Book Review: Journey to Chandara

First of all... in case you haven't heard about it, do a quick search on Limusaurus, Limusaurus, Limusaurus, Limusaurus, and Limusaurus. While most of the news seems to revolve around its fingers, the fact that it's a herbivorous and beakily toothless ceratosaur from Jurassic Asia is at least as exciting. Yes, Virginia, there's a lot we still don't know about dinosaurs*.

*But we're working on it.

In the meantime, despite being out of university, I've got less time than I thought I'd have. At least the student visa and the apartment are clicking into place - but I most likely won't be able to go SVP this year.

As usual, when there isn't much else to say, what better than a book review? I recently have had the fortune to obtain a copy of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, the latest installment in James Gurney's Dinotopia series, and will review it right here and now.

Like the previous books, Journey to Chandara (or JtC) is a big, colorful, and lavishly illustrated book. As one commenter on this blog said, "James Gurney paints like God". And I'm inclined to agree. The artworks run the gamut from near-photorealistic to quasi-impressionist, with hints at a whole variety of distinct art styles in between (Alma-Tadema? Is that you?) If you're buying this book, chances are you're buying it to pore over the pictures, and Gurney certainly delivers here. The journey itself allows depiction of various "Dinotopianized" cultures, including Egyptian, Chinese, Tibetan, and Russian, which again adds to the diversity of the book.

Another welcome development is the appearance of feathered dinosaurs. While a good deal of ornithomimids are still scaly, there now are fluffy oviraptorids and therizinosaurs. Also, Witmer's work on dinosaur nostrils has apparently not yet caught up with Dinotopia, but that's more of a pedantic quibble than anything. Those dinosaurs really are believably interacting with humans.

If there is something to actually complain about, it's the story. The Dinotopia books are all light on plot, and this one is no exception. The "plot" is basically Arthur Denison Passing Through Dinotopia On His Way To His Goal, And What Befell Him There. That's it. I just spoiled most of the book for you (with the exception of Emperor Hugo Khan, which - I must admit - was a big surprise). It's the standard Dinotopia formula - book 2 tweaks it a little, but that's the general outline. Furthermore, interesting characters are introduced, and then forgotten a few pages later. And Arthur Denison has gone from a rational, scientific sort of person to someone who swallows anything he's told without argument (apparently, he really believes that those guys at Bilgewater are going to soar heavenward), and there is rather more "mystical" talk here than in previous books.

Finally, one thing that bugged me (pun not intended) was that the implications of a few things. In the first book, dinosaurs and (shudder) dolphins were the only sentient non-humans. In this book, though, we are treated to sentient singing butterflies. Does this mean that everything with a nervous system higher than a jellyfish's is capable of talking and thinking? Why are fish eaten here then? Do sauropods go out of their way not to step on ants? Arrrggghhhh...

In short, it's a glorious book. But the plot could have been fleshed out a little more, and some points should not be thought about too much. The pictures, though, are glorious, and worth getting the book for.

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara and its cover copyright James Gurney.

Ocular blood-cannons - the how and why

A wide variety of chemical defenses have evolved in the natural kingdom, in creatures ranging from sponges to skunks. However, squirting blood from one’s eyes may seem to be taking self-defense a little too far. Besides, the animals that use it seem to be well-protected anyway, decked out as they are with spikes and prickles. So what’s up with blood-squirting in horned lizards? (picture of Phrynosoma douglassii from Wikipedia).

Blood-squirting from the eyesockets is the exclusive predator repellent of several species of horned lizard. All horned lizards (aka horned toads) are iguanids belonging to the genus Phrynosoma (literally, toad body), and hail from North America. They're very distinctive creatures, and hard to confuse with anything else; Pianka and Parker (1975) assembled a list of distinguishing features, including dorsoventral flattening, abundant spines (mostly around the back of the head), short legs, sluggish behavior, a diet based almost exclusively on ants, and specialized dentition and a huge stomach to cope with their myrmecine meals.

