All indications are that there will really be a Spring Season. Call me cynical, but I'd want to step off the bus before I declare it a fact. However, it has motivated me to start refreshing the website's Lee Creek-associated pages. Some of the oldest material was contained in Bill Heim's pages and an effort has been made to upgrade the graphics.

The Fall provided me with two opportunities to collect the Nanjemoy. The results were very good, but only provided a few upgraded graphics and no new selachian species.

I had expected to "release" the Otodus-Carcharocles evolution slide-show by this time, but integrating the Kazakhstan material has proved slow. This "cyber-paper" by David Ward, Gary Grimsley and myself is coming together well, and should prove worth the wait.

Bill Heim & I continue to work on the Dentition slide show -- it has been greatly expanded (17 species). If there are others that would like to contribute to this project, please drop me a note.

Some web authors are more ambitious than others. I've recently been dealing with Mikko Haaramo of the University of Helsinki. Mikko's Phylogeny is a website that attempts to provide the definitive phylogenetic tree -- extinct and extant, and not just vertebrates. Take a cyber trip.

In April, I took on a new job, which has consumed most of my time, this Spring, and Summer -- no personal web work, no collecting, no research, no life. However, the pressure is diminishing and ELASMO.COM should become more active. The top news item (for those who haven't yet heard) is that there will be a Spring 2001 collecting season. Unlike the past, there will be an effort to allocate "slots" on a more equitable basis -- fewer visitors that see Becky more often than their spouse. There will likely be more or better safety rules in place -- not a bad idea. Membership in a PaleoClub will now be more important than ever.

Before going dormant, two major slide shows were in preparation for the website. The first to be introduced is a revised version of Compagno's species list. This new version is not only updated, but provides a search capability and brief description about each family and genus. For those interested in details, a small (60KB) database is loaded into the client PC's memory, which can be accessed in various ways. Try the new slide show and let me know what you think.

The continuing odyssey known as Lee Creek III might be seeing the "light" as well. Bob Purdy wrote me that it "is in page proofs and has been funded for publication... It could be published in December but most likely in January or February."

Many new sites appeared during my 'absence' but I must highlight Rick Martin's REEFQUEST.COM. Rick has been a contributor to ELASMO.COM for several years, and has finally gotten serious in sharing his expertise with the world. Rick's willingness to share this knowledge is well known to cyber-elasmophiles (SHARK-L & ELASMO-L subscribers) and should render his website interactive in the intellectual sense.

Mike Everhart recently passed on a lead to an interesting .PDF, Samuel Williston's Water Reptiles of Past and Present. Many interesting websites were brought to my attention, but I managed to forget or lose my notes to many of them. A few I tracked-down include: Eric Inyo's Fossils From The Kettleman Hills covers the Pliocene fossil-bearing beds of the western San Joaquin Valley (California). Kris Blomme is developing HAAIENTAND a nice website on shark teeth and other fossils from the Cadzand-area in Holland. (I've had some problems accessing this site, but it may be the old browser I use.) Andreas Ochs' Potamotrygon Die Süßwasserrochen Südamerikas focuses on the extant freshwater ray Potamotrygon from South America.

Besides the normal website maintenance, one updated feature is the Palaeocarcharodon dentition. A preliminary version was put up a couple years ago, but the revised page should prove much more useful. Try the new slide show and let me know what you think.

I spent some time with Bob Purdy two weeks back. He said he recently reviewed the galley proofs and anticipates the Lee Creek vertebrate book to come out later in the year.

John Schack sent me an e-mail with some interesting websites. The top on my list was a new CDROM, Miocene Fossils of Maryland, being offered by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources for $10.00. This is Electronic Publication No. 00-1 which is the second Edition of Bulletin 20. Other interesting links included Dinosaurs of Maryland and at clickable US map for various Geological Surveys

WEBSITE COMPATIBILITY WARNING. From its birth in 1996, the website was designed to operate with JavaScript 1.0 (Netscape 2.0, IE 3.0). Mid-1999 saw the incorporation of JavaScript 1.1 and continuing support of the older standard. Maintaining this site is time consuming, and JavaScript 1.0 compatibility is now being phased out (Netscape 3.0 or IE 4.0 browsers required). Although it would be nice, I don't anticipate a move to JavaScript 1.2 this year. I would appreciate feedback from anyone as it relates to browser compatability and ELASMO.COM.

As usual, there's new stuff scattered around the site, but the big addition this month was Steve Cunningham joining the ELASMO.COM team. When I have questions about sand tiger-type teeth, particularly the overwhelming varieties that are found in the Nanjemoy, I find Steve to be an invaluable resource.

