Cromer for the Continent ...

We've decided - finally - where we're going for our summer vacation. After much argument, deliberation, cogitation, mastication and prestidigitation, we've decided we'll go to ...

... wait for it, wait for it ...

CROMER.

If the past couple of weeks are any guide, Cromer will be basking in sunshine. Here is Cromer, yesterday afternoon. Blue(ish) skies, warm golden sand, and nary a living soul within half a mile. You could hardly ask more from, say, Jamaica.


Cromer has the distinct advantage for us in that we already live there, so we'll be paying £0 for holiday accommodation, transport, pet-sitting services and so on and so forth (notwithstanding inasmuch as which, three days in Paris during the Easter Holidays has fair cleaned us out).

But wait, there's more.

We'll also be doing without airline cabin-crew disputes, volcanic outfall, terrorist outrages and all the tzores to which modern travel is heir. And even when you arrive in Thailand, say, or, as it may be, Jamaica, you might be walking into a political dispute, a drug-fuelled war zone or get eaten by sharks.

But soft: political strife is virtually unknown in Cromer; machine-gun toting drug lords have never holed themselves up on the Pier, nor, yea, in Mary Jane's Fish and Chip shop. Cromer is hardly ever witness to typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis. Cromer has as yet been unbesmirched by international jihadist outrages. The wildlife, such as it is, is generally unthreatening,

Given this background, purveyors of Luxury Holidays to Exotic Places clearly see Cromer as competition, as well they might. Here, for example, is a picture from the latest brochure from Messrs Hayes and Jarvis.

The choice, Ladies and Gentlemen, is yours. Spend a fortune and overcome all kinds of trials and hassle to get to a beautiful, deserted beach in the Caribbean, and possibly endure a lot more trials and hassle when you finally get there.

Or not.

If your choice is the first, well, you're welcome to it - there'll be even more space here in Cromer for the rest of us.

Cromercrox In China: The Figured Stones of Chaoyang

I have been deluged by a request from a Dr S. S. of Lüneberg for more pictures from my visit to China - of fossils, I assume. Now, one can't just assail one's readers (either of them) with random fossils. One must have a story, a context. Happily, I have one to hand.

During my two-day excursion to western Liaoning Province in the company of colleagues Dr Zhou Zhonghe, Dr Ni Xijun and Dr Yu Xiabo from the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing, we visited - as has been mentioned - the city of Chaoyang. On the outskirts of that town is a truly magnificent and brand new museum of palaeontology, set in a large park. We went to explore.

The first thing that greets you is an enormous, swooping gateway - so enormous that one first assumes it is the museum.  Here it is, from inside the museum grounds, as it were. (Something I never quite got used to - everything in China - but everything - is conceived on a stupendous scale).

A few animatronic dinosaurs and dino-birds are scattered about the park. These roar menacingly as one passes.

 An animatronic dinosaur. Roaring menacingly. Recently.

In this picture, Dr Zhou Zhonghe ignores the menacing roar from a not-very-good animatronic rendition of the extinct bird Yanornis. Dr Zhou can afford to do this, as he was one of the people who described the species in the first place. But the animatronics are, literally, a sideshow. Elsewhere in the park is a concrete-and-glass pavilion which covers something much more real - and much more breathtaking - an excavation, in which a chunk of ground has been removed to reveal the fossil wonders that underlie not just this museum, but enormous swathes of the region. This is what this pavilion looks like from the inside:

It can't be emphasized enough that this isn't a model - it's the real thing. It's not a plaster and simul-crete^TM mock-up of an exposure from somewhere else. This is a slice of Liaoning fossil beds, in situ, straight outta the Lower Cretaceous. It's real. As real as the skeletons of fossil birds, dinosaurs, fishes and plants that litter the floor wherever you look, casually pointed out for our stupefied perusal. Oh look, here's one, a fossil bird, Cathayornis ...

and, what do you know, here's a fish and a plant, almost as well preserved as had they died yesterday (well, last week, maybe).

