The mandible and dentition of the Early Cretaceous monotreme Teinolophos trusleri

Rich, T.H., Hopson, J.A., Gill, P.G., Trusler, P., Rogers-Davidson, S., Morton, S., Cifelli, R.L., Pickering, D., Kool, L., Siu, K., Burgmann, F.A., Senden, T., Evans, A.R., Wagstaff, B.E., Seegets-Villiers, D., Corfe, I.J., Flannery, T.F., Walker, K., Musser, A.M., Archer, M., Pian, R. & Vickers-Rich, P., June 2016. The mandible and dentition of the Early Cretaceous monotreme Teinolophos trusleri. Alcheringa 40, xx–xx. ISSN 0311-5518.

The monotreme Teinolophos trusleri Rich, Vickers-Rich, Constantine, Flannery, Kool & van Klaveren, 1999 Rich, T.H., Vickers-Rich, P., Constantine, A., Flannery, T.F., Kool, L. & van Klaveren, N., 1999. Early Cretaceous mammals from Flat Rocks, Victoria, Australia. Records of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery 106, 1–34. [Google Scholar] from the Early Cretaceous of Australia is redescribed and reinterpreted here in light of additional specimens of that species and compared with the exquisitely preserved Early Cretaceous mammals from Liaoning Province, China. Together, this material indicates that although T. trusleri lacked a rod of postdentary bones contacting the dentary, as occurs in non-mammalian cynodonts and basal mammaliaforms, it did not share the condition present in all living mammals, including monotremes, of having the three auditory ossicles, which directly connect the tympanic membrane to the fenestra ovalis, being freely suspended within the middle ear cavity. Rather, T. trusleri appears to have had an intermediate condition, present in some Early Cretaceous mammals from Liaoning, in which the postdentary bones cum ear ossicles retained a connection to a persisting Meckel’s cartilage although not to the dentary. Teinolophos thus indicates that the condition of freely suspended auditory ossicles was acquired independently in monotremes and therian mammals. Much of the anterior region of the lower jaw of Teinolophos is now known, along with an isolated upper ultimate premolar. The previously unknown anterior region of the jaw is elongated and delicate as in extant monotremes, but differs in having at least seven antemolar teeth, which are separated by distinct diastemata. The dental formula of the lower jaw of Teinolophos trusleri as now known is i2 c1 p4 m5. Both the deep lower jaw and the long-rooted upper premolar indicate that Teinolophos, unlike undoubted ornithorhynchids (including the extinct Obdurodon), lacked a bill.

Thomas H. Rich [trich@museum.vic.gov.au], Sally Rogers-Davidson [srogers@museum.vic.gov.au], David Pickering [dpick@museum.vic.gov.au], Timothy F. Flannery [tim.flannery@textpublishing.com.au], Ken Walker [kwalker@museum.vic.gov.au], Museum Victoria, PO Box 666, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia; James A. Hopson [jhopson@uchicago.edu], Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy, University of Chicago,1025 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Pamela G. Gill [pam.gill@bristol.ac.uk], School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1RJ, U.K. and Earth Science Department, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK; Peter Trusler [peter@petertrusler.com.au], Lesley Kool [koollesley@gmail.com], Doris Seegets-Villiers [doris.seegets-villiers@monash.edu], Patricia Vickers-Rich [pat.rich@monash.edu], School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia; Steve Morton [steve.morton@monash.edu], Karen Siu [karen.siu@monash.edu], School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia; Richard L. Cifelli [rlc@ou.edu] Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73072, USA; Flame A. Burgmann [flame.burgmann@monash.edu], Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy, 10 Innovation Walk, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia; Tim Senden [Tim.Senden@anu.edu.au], Department of Applied Mathematics, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia; Alistair R. Evans [alistair.evans@monash.edu], School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia; Barbara E. Wagstaff [wagstaff@unimelb.edu.au], School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia; Ian J. Corfe [ian.corfe@helsinki.fi], Institute of Biotechnology, Viikinkaari 9, 00014, University of Helsinki, Finland; Anne M. Musser [anne.musser@austmus.gov.au], Australian Museum, 1 College Street, Sydney NSW 2010 Australia; Michael Archer [m.archer@unsw.edu.au], School of Biological, Earth, and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; Rebecca Pian [rpian@amnh.org], Division of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, NY 10024-5192, USA. Received 7.4.2016; accepted 14.4.2016.     

Ghosts in the Garden: locative gameplay and historical interpretation from below#

The heritage industry now makes extensive use of digital audioguides and similar interpretation tools to reach new audiences but many remain rooted in authoritative and didactic conservatism. This paper critically evaluates the state of play in the field, from downloadable audio tours and apps, through more complex engagements with theatrically enhanced and affective simulation, to attempts at fuller dialogic visitor participation and the use of gps or RFID-triggered game mechanics. While ‘armchair’ and home screen-based game and interpretation models are addressed, particular attention is paid to the use of mobile and locative design, where embodiment in place is privileged over less associative or remote experience. The paper takes a research project led by the author as a case study. Ghosts in the Garden was conceived in collaboration with a museum and an experience design SME to test the potential of immersive, affective real world games on public understandings of history. It sought to engage visitors with researched history from below by using a pervasive media soundscape, the ‘ghosts’ of past visitors and a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ game mechanic in which outcomes are variable, visitor agency is retained and a more radical model of historical knowledge suggested.     

Procedures and complications in late-nineteenth-century experimental neuroanatomical research exemplified by articles of Henry Herbert Donaldson (1857–1938)

Henry Herbert Donaldson (1857–1938) was a leader in neurological research in the United States for several decades, beginning about 1890. A detailed account of three of his earliest publications shows the neuroanatomical procedures involved in the study of the relation of brain and intelligence during the late-nineteenth-century in America. Two of the articles, published in September 1890 and December 1891, were titled, “Anatomical Observations on the Brain and Several Sense-Organs of the Blind Deaf-Mute, Laura Dewy Bridgman (1829–1889)”; the third, published in August 1892, used the information from the first two to delimit the extent of the visual processing area of the human cortex. Donaldson’s procedures included brain cuttings and measures of macroscopic brain structures, histology of cellular structures, attempts to relate macroscopic brain structures with brain functions, data corrections, estimations, comparisons, and statistics. These procedures provide a view of the relative thoroughness, accuracy, and comparability of the various neuroanatomical techniques in use at that time and of Donaldson’s implementation of the techniques. Donaldson’s brain cutting techniques were much more comparable than his measurement techniques. The latter could be quite precise, but they were fraught with lack of standardized procedures that made corrections and estimations necessary when making data comparisons across studies. Donaldson emphasized these incompatibilities, implying a need for standardization. Statistical procedures were the least thorough and effective. His, and the field’s, total complement of statistical techniques consisted of mean and range, which severely limited his ability to make complicated assessments. This limitation was not necessarily supplemented by stringent control group comparisons.