Books, Birds, and Elusive Papers

Scientific writing. I am still trying to wrap my brain around it. Over my lifetime I have developed a style, and it can be seen here quite well, but lately I have been tasked with writing scientific papers and they have not been pretty. One would think the more I read the better I would get at writing in that style, but not quite so yet. That makes the days I discuss papers that much more important in my own personal development. Today I, unfortunately, do not have many papers to share. I still have not found a way to get the original naming paper, not by the end of this week at least, but there are other essays and papers that refer to Achillobator in them. There are two papers that discuss evolution in Gondwana of dromaeosaurs and a paper on evolution of the dromaeosaur tail. The paper on Gondwana also describes a new Patagonian theropod (as of 2009). That theropod was named Austroraptor cabazai in the paper. The paper on dromaeosaur tail evolution also discusses and names a new dromaeosaur from Utah. Two specimens were not named but the third specimen was name Yurgovuchia doellingi. Achillobator comes into play in these papers in that the discussion of evolutionary lines in both papers mention Achillobator. Both Greg Paul's Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs and Matt Martyniuk's recently released Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and other Winged Dinosaurs contain entries on Achillobator. Martyniuk's entry is longer and speculates a little on behavior inferred from the skeleton. Additionally, Martyniuk has illustrated a squat little Achillobator to accompany the entry (Martyniuk's "field guide" is much more like a modern fauna field guide in respect to illustrated specimens with entries).