It's hard to grasp, but the fossil riches of the early Cretaceous world cluster thickly just a few meters beneath one's feet over hundreds, if not thousands, of square miles of this part of China.

But wait - there's more. We've yet to enter the museum itself. Here is its imposing façade. See if you can spot the word for 'fossil' in the signage.

This is a biggish sort of museum. And, on display, in room after room, is a collection of fossils just from this region of a quality and variety that speaks of insouciant braggadocio - any one of these specimens would be the pride of any self-respecting national collection. And yet, here, in a provincial museum on the outskirts of a smallish city, is palaeontological wealth beyond the dreams of the most avaricious Victorian collector. So - and this is for you, Dr S. S. of Lüneberg - let's look at some fossils.

First of all, the plants are lovely. Not just the odd leaf, but whole plants, including fruiting bodies and flowers.

The rocks of Liaoning hold the earliest known good records of flowering plants in the world.

 There are lots of invertebrates (crustaceans, insects)...

... a plethora of fishes ...

... turtles ...

 ... extinct lizard-like reptiles called choristoderes ...

... quite a number of collapsed umbrellas pterosaurs ...

 ... plenty of birds ...

 ... and, of course, dinosaurs.

Nor is this museum short on interpretive models, especially of feathered dinosaurs, which are far more convincing than the animatronics outside...

And the fossils just keep on arriving. As we were leaving the museum's main building, two trucks pulled up to disgorge a haul of beautiful fossils - recently confiscated, we were told, from the private collection of a corrupt official.

 This haul, which is far from unique, comprised 132 boxes, including -- picked at random -- this lovely specimen of the fossil bird Confuciusornis. Just look at the detail of these tail feathers.

As if to emphasize the unbelievable abundance of the fossils of this region, the museum doesn't contain just one or two scraps of fossilised wood, or even a couple of logs, but get this - an entire petrified forest.

Kinda just - gets you - doesn't it?

Cromercrox in China: Figured Stones

What is a fossil? Our word 'fossil' comes from the Latin verb fodere, which means 'to dig'. A fossil, therefore, is something that's dug up. This is a somewhat vague definition, as it could apply equally well to the bone of a mammoth as to as anything that Canis Croxorum might unearth here at the Parc Zoologique Des Girrafes.

Canis croxorum, fodering. Some time ago, when we still had grass.

Once upon a time, however, fossils fell into that class of object known as 'figured stones' - objects that were obviously rocks, but which bore signs of past life, or, perhaps, future portent. The Chinese word for fossil is huà-shi - literally, transformed stone. Here it is in the window of a fossil store in the town of Liaoyang, in western Liaoning Province, a few hours drive north-east of Beijing:

Western Liaoning is built on fossils. It oozes fossils. Fossils practically jump out at you. There are dinosaurs for road signs, and fossils are a matter of civic pride. The city of Chaoyang - another of those cities in China of which you have never heard,  even though it has a population of 428,000 - has a brand new museum crammed with fossils, any one of which would be the pride of any national fossil collection.

Why is this?

Back in the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous Periods, this part of the world was a volcanically active region whose rivers, lakes and surrounding countryside hosted a rich flora and fauna. The frequent volcanic eruptions, and the occasional outpourings of toxic fumes from the lakes, made for a very fossil-friendly combo - a Mesozoic Pompeii in which a wide variety of creatures was abundantly preserved. Not just bones, but soft tissues, too. Here, at the Sihetun quarry site in Liaoning,

... you can pick up, within only a few minutes of searching ...

Dr Zhou Zhonghe, Dr Yu Xiabo, and Your Humble Host, at the Sihetun Quarry. Image courtesy of Dr Yu.

... beautifully preserved fossils of fishes and insects. With a little more diligence, one can find plants, pterosaurs,  dinosaurs and birds - often complete with feathers. A museum at the site presents a selection of the treasures unearthed at this one quarry, and the tale is repeated in Chaoyang's museum, the fossil shops of the area, and in any number of nooks and crannies.