Not all horned lizards squirt blood, though. Apparently, the mechanism evolved early on and was then lost in later members of the genus. According to a recent study by Leaché and McGuire (2006), Phrynosoma can be subdivided into four main clades. Tapaja are viviparous with short or reduced horns, while Anota have especially prominent cranial horns. Doliosaurus lack blood-squirting, and hail from the Chihuahuan, Mojave, and Sonoran deserts. Finally, Brevicauda are viviparous with very short tails and no blood-squirting. The nifty cladogram adjacent (from Leaché and McGuire, 2006) makes it a lot clearer. Note the horn lengths in the different species, and the loss of blood-squirting, which happened several times over their history.

With the introduction and phylogeny out of the way, the bloody business can be breached, starting with the mechanism. The blood in question is ejected at high pressure from a circumorbital sinus between the eyeball and the orbital walls. A muscle found in most reptiles squeezes the internal jugular vein, rupturing the nictitating membrane and forcing blood out for several feet (Burleson, 1942). The actual behavior seems to be “rare but consistent” (Lambert and Ferguson, 1985). The blood-squirting defense seems to be primarily directed at canine predators (Middendorf and Sherbrooke, 1992), or at least larger mammals. Canids always elicited blood-squirting, as did canid saliva; roadrunners and grasshopper mice, on the other hand, did not stimulate blood ejection. When blood was ejected, the target regularly showed symptoms of irritation.

Does the blood have anything in it that makes it nastier than regular blood? It has been suggested that secretions from the Harderian and lacrimal glands give it its irritating quality (Burleson, 1942); however, not only did the secretions from the glands prove innocuous (Sherbrooke and Middendorf, 2004), but the blood squirted did not significantly differ from “regular” blood in the rest of the lizard’s body, which is also laced with antipredator chemicals (Middendorf et al., 2001). In other words, all of a horned lizard's blood is irritating. It is possible that the chemicals that render the blood distasteful are sequestered from harvester ants Pogonomyrmex (Sherbrooke and Middendorf, 2004). This is a likely conclusion, given that horned lizards are highly resistant to harvester ant venom, with plasma factors that neutralize the ants’ toxins (Schmidt et al., 1989). (picture of blood-spattered Phrynosoma asio from here).

The horns are a primary line of defense, as kit foxes are more likely to attack a dehorned lizard; once the lizards are attacked, the irritating jet of blood ensures they are not attacked again (Sherbrooke and Middendorf, 2004). Noxious systemic blood could function as a last-ditch resort, dissuading predators from eating any more horned lizards. Regarding how/why such a system would evolve remains open, however.

Finally, because I couldn't find a decent photo of a blood-squirting lizard, here's a National Geographic clip from Youtube. The first 5-10 seconds are enough. Ah, if only there could be more uploads like that redback mating clip...




References

Burleson, G. L. (1942) The Source of the Blood Ejected from the Eye by Horned Toads. Copeia, Vol. 1942, No. 4 (Dec. 28, 1942), pp. 246-248

Cutter, W. S. (1959) An Instance of Blood-Squirting by Phrynosoma solare. Copeia, Vol. 1959, No. 2 (Jul. 24, 1959), p. 176

Lambert, S. and Ferguson, G. M. (1985) Blood Ejection Frequency by Phrynosoma cornutum (Iguanidae). The Southwestern Naturalist, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Nov. 27, 1985), pp. 616-617

Leaché, A. D. and McGuire, J. A. (2006) Phylogenetic relationships of horned lizards (Phrynosoma) based on nuclear and mitochondrial data: Evidence for a misleading mitochondrial gene tree. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 39, 628–644

Middendorf, G. A. and Sherbrooke, W. C. (1992) Canid Elicitation of Blood-Squirting in a Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum). Copeia, Vol. 1992, No. 2 (May 1, 1992), pp. 519-527

Middendorf, G. A.; Sherbrooke, W. C.; and Braun, E. J. (2001) Comparison of Blood Squirted from the Circumorbital Sinus and Systemic Blood in a Horned Lizard, Phrynosoma cornutum. The Southwestern Naturalist, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 384-387

Pianka, E. R. and Parker, W. S. (1975) Ecology of Horned Lizards: A Review with Special Reference to Phrynosoma platyrhinos. Copeia, Vol. 1975, No. 1 (Feb. 28, 1975), pp. 141-162

Schmidt, P. J.; Sherbrooke, W. C.; and Schmidt, J. O. (1989) The Detoxification of Ant (Pogonomyrmex) Venom by a Blood Factor in Horned Lizards (Phrynosoma). Copeia, Vol. 1989, No. 3 (Aug. 8, 1989), pp. 603-607

Sherbrooke, W. C. and Middendorf, G. A. (2004) Responses of Kit Foxes (Vulpes macrotis) to Antipredator Blood-Squirting and Blood of Texas Horned Lizards (Phrynosoma cornutum). Copeia, Vol. 2004, No. 3 (Aug. 20, 2004), pp. 652-658

I'd be a Diplodocus, then

What's better than shamanism? Shamanism with dinosaurs, of course!