As a kickoff for this collaboration, Steve has put together a slide show on the teeth of the extant species Carcharias taurus. This is more than a quick overview, it's an in depth discussion of the teeth and dentition. Teeth from every file position are presented. (The JavaScript should be safe for most browsers, tested on Navigator 3.0 and up.)

As reported last month, there will again be an Aurora Fossil Fair Auction. Scheduled for May 27th, some of the items to be auctioned off can be viewed at the Museum's website.

The News Bulletin of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, is more like a book than a "bulletin". Over the years, I've found it stimulating to read the work going on worldwide. Digital copies (.HTML) are now available from the SVP Website — but choose off hours — these can run over 300KB in size.

ABCNEWS.COM had a few items worth sharing recently. We have Another T-rex Challenger from Patagonia, and can a month go by without another Dino-bird of some sort? This month Bambiraptor feinbergi is claimed to be the closest yet — and it was a native American!

       

Three more from ABCNEWS.COM include: 1) a second multi-part series on Samuel Gruber's Lemon Shark research off Brazil, 2) Haasiophis terrasanctus a 95-mya snake from Jerusalem which shoots down the mosasaur to snake theory, and 3) Byronosaurus jaffei another of a seemingly endless stream of small dinos from Mongolia

Speaking of Bambiraptor feinbergi, this is one of a growing number of dinosaur finds that has its own website. Give a quick look at the latest, BAMBIRAPTOR.COM or try JOBARIA.ORG (Jobaria tiguidensis)

A few websites you might want to visit and/or bookmark are:
The Tree of Life (Classification & Cladograms) - David Maddison is coordinating this multi-authored Internet project about phylogeny and biodiversity, or try the University of Maryland hosted Cladogram site. There is no way to be complete or correct, but George Williams has attempted to assemble a listing of Fossil Sharks and Rays of the World. This is a handy and useful reference. The SAR (Sveriges Amatörgeologers Riksförbund) has put together an extensive list of paleo links.

Michael Keesey's Dinosauricon is a good dinosaur site and the South African Museum's Palae- ontology, Fossils & Past Life on Earth site has some very good articles. Be sure to try Fossil Reptiles of the South African Karoo.

The Nanjemoy myliobatids took a couple months to straighten out, but they seem to have come together pretty well. There are also new or updated genus pages for the extant members of this family (Aetobatus, Aetomylaeus, Pteromylaeus and Myliobatis and a slide show on their teeth. Another batoid, Heterobatis is now included in the 'Muddy Creek' fauna.

Some time was also spent updating the Nurse shark (Ginglymostoma) page and references to reflect Plicatoscyllium and Delpitoscyllium Finally, Rhincodon has been added to the genus page

If you haven't seen a copy, Volume 6 of The Mosasaur (1999), it featured a number of relevant (to this website) articles:
Kent, B & Powell, G. Reconstructed Dentition of the Rare Lamnoid Shark Paratodus benedeni (le Hon) from the Yorktown Formation (Early Pliocene) at Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina. pp 1-10.
Kent, B. Speculations on the Size and Morphology of the Extinct Lamnoid Shark Paratodus benedeni (le Hon). pp 11-15.
Hartstein, E, Decina. L. & Keil, R. A Late Cretaceous (Severn Formation) Vertebrate Assemblage from Bowie, Maryland. pp 17-23
Case, G & Leggett, J. Cretolamna cf. C. aschersoni (Stromer) (Neoselachii: Cretoxyrhinidae), from the Late Paleocene/Early Eocene of Mississippi, USA, with Comparisons to Moroccan Fauna. pp 25-28
The Delaware Valley Paleontological Society puts out a great product. This & prior Mosasaurs are valuable sources of information and are available at the club's website.

A few websites that are worth a visit include: Jan Biesemans' Tertiairy sediments of Belgium, Roy Beckemeyer's Permian Insects of Kansas and Oklahoma and Michaël Laterveer & Peter Bor's Egg-capsules of Rays and Skates.

The Yale Museum is republishing Marsh’s Dinosaurs The Collections from Como Bluff with a new forward and updated information. It's listed as 419 pp, & 168 illus. -- price 85.00.

I hope everyone's holidays went well, Happy 2000! Now the bad news. I got an e-mail from Candace down at the Aurora Fossil Museum, she states that the mine will not be open for collecting this Spring and went on to note that Jerry is retiring.

A few years back, I caught the Russian Dinosaur Exhibit at the New Jersey State Museum - it was excellent, particularly the mammal-like reptiles. This website presents the 66 specimens from the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (PINRAS) which are part of this tour.

Another site well worth a bookmark is FishBase99. This internationally developed database contains information (pictures, references, distribution, etc.) on 23,700 species and is accessible online through their query interface. However, you'll need a 4.0 browser to support the embedded JavaScript. If you're interested in living sharks and rays, this is an extraordinary source of data.