Fossils have been found here for decades, but it is only in the past twenty years or so that spectacular fossils of birds and dinosaurs have come to light. These fossils have fundamentally changed our conception of what life was like in the Age of Dinosaurs, and has shifted the focus of fossil-hunting decisively towards China.

Rumour of the fossil treasures of western Liaoning first reached mes oreilles in the mid-1990s, when Nature started publishing papers about remarkably preserved fossil birds. My host, Dr Zhou Zhonghe, now the Director of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Bejing, was at that time a graduate student in Kansas, and a coauthor on one of the first papers, reporting the fossil bird Confuciusornis, unearthed in western Liaoning. Specimens of this bird and many others previously unknown species - beautifully preserved, with remains of feathers, beaks, claws and even stomach contents - were soon discovered in their hundreds. It's worth reminding oneself of the shock value of these finds. Back in the 1990s, fossil birds were unbelievably rare, and the best preserved was still Archaeopteryx, first discovered in Bavaria around the time that Darwin's Origin was published, and only a handful of specimens of which had been discovered in the succeeding century and a half. The 'London Specimen' of Archaeopteryx is the prize jewel in the crown of the collections in the Natural History Museum in London. Yet now, one can walk into a provincial Chinese museum and see literally dozens of fossil birds, any one of which has the potential to yield at least as much information about the life of prehistoric birds as Archaeopteryx has.

The dragons were next. It was at an annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in (I think) 1996, when at a coffee break I noticed a Chinese researcher passing round a much-thumbed snap of a feathered dinosaur - to much general consternation.

The researcher was Dr Chen Pei-Ji of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeotology, who was not in fact a vertebrate palaeontologist - he was (and still is) interested in the small fossils of water-fleas that are found in the Liaoning deposits in such abundance that their different forms can be used to pinpoint the stratum whence a particular slab has been quarried. On a sudden, the dinosaur specimen came into his hands, and he'd come to New York to meet a few dinosaur experts who might shed light on this exciting find. I was among the melée. Unaccountably bereft of business cards, I scribbled down my contact details on a piece of gray cardboard I happened to have in my pocket and gave it to Professor Chen. In due course, Nature published the fossil, and Sinosauropteryx exploded onto the public stage. Casts and copies of this iconic fossil are legion, but in Nanjing I saw the real thing ...

 Sinosauropteryx, with my host Dr Wang Xiangdong, for scale.

I also met Dr Chen, for the first time since that meeting in New York ...

 ... and when we swapped business cards (I'd remembered to bring some this time), he showed me something else. In his wallet was the same piece of small gray card on which I'd written my contact details all those years ago. It was a small, touching memento of what proved to be a decisive moment in palaeontology, when our understanding of the evolution of dinosaurs and birds was utterly transformed. For Sinosauropteryx was the first of many feathered dinosaurs to come from Liaoning - and I'm pleased to say that a goodly share has been published in Nature. It was, in essence, the reason why I'd come to China.

To Sleep, Perchance ...

I'm reading the late Roy Jenkins' most excellent biography of Winston Churchill. Now, Churchill was famous for his energy, and for his ability to thunder rumbustiously around having had a very minimum of sleep. The rest of us need some more shut-eye, and what I am beginning to discover, now that the shades of advancing years descend like a veil across my transom, is that a short nap in the afternoons would be a very good idea - were I to be afforded the chance. The Spanish, with their convention of siestas, have the right idea. When I was in China, recently, my hosts would often ask me whether I'd quite like a short post-prandial nap - a fair question, as my schedule of sightseeing, eating, drinking, lecturing, touring universities, eating and drinking was both busy and remorseless. But can one nap at work?

Like Roy Jenkins, my late boss, Sir John Maddox, was a son of South-East Wales, and a writer of prodigious output and skill. A hands-on editor of indefatigable energy, productivity and verve, he had a sofa in his office, on which he'd curl up for the occasional catnap. One wonders whether it enabled him to be more productive, for longer.