At least, that's what this site would have us believe. After scrolling down through a lot of potential totems (including horseshoe crabs, anhingas, stinkbugs and sea fans), you get to the Dinosaurs section. Apparently, "The Lower Cretaceous Period is the time of the Dinosaurs" (really?), and "The first Butterflies, Ants and Bee appear" (there was only one Bee, see).

The real meat of the page, though, is the "Main List of Dinosaurs", and all the glorious attributes given to each dinosaur. A cursory glance reveals that, for instance, Diplodocus confers the following virtues:

* Proper use of instinct
* Connection to Conifers/Pines
* Ability to reach above the common
* Facilitating movement
* Self-growth

I guess I'm one of these - I've got a lot of conifers/pines where I come from. And who doesn't want to reach above the common?

Archaeopteryx, on the other hand, grants the "Ability to be in two places at once", "Protection of self by extraordinary means", and "Ability to control temperatures" (wonder where they got those from). Meanwhile, we find out that Stegosaurus has a "Connection to Echidna" (Stegosaurian phylogeny finally unraveled! Someone get Nature on the line!). And, if you're an Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus [sic], you've got "Proper use of slowness", "Ease of movement through emotional waters", and the "Ability to digest all aspects of an issue". Someone's been taking hypothetical dinosaurian paleobiology a little too literally.

It's all very weird, really. I wouldn't be surprised if a prehistoric zodiac hasn't been thought out somehow, somewhere (with star signs ranging from Anomalocaris to Brontops).

All images from Wikipedia (including the stegosaur, which looks a lot like an echidna, I'm sure).

Big tip o' the hat to Commander Salamander for pointing this out!

Creature feature - the Yara-ma-yha-who

The yara-ma-yha-who was recently featured in an art brainstorm on dA, so I thought I'd share its horrifying countenance with the rest of you.

For those of you who don't know, the yara-ma-yha-who is a nasty goblin/boogieman from Australian Aboriginal legend. It's supposed to be a humanoid creature with red skin or fur and froglike features. Its enormous mouth dominates most of its head, and it has suckers on its feet and hands.

A yara-ma-ya-who typically waits in a tree to ambush human prey. It drains its victims of their blood, swallows them, and then regurgitates them, seemingly unharmed. However, after being vomited out of the yara-ma-yha-who, the human is a bit shorter. And redder. If you're unfortunate enough to get swallowed and spat out by those monsters several times, you'll eventually become a yara-ma-yha-who yourself. Booga booga booga!

The stegosaurs of terror

Most of us think as Stegosaurus as plodding, dimwitted giants only fit to end up as plates of meat for a hungry predator. Indeed, the majority of the information we're fed about them is about their size and stupidity, including the famous peanut-brain factoid (apparently, major scientists have been doing research on just how stupid Stegosaurus is).

Popular culture doesn't help any. Remember the dinosaur that gets owned by T. rex (really) in Fantasia? It's Stegosaurus. Like many herbivorous dinosaurs, Stegosaurus gets typecast as the dim giant that get easily eaten - the only dinosaurs that get more of this treatment are probably the sauropods. At least it did come across as badass in Walking With Dinosaurs...

And yet, despite all this negative publicity, Stegosaurus has had its shining moments. Various authors have latched onto stegs as a potential deadly killer, of all things. This post is devoted to such representations of Stegosaurus. You will never see the plate-backed lizard the same way again.

Above image (and another one further down) from Bob's Dinosaurs Attack! Homepage.

Perhaps one of the best-known of Stegosaurus's weird cameos hails from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan at the Earth's Core. Pellucidar, it turns out, is home to lizardmen, psychic pterosaurs, and hang-gliding stegosaurs known as dyrodors.

