Last week I picked up a copy of The Times on the train (as you do). There was a short article about a newly described short necked sauropod by someone called Mark Henderson (hmm, that name seems familar).

Here I’d like to rant about the crapness of The Times web site, about how the search feature directed to towards a so-called print friendly version of the article (hello, 2005, print CSS) - complete with (presumably) print friendly banner ads, and about how the very nice illustration from the paper version are entirely lacking from the web site.

Anyway, Brachytrachelopan mesa is a south american sauropod with a short neck, in fact it looks superfically rather like a hadrosaur (see the pic at the bottom of this post on Palaeoblog). As the hadrosaurs were mostly (entirely?) northen hemisphere residents it makes sense that some sort of southern hemisphere dinosaur would evolve to fill the same ecological niche and sauropods are the only major group of plant eating dinos in the southern continents.

But The Times claims that “the short neck of Brachytrachelopan appears to be an adaptation for feeding on shrubs and grasses”. Um, no. Grasses didn’t evolve until millions of years after the dinosaurs went extinct. None of the other sources carrying this story made this mistake so I guess that this Henderson fellow is at fault, I wonder where he learnt his science?

(Mark, if you read this, sorry if I come across as being a bit mean. For all I know the mistake was a sub-editor’s not yours, and maybe The Times even published a correction on Friday.)

Drinking in The George Inn this evening and overheard a couple of lovies at the next table talking about Doctor Who – he had been in it in 1964 and was constantly asked by people what is had been like to work with William Hartnell, she had been in it with Peter Davison. They both liked Christopher Eccleston.

Then there was folk music so Jolyon and I adjoined to the Slug and Lettuce for food and more (although not as nice) beer.

On the way home I noticed that all the office lights were on. This was five to eleven on a Monday. I may be putting on my environmental hat and asking questions. All the lights were on next door in City Hall too so I may be writing to Ken as well.

Very small children seemed to be a not immeditately present but still prevalent feature of the evening. Ben D (father of a three week old) had briefly joined us for a shandy early on; Dave H (due to become a father within the next ten days) also made an appearance; and Jolyon was about to become an uncle at any moment (a text was received that informed him that pushing had been underway for twenty four hours!). Cripes.