But what about the rest of us? We are not so well accommodated, notwithstanding inasmuch as which there exist, in the atrium of the building in which I work, various couches, banquettes, sofas, chaises-longues and pouffes, designed for the reception of guests. OK, I lied about the pouffes. One day, long ago, I found myself discommoded by reason of jetlag, mild illness, or just general fatigue, and stretched myself out on one of these items for a brief fifteen winks. I'd be just nodding off, as it were, falling into Morpheus' welcome embrace, when I'd be tapped on the shoulder - 'Are You All Right?' would come the concerned emission.

Next time I'll drape a sign across my person. 'EDITOR ASLEEP', it will say. 'PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB', it will continue, although it might not conclude 'IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU'.

Cromercrox Goes To China

It will not have escaped your notice that I've been away recently, traveling in the Middle Kingdom. Here are the bald facts about my visit. Being, as I am, a longtime scientific editor whose journal has published many scientific papers from China over the past twenty years, I'd been invited by the Chinese Academy of Science to visit various institutions in Beijing, Nanjing and Xian; to meet scientists, and to give lectures about being a scientific editor. I'd also get a chance to go into the countryside to view various fossil localities.

My relationship with China has been rather special, you see. As the editor into whose bailiwick falls palaeontology, I'd seen Chinese palaeontology go from almost nothing to world-beating, while entirely on my watch as editor. Many scientists I'd known as graduates are now distinguished authorities in their subjects. Therefore it came to many as a surprise that I had never been to China before - none more so than me.

 But wait, there's more. I got in a lot of sightseeing,

  and ate a remarkable diversity of food.

Over the course of ten days, I visited six cities, gave three lectures, and saw the stamp made on this vast country of the first Emperors, and the last. And for the first time (with the arguable exception of a visit to Israel in 1983) I was in a country in which I was completely ignorant not only of the language, but of the system of notation in which it is written.

(although many signs had helpful English translations).

This post is, therefore, something of a taster. I hope to tell you about some of my adventures in the next few days and weeks. But before I go, can you identify the edible item on the right of the following picture?

The Maison Des Girrafes Caption Competition #54

The author of the best caption to the following will be deluged with the coveted OOFTUG (Order of the Unicycling Girrafe). I've added a caption to help start you off.

'OK, OK, how about this - you stop banging on about proportional representation, and Vince gets to play at being Chancellor. How does that sound?'

I'm Off

In just over an hour I'll be leaving the Maison Des Girrafes, bound for China. If my propitiations to the Sons of Muspell and BA Cabin Crew have worked, I'll get there on Monday morning. I can't complain - it took Marco Polo a lot longer. I hope to return just in time for the Cromer Crab Festival. I'll let you know what happens, if and when I get back.

The Hunting Of The Snark

It all started when I was a kid. A cousin, a year or so older than me and scion of what I later learned was a very right-on family, termed his own view of the world as 'intellectual politics'. The implication was clear to me at once. It hit me like an express train, and I have never forgotten that moment - the implication was that every other form of politics, particularly mine, was non-intellectual, inferior, backward, regressive, unworthy of discussion or engagement. Years later I came across a quip (I wish I could remember the source) that those at the more 'progressive' end of politics believe very strongly that everyone should be able to hold any view they want - provided it's theirs. 

As the years passed, I would often find myself on the wrong side of cool. The Tory when everyone else was Labour. The Heavy Metal Kid when every one else was Punk. The research group of one, when other graduate students had others to talk to, with whom to share experiences.  I have only rarely experienced a sense of belonging so inclusive that every person of my acquaintance shared a view that bore any resemblance to my own. And so it is today, when my circle consists very largely of academics easy with one anothers' political views which are of course alien to mine. This was brought home to me in Katherine Haxton's blog, Endless Possibilities. The author is an academic chemist who is entirely candid about how the views of her circle are restricted to the views she holds herself:

This is the first general election I’ve experienced with the “aid” of the internet.  By internet I mean twitter and the circle of similar-minded folk that I follow over there.  It is, undoubtedly, a microcosm that bears little resemblance to reality.   That’s not to say that the folk on twitter aren’t real – they are, just that I select that the residents of my online microcosm on certain characteristics (witty, scientists or related, care about similar things to me).  The big bad world doesn’t reflect those characteristics as strongly.