But be that as it may, his eyes moved directly to a spot upon the summit of the opposite cliff where stood such a creature as no living man upon the outer crust had ever looked upon before--a giant armored dinosaur it was, a huge reptile that appeared to be between sixty and seventy feet in length, standing at the rump, which was its highest point, fully twenty-five feet above the ground. Its relatively small, pointed head resembled that of a lizard. Along its spine were thin, horny plates arranged alternately, the largest of which were almost three feet high and equally as long, but with a thickness of little more than an inch. The stout tail, which terminated in a long, horny spine, was equipped with two other such spines upon the upper side and toward the tip. Each of these spines was about three feet in length. The creature walked upon four lizard-like feet, its short, front legs bringing its nose close to the ground, imparting to it an awkward and ungainly appearance.

It appeared to be watching the man in the canyon, and suddenly, to Jason's amazement, it gathered its gigantic hind legs beneath it and launched itself straight from the top of the lofty cliff.

Jason's first thought was that the gigantic creature would be dashed to pieces upon the ground in the canyon bottom, but to his vast astonishment he saw that it was not falling but was gliding swiftly through the air, supported by its huge spinal plates, which it had dropped to a horizontal position, transforming itself into a gigantic animate glider.

...there flashed upon the screen of his recollection the picture of a restoration of a similar extinct reptile and he recognized the creature as a stegosaurus of the Jurassic; but how inadequately had the picture that he had seen carried to his mind the colossal proportions of the creature, or but remotely suggested its terrifying aspect...

...the reptile, using its tail as a rudder and tilting its spine plates up on one side, veered in the direction of the American.

Incidentally, the accompanying photo, from Amazon, shows the box of a "Tarzan at the Earth's Core" action figure, and Tarzan here is supposedly clad in "the ultra-armored hide of the dyrodor". Too bad those toys are hard to find nowadays, though I can claim to be the proud owner of Tars Tarkas and a kaldane/rykor pair. Couldn't find any art of the dyrodor on the net; feel free to picture it whichever way you want.

Tarzan wasn't the only action hero to run into a predatory stegosaur. Here, in Red Nails by Robert E. Howard, Conan runs into an imaginatively-named "dragon". Its true nature, as confirmed by the Marvel Comics shot adjacent, is obvious.

It must be as big as an elephant," muttered Conan, echoing her thought. "What the devil--" His voice trailed away in stunned silence.

Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth.

The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated backbone rose higher than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind.

"Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conan, thrusting the girl behind him. "I don't think he can climb, but he can stand on his hind legs and reach us--"

Needless to say, the dragon gets its comeuppance in a suitable way.

Elsewhere, in Philip Barshofsky's One Dinosaur Night, a squadron of aliens invades Earth during the Mesozoic, and face a gauntlet of dinosaurs. Protected by an electric fence and armed with a laser gun that turns dinosaurs into piles of squirming green worms (ewwwww), they set about conquering. Until a hapless Stegosaurus blunders into their electric fence and opens a breach in their defences (the stegosaur is reduced to ashes, BTW), allowing the rest of the dinosaurs to dispatch the invaders, setting the stage for humans to evolve.

Moving on to the graphic arts, a gang of stegosaur hooligans effectively dismembers a police station in Topps' Dinosaurs Attack!. Actually, that's not saying much in a universe where Ultrasaurus tears down suspension bridges and Parasaurolophus EATS BABIES.

F*** THA POH-LEECE! Sorry, couldn't help it.

In a similar vein, Big White Hunter Frank gets what he deserves at the business end of a Stegosaurus, in the Franco-Belgian Bob Morane comics (I'd already covered this dino-violence-laden issue in a previous post).



Of course, a nod has to be made to Gary Larson's infamous thagomizer cartoon. But then, you've all probably seen it. And a Stegosaurus gets a moment to shine in Walking with Dinosaurs when it stands down a pair of allosaurs (it kills a cute little sauropodlet to boot).

Oh, and this thing was made by an enterprising small-time rubber-toy maker.


STARE DOWN THE MOUTH OF A STEGOSAUR AND KNOW FEAR

Well, that just about wraps up our tour of killer stegosaurs in literature and the arts. If you know of any more, let me know (for the sake of Science).

