The irony certainly didn't escape me. I spent all week running shovel, loving every minute I wasn't doing my normal pumpman job. You remember, the job I took because I didn't want to run shovel.
Anyways. What's with all the Russian military aircraft making like they're going to invade Canada lately? Are they bored? Feeling the Cold War Nostalgia Blues? Or getting ready to invade the Arctic to claim all its supposed oil?
Also- sewer diggers discovered bones from an Edmontosaurus and an Albertosaurus right here in Edmonton. Alberta. Not discovered- any Calgarysauruses. Cause there's no such thing sucka!
And look- all of Chewbacca's dialog from Star Wars!

Haha remember this terrifying Triceratops I drew? It was netcromanced (yes- the black art of internet necromancy, thank you very much) back to life today by David Orr over at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs. Seems there's a debate over whether Triceratops is its own species or not. Well, even if he's not there's always Eotriceratops.

Awww look at the little guy! A tiny little pterosaur was announced today. Which sounds to me like the perfect opening line of a new paleo-poem!

Ode to Nemicolopterus crypticus

Tiny little pterosaur, hello!
You seem like a cute little fellow
Flying around on your tiny wings
Looking around for shiny things
How did you get so small and shrinked?
I would ask you but you're extinct!

The world famous Royal Tyrrell Museum is only about three hours away from Edmonton. When Michelle and I went there this summer we were kind of surprised at how quickly we got there. So there's no excuse to not go there at least once a day! Okay, well at the very least maybe once every few years or so. Especiallly now that they are displaying the world's only specimen of Eotriceratops xerinsularis, a huge proto-ceratopsian discovered not far from Drumheller in a previously dino-free stratum. Cool, eh? Check out this photo of the skull. Just imagine how that would look in the garage next to your Jaekelopterus rhenania.
I will now write the world's first ever poem dedicated to Eotriceratops.

Eotriceratops xerinsularis, can I call you Ted?
You're a horned dinosaur with a gigantic head
I wish you were still alive and not quite so dead
O Eotriceratops xerinsularis, whom I call Ted.

I finally found some trilobite fossils today, at West Edmonton Mall. Pretty nice specimens, and going for a pretty penny too. So I didn't buy one. But at least there's some news from the dinosaur world today. Is it still news when the specimens in question are 110 million years old? National Geographic has a cool (somewhat) interactive flash site up about unusual dinos. My favorite is the Epidendrosaurus.
Wanna win a children's book about squids? Well, you won't be able to, since I'm going to. But you can always try, right?
You know what's a terrible movie? Rise of the Silver Surfer. Lucky it was a freebie from the library. Seriously, it was extremely unfantastic. Oh well.
Also, I discovered that my wife doesn't like it when I use her toothbrush. And she likes it even less when I say, "But you never even noticed all the other times!"

As of 7AM this morning I'm on holidays for the next twelve days! That's the coolest thing ever. Here are some things that are tied for second coolest thing ever:
1. Little red panda cubs born at the Valley Zoo. Help me cheer on my little cousins as they struggle to survive their first few months.
2. Many dinosaur fossils just down the road a ways from my place. (The actual location is secret to protect the site.)
3. Tomorrow I'm running my first race! Happy Canada Day Race. Yay for me! Join me in cheering me on! And Michelle too but she is an old pro at races and our little 5 KM race is just a cakerun for her. In fact she was the 5 K run clinic leader for the past few months.
4. This: and this: arrived in the mail for me this week from my internet pal Travis Hanson, the most excellent illustrator and print-maker. It joins the other print I already have and never ever tire of looking at. You can order your own prints or his books if you like over here.
5. Monday is our second anniversary. Yay for me and Michelle!
6. Bears. Or maybe they should be the coolest thing ever and everything else can be tied for third.

A new dinosaur has been identified in Argentina- a huge T-Rex-like carnosaur that hunted in packs and probably liked to munch on Argentinosaurus. Actually it's an old dinosaur- Mapusaurus roseae was found in a 90 million-year-old stratum, making it older than T-Rex by about 30 million years. My alma mater's own Dr. Philip Currie helped excavate and name it.
Here's a picture of its skull. Thanks to Papa Bear for the heads-up.

Like a lumbering alkaloid dinosaur from Titan, Shovel 10 slowly walks its way up the mountain, maw open and ready to devour everything in its path with its blunt metal teeth.



Work really kicked my ass this week. We moved a shovel every day, and two yesterday- from the bottom of the pit to the top of the mountain, or off to the healing grounds to get fixed. A shovel, for those of you unfamiliar with the alien world that is an open pit coal mine, is the primary means of moving rock to get at coal. They're gargantuan electric digging machines, not the small handheld tools you find in your garage. They're also unwieldy. It's not like you can just drive them anywhere you want, you have to manhandle their power cables, move things around, make sure nothing catches on fire, or touches a powerline. Basically you stand outside in the cold ensuring that nothing goes wrong. When there's a ramp involved, and ice, then you want to have a bulldozer (another species of metal monster- a brutish and stubborn chilopod from Neptune) acting as a brake in case, as almost happened with 10 here, it starts sliding out of control. Moving one is a lot of work, and takes a long time. Still, it's not a bad job, especially with the scenery. I certainly don't mind working. And who else gets to play with giant metal alien dinosaur robots that eat rocks?
Anyways, work's done, time to enjoy some days off. Four of them. On the agenda for today: absolutely nothing! Lots and lots of nothing.

Dinosaurs make me happy. I was spending a lazy Saturday afternoon down by the fireplace reading a National Geographic article on the mighty saurians. Here in Alberta we have one of the finest dinosaur fossil beds in the world, and an excellent museum to go with it, the Royal Tyrrell. If you are an Albertan student, you can enter their poster contest, though you will have some stiff competition from Weremagnus, who is her own worst enemy it seems, as she was disqualified from a previous year's contest because the judges didn't believe she had actually drawn her entry herself.
Lucky for everybody else, I am not eligible to enter.

Behold my terrifying Triceratops of triumph!

We saw a robot dinosaur at the store yesterday. Cool, eh? Some sort of carnosaur- likely the mighty Rex. It was walking and roaring and chomping its teeth. Little children were playing with it. Much as I love robots, and dinosaurs, I'm not sure if it's wise to allow young kids to have one. If I have learned anything from science fiction, it is never to trust robot dinosaurs- it's only a matter of time before they run amok. Luckily this one was very small.
Anyways, all you parents out there, my advice to you is this: if you must buy this ticking timebomb for your toddler this Christmas, at least buy this book for yourself while you are at it. Please.