Being always something of an outsider, I have never had that luxury. As a result, my friends (or 'friends', if one includes those on Facebook) are a piebald bunch. They come from all religions and none, and political persuasions from fairly leftish to somewhat more right-wing even than mine. But being, as I am, in a somewhat academic milieu, I have found myself, once again, isolated. One correspondent wrote that he thought I must be the only 'out-and-out Tory' he knew. Although many are sympathetic towards diversity and regard my allegiance to the Conservative Party somewhat odd, I do get rather a lot of remarks one might call 'snarky', and am sometimes on the receiving end (if unintentionally) of badinage suggesting that Tories are aliens, or worse, and should be shunned.

Imagine, then, my relief at the election just gone, when the Conservative Party reaped the largest share of the popular vote, and the largest number of seats in Parliament. Clearly, there are a lot of people out there in the 'big bad world' who think along the same lines as I do. This only points up the inward-looking, closed-mindedness of any group - in this case, the academic, intellectual Left - who are fastidious about choosing their friends from people whose views bolster their own self-regard mirror their own. I realize that I really don't have to put up with snarkiness any more - I can see it as the desperate rearguard action of a minority defined in equal measure by its own inflated sense of self-worth; its own over-developed sense of entitlement; and its own fear - of what it sees as a barbarian horde, baying at the gates.

I shall continue to adopt a more inclusive policy towards friendship than this - or so I hope. But the recent election has brought some nastiness out of the woodshed. If my so-called-friends are unable to adopt the catholic (small 'c') attitude towards their own circle as I have been forced to do with mine, such that they post childish remarks about Tories being aliens, designed to appeal to an in-group that doesn't include me, for all that such notes are posted publicly under the tacit assumption that everyone must surely agree; or continue to spew half-baked tripe under the assumption that no-one in their in-group will subject it to any kind of critical scrutiny, thereby exploding it; then I shall assume that the intellectual caliber of their 'intellectual politics' doesn't rise above sixth grade, and is therefore not worth my consideration (or that of anyone else, frankly).

I'm 48, you see, and whereas one can indulge such stuff as a student, I am increasingly conscious that Time has gotten up on his wingèd chariot and is disinclined to spare the horses. And thus, sadly, my own in-group will begin to shrink, until I, too, will not see anything with which I would disagree. And that would be a sad day.

Party Election Broadcast by the Interwebz Party

This General Election, like perhaps no other, has been conducted in cyberspace. As a loyal and registered member of the Conservative Party, I've been receiving 'personally addressed' emails from David Cameron, George Osborne, William Hague and Eric Pickles. I have to say I gave these at best a cursory skim before deleting them. Except, tonight, I got a message from Boris Johnson, whom posterity will record as having been the greatest statesman of this or any other age.

Boris (yes, Boris - he's one of those celebrities who can be referred to by given name only, and yet everyone will know whom is meant) - Boris is a consummate writer, always worth reading, so naturally I read his communiqué to the end. Boris's effusions are always too good not to share, so I reproduce this letter here. Given that the email went out to several thousand of Boris's closest friends, I see no harm in reproducing it here in extenso, and, what's more, in full.

Henry,

This is it. As I write these words Gordon Brown should be teetering on the edge of the political oblivion he so richly deserves.

One shove, one nudge, one tiny prod in the right place - and we will at last be rid of this bankrupt embarrassment of a Labour government. Just one last push and this great country will be spared another five years of Gordon Brown.

