PaleonTurolog ’12 & El Plateosaurus virtual

Yesterday I finally made it to Teruel again, 31 hours late thanks to the airline’s being totally surprise by white stuff falling from the sky in winter. I arrived at 11 pm, had  a wonderful dinner with Luis Alcalá and the jury colleagues for PaleonTurology ’12 – and then we got down to business! There was quite a list of submission, and although we had all studied all the papers carefully picking the winner for this year’s PaleonTurology prize was not easy. In the end it was a tight race, and this paper won:

Nat Commun. 2011 Aug 23;2:444. doi: 10.1038/ncomms1458.

Anatomically modern Carboniferous harvestmen demonstrate early cladogenesis and stasis in Opiliones.

Garwood RJ, Dunlop JA, Giribet G, Sutton MD.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21863011

Today, there was a press