very end of last year. Although this is in some respects a minor paper, I’m fond of it because it fell into place so quickly and easily.

As we’ve often observed, it’s a funny thing that incredibly well-known dinosaur specimens can sit around for decades, or for more than a century, before someone notices something fascinating about them. One lesson to learn from this is the importance of collections — their creation, maintenance and accessibility.