We will avoid the drift and dither of a hung parliament. We will give a Conservative government the chance to offer dynamic and energetic government and by tomorrow morning we will begin the work of undoing the damage done by Labour.

Who is there left to administer this final judicious kick to the Labour Party's ample posterior?

It could be you, Henry.

If you have yet to vote - and you have five minutes to spare - I urge you and all your family and friends to get down to the polling station and play your part in history.

In an election this tight, your vote could be decisive. The boot's on your foot. For the good of our country - I urge you to use it.

On reading this I was deluged with an urge to reply, which I append, notwithstanding, inasmuch as which, in hope and expectation of a detailed reply.

Dear Boris : I've tweeted. I've Facebooked. I've leafleted until my feed are so sore I could barely walk. And I've voted. I've made myself unpopular with my lefty friends - some of whom would vote Tory were you the leader. I can do no more than lie back and enjoy Albus Dimblebore and his psephological prognostications. I wish you well. BTW, when you edited the Spectator I offered my services as your science correspondent. You did not reply. Probably for the best.

The Videography at the Maison Des Girrafes

My readers (both of you) will no doubt be aware that Crox Minor got a Flip video camcorder for her 12th birthday a few weeks back. She's already filmed a family holiday in Paris at Easter. But this weekend just gone she fulfilled a long-standing ambition and used her Flip to make a stop-motion animation. Here it is!



It was part (believe it or not) of an English assignment - to come up with an alternative treatment for a scene from Shakespeare. Crox Minor's favourite play is A Midsummer Night's Dream: her version takes place in the Purple Flower Nightclub and Bar, where evil barman Oberon spikes the drinks of clubbers Titania and Bottom with a love potion.

Crox Minor had made the Plasticene characters ages ago, but still took most of the weekend filming. I imported the clips (each between one and two seconds long) into iMovie, trimmed them all to a standard 0.2s each (though I left a few longer ones to indicate pauses) and added stock music and sound effects under Crox Minor's direction. Needless to say we think Crox Minor has a promising future in film-making. Our next project is to do a live-action film on Cromer East Beach that'll be set to the soundtrack of P. D. Q. Bach's timeless secular cantata Iphigenia In Brooklyn...

The Zoological Communiqué of the Maison Des Girrafes

Every so often I update both my readers with a list of who's who in the Maison Des Girrafes (and attached Parc Zoologique Des Girrafes). We've had some comings and - sadly - goings in the past few weeks, so this is a brief attempt at a resumé.

PHYLUM ANNELIDA
Worms (Wormus wormus) - in wormery.

PHYLUM CHORDATA

SUBPHYLUM VERTEBRATA

CLASS PISCES
Fish (Fishus fishus) - in fishtank in sitting room.

CLASS AMPHIBIA
Axolotl (Axolotlus axolotlus): Squirty Benson Wilberforce III - tank on kitchen worktop.
Frogs (Froggus ribitus): Mr and Mrs Jeremy Fisher and Progeny - in garden pond.

CLASS REPTILIA
Corn snake (Serpentinius murophagus): Sid - in vivarium above fishtank in sitting room.

CLASS AVES
Chickens (Hennus hennus) - Charlie, Lola, Hermione, Luna, Bracken, Bluebell, Cho, Portia, Titania and Ginny - in the garden.

CLASS MAMMALIA

ORDER RODENTIA
Hamster (Hamsterus hamsterus) - Victoria - in cage in sitting room.
Guinea Pigs (Guineus piggus) - Florence, Emily, Punky, Snowy, Bubble, Squeak y Consuela - in the garden.

ORDER LAGOMORPHA
Bunnies (Bunnius bunnius) - Barney, Buttons and Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM - in the garden.

ORDER CARNIVORA
Dog (Doggus doggus) - Heidi
Cats  (Moggus moggus) - Naughtypants, Tabitha Spong, Electra Z.


Electra Z and Tabitha Spong, 7 weeks old, arrived yesterday.

I don't think I've forgotten anyone.