The Systematic Position of the King of the Monsters

A few weeks ago I was really excited to be contacted by Danielle Venton, a freelance writer working on a piece for Popular Mechanics about the biology of Godzilla! With a new big-screen appearance by Godzilla right around the corner, I thought this was a fun exercise in speculative biology. The piece is out now at Popular Mechanics and I highly recommend checking out "The Impossible Anatomy of Godzilla".

I've always been a fan of B-movies (especially ones that have been MST3K'd) and monster movies, so, in preparation for the new Godzilla film, I've been trying to brush up on my kaiju history. Perhaps unfortunately, my introduction to Godzilla was with 1998's TriStar film, which seems to be uniformly considered not that great an entry into the monster's filmography. In the process of helping out with Venton's piece about Godzilla, I also came across some really fun previous discussions of Godzilla's anatomy. I heartily recommend checking out Darren Naish's "The science of Godzilla, 2010" and "The anatomy of Zilla, the TriStar 'Godzilla'" over at Tetrapod Zoology, and Brian Switek's "What kind of dinosaur is Godzilla?" over at Smithsonian.com.

[Some of what I find is very silly. Godzilla flies using his rocket breath in Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster!]

Most discussions of Godzilla's anatomy use dinosaurs (for classic Godzilla) or lizards (for Zilla) as starting points, and it's generally understood that the original Godzilla design was a melding of an Allosaurus, Iguanodon, and Stegosaurus. However, it occurred to me that another group of diapsids might serve as plausible candidates for Godzilla's heritage: the pseudosuchians (or crurotarsans, if you prefer)!

Today's only living pseudosuchians, the crocodilians, have osteoderms in their skin, if somewhat less flamboyant than Godzilla's. The 'scale' pattern on their heads is actually formed through cracking of the skin during development, resulting in a texture similar to what's seen on Godzilla's body, which in turn is apparently supposed to resemble the keloid scars of nuclear explosion survivors.

West African dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis) at the Toronto Zoo.

All living crocodilians are aquatic quadrupeds with powerful tails, and Godzilla seems to be a pretty good swimmer using his tail as a propulsive mechanism. Although many pseudosuchians were quadrupeds, some, like the poposauroids, were bipedal! Pseudosuchians seemed to have typically retained most fingers on the hand, like Godzilla, but unlike most theropod dinosaur lineages.

As far as I know, and I certainly haven't done a thorough literature search on this, there are no known pseudosuchians with nuclear breath....but alligators can produce a mighty bellow during breeding season.

Could Godzilla represent a long-lost and enigmatic lineage of pseudosuchian? Should there be a Godzillasuchus? Tell me what you think in the comments!

In Which there are Whales

One more post from my trip to Vancouver last weekend, which upon reflection definitely had a whaley theme to it. What can I say, I have a soft spot for cetaceans.

On Sunday I went whale watching with the aptly named Prince of Whales company. We almost didn't see any, but the boat went further than usual on its route after reports that a pod had been spotted. And sure enough, there was a pod of 20 - 30 orcas from the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale community! My only regret is that we didn't have longer to watch them.

At the time our on-board naturalists thought this was L-pod, but after checking some of the photos they took (which were much better than mine), I think that K-pod may have been hanging out here, too. How can you tell one orca from another? Orcas have distinctive grey splotches on their backs just behind their dorsal fins, called saddle patches. Because the fin and back are exposed when they surface, scientists have been able to catalogue who's who in each pod, and each orca has a letter and number designation. Based on the naturalist's photos, we saw K21 (a male born in 1986) and L47 (a female born in 1974). I might have caught K16 and K12 in some of my photos. The Southern Residents were featured in the movie Free Willy (although Keiko himself was from the area around Iceland), and Luna, a famous orphaned orca who made friends with people, was from L pod.

Tuesday I had the chance to visit the wonderful Vancouver Aquarium again. I like a lot of things about this aquarium, such as its focus on the organisms found around Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, and Haida Gwaii. There's a big emphasis on active research: during the dolphin 'show' (and I use the term show very loosely here, as it is not the dramatized muscial adventure you will see at Sea World but more of a casual talk about the animals) there was a demonstration of how scientists at the aquarium are investigating why cetaceans become entangled in fishing gear. There's no shying away from evolution, either.

Highlights this time included baby wolf eels, comb jellies, and of course the dolphins.

And here is a sea pen! They look kind of like Ediacaran fossils!

All in all, it's a great place and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Vancouver. And that wraps up my trip to the Canadian Paleontology Conference, and now I begin my planning for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Las Vegas...

...oh, what the heck: