So Much To Do

I said before that a lot of my work at present is a lot of reading and background researching. Dolichorhynchops figures into this a lot right now. Some days, like today, I have to put away the work though as it just seems like far too much to read and look over. There is a lot of information to reconcile out there depending on the researcher. The papers I shared yesterday all mention Dolichorhynchops even if their main goal was to describe another animal or discuss the phylogenetic placement of different polycotylids. Every researcher has their own or a set of derived characters taken from another researcher and therefore, by the time someone like myself comes along, there are well over 100 characters in a few different sets which may or may not overlap or be derivations of another character in another set. I feel lost some times. When I feel that way, though, I like to just look at the bones and at illustrations, computer models in motion or stills done in any number of style, and I just like to relax my brain. Therefore, today, I say let us relax our brains with this:

There are a ton of images that I find interesting or relaxing (Walter Meyers' Cretaceous Marine Predators is another favorite for this topic but I did not ask his permission). This group of Dollies is pretty serene, so it is pretty relaxing. They seem a bit slow and awkward in this still though; I do not know if that was the intended look of the models in this scene. Also, their eyes, at this angle at least, are rather odd looking to me, as though the "fleshed out" model has no flesh over the skull really. Anyhow, I should get back to work!