All images and quoted work copyright their respective authors.

Fuzzy ornithischians - the story so far

By now, you've probably seen the fossil below a million times, but it bears repeating: this could well be one of the most important finds of recent years (or any years).


Its name is Tianyulong confuciusi (Zheng et al., 2009), and it represents the first concrete evidence of filamentous integumentary structures in ornithischians. If they're not feathers, they're something very much like them, and it goes to show just how much we still don't know about dinosaur skin. It would certainly be awesome if they proved to be actual protofeathers, and the possibility of a fuzzy Ornithodira is fascinating (a sauropod with integumentary structures would probably clinch it).

While Tianyulong basks in the attention in deserves, I'm using the rest of this post to recall the other ornithischian with integument - Psittacosaurus.


Described by 2001 from the Early Cretaceous of China, SMF R 4970 is an exceptionally well-preserved specimen of Psittacosaurus, and the first ornithischian discovered with some form of integument. What appear to be long, quill-like structures line its tail, but whether these were homologous to theropod feathers remained unknown. As stated in the original paper, "[a]t present, there is no convincing evidence which shows these structures to be homologous to the structurally different integumentary filaments of theropod dinosaurs (Mayr et al., 2002). However, with Tianyulong, integumentary structures may be common to all dinosaurs.

Exactly what Psittacosaurus was doing with those bristles is harder to pinpoint. Tianyulong may have used its fuzz for insulation, but the fuzz on Psittacosaurus was restricted to its tail. It may have been a display structure, or it may have made Psittacosaurus the Mesozoic equivalent of the porcupine. For those of us raised on Sibbick's reconstruction of Psittacosaurus, this is a dramatic change of appearance (image below of the new-look psittac from Wikipedia).


Sabertoothed cats are not reconstructed without fur, and now we may well find that our current depictions of dinosaurs are naked. Both Psittacosaurus and Tianyulong demonstrate more than ever that "the integumentary covering of at least some dinosaurs was much more complex than has ever been imagined before" (Mayr et al., 2002).


References

Mayr, G.; Peters, S.; Plodowski, G.; and Vogel, O. (2002). Bristle-like integumentary structures at the tail of the horned dinosaur Psittacosaurus. Naturwissenschaften 89: 361–365

Zheng, X. T.; You; H. L.; Xu, X.; and Dong, Z. M. (2009) An Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid dinosaur with filamentous integumentary structures. Nature 458:333-336

New insights on sauropod feeding

Every once in a while, a paper comes along that just shakes up your way of thinking about dinosaurs. And I'm not talking about Tianyulong (though I probably will, sooner or later). This time around, it's a profound change of the entire sauropod paradigm, more radical than the dramatic reorganization of dinosaurian taxonomy (Schlumpf, 2008).

Dr. Avril Poisson, who you may remember as the discoverer of Stegopenna (Poisson, 2008), has made a series of in-depth studies on sauropods, including biomechanical and physiological studies, as well as analyses of various fossils. The conclusion she has arrived to (Poisson, 2009) is bound to send shockwaves in the paleontological community.

It turns out that sauropods were far from being the plodding, harmless creatures they are frequently portrayed - far from it.

In fact, sauropods were some of the most accomplished predators to have ever existed.

"It all fits together", says Poisson, "and it explains a lot of things we took for granted, such as the long necks, the enormous guts, and those seemingly ridiculous tiny teeth. What's more, the paleobiological relationships all make sense now".

(Adjacent picture, from Wikipedia, shows a pack of Alamosaurus on the prowl).

Poisson's research lucidly demonstrates how sauropods attained their status as the deadliest ambushers of the dinosaur world. The tiny teeth actually drained venom from venom sacs, lodged in the huge, superfluous fleshy nostrils. The ridiculously long necks allowed sauropods to approach unsuspecting prey without it noticing the bulk of their body (much as plesiosaurs did in the sea). Diplodocids and titanosaurs approached their prey from behind, while brachiosaurs attacked from above. Small, peg-like teeth would then punch into the victim's skin and inject fast-acting toxins; titanosaurs refined this into a deadly shearing apparatus. Once prey was successfully envenomated, the sauropod would then swallow it whole; its jaw could unhinge from its tiny head, and its minuscule teeth were no hindrance to swallowing. With an extensible neck that rivaled the gullet of modern-day pythons, anything from a camptosaur to a large theropod would be inexorably swallowed.

Megacarnivory was the reason why sauropods grew so big - their necks could stretch, but their bodies couldn't (Poisson, 2009). As a result, diplodocids enlarged their gut contents by just getting bigger, while titanosaurs, on the other hand, developed incredibly broad stances to accommodate meals (usually carcharodontosaurs).

As the dominant predators of the Mesozoic, sauropods shaped their world. Stegosaurs evolved to counteract sauropod predation - their otherwise-useless plates and thagomizers preventing sauropods from swallowing them whole. It was also their downfall; with the decimation of the diplodocids at the end of the Jurassic, they were easy meat to theropods, who had lived in the shadow of the sauropods until then. Titanosaurs managed to remain active until the bitter end, stalking hadrosaurs and ceratopsians (the latter of which evolved horns and frills as countermeasures).

Adjacent picture, by Luis Rey and borrowed from SV-POW, shows a typical scene from the Early Cretaceous of North America: a hungry Astrodon charges a flock of Utahraptor and escapes with its meal, while the rest of the startled raptors mill in confusion.

So far, the reaction had been positive, albeit one of extreme amazement. And yet, the discovery was hailed as credible. In a roundup of recent paleontological breakthroughs, noted blogger Darren Naish mentions that "The notion of carnivorous sauropods has as much credence as... the dinosaur-bird connection".

The feeding specializations of the rebbachisaurids was not touched upon in the paper, but Poisson assures us that there' s a lot more we still don't know about these amazing animals. "We're working on it", says Poisson.


References

Poisson, A. (2008) Stegopenna, a new stegosaur from Spec. Piltdown University Press.

Poisson, A. (2009) The implications of sauropod carnivory. Piltdown University Press.

Schlumpf, G. (2008) Saurischians are from Mars, ornithischians are from Venus. Dar Al Habal Publishing House.

Beachcombing in Abu Dhabi

I haven't had the opportunity to rant about it yet, but there's precious little to see on the Lebanese shores - at least, whatever isn't hidden under piles of junk. Sigh...

The beaches of Abu Dhabi, however, are an entirely different kettle of fish. I was doing fieldwork in the Emirates last December, and beachcombing was one of those activities you could enjoy after a hard day's worth of sieving and sifting.

As I found out, there's a lot to see here, and you don't have to look particularly hard thanks to all those large things that die on the beach. These pictures show just a few of them. If you're feeling particularly sure of yourself, try to identify each object before reading the description.

For a start, the adjacent picture shows a nice chunk of turtle plastron. One or more turtles perished in the environs, and and are currently resting in pieces all over the coastline.





This bit isn't a turtle - it's a piece of dugong skull, as far as I know. Apparently, dugongs regularly ply the seas around the Emirates, and commonly fall prey to predators, ships, and ignorant natives alike (actually, I'll be getting back to that). This was one of several pieces of skull and postcranial skeleton, couldn't tell if it was from one individual or more.










A fish spine, from an unidentified fish. If anyone can identify this, please speak up.








The most interesting and depressing of all the things we saw there, however, was a beached dugong.




It was washed up on the mudflats, and every high tide pushed it up higher along the beach. Its face was seriously messed up (see picture adjacent), and it looked like something had just taken a bite out of it. At first I thought it had succumbed to a ship's propeller, but the wound looks too messy for that sort of thing. A shark, perchance? Again, if you know about this sort of thing, weigh in with your opinion!

It was a strangely sad and comical sight, at the same time. Obviously, seeing such a charismatic afrothere is touching in itself, but its rounded body and the texture and color of its peeling skin reminded me of a baked potato, for some nasty reason.

At least the dugong did not perish in vain. We reported it to competent authorities, who routinely sampled it and recorded its presence before burying it.

Cheating a little here - this isn't an animal skeleton, but rather a skeleton of our civilization. This is none other than the wreck of a World War II fighter plane that crashed in the middle of this tidal flat. Or so I heard.

There's plenty of similar wrecks all over Abu Dhabi, including a car from the 60's mired in the middle of a sabkha. There was quite a lot to see there, really - you just need to have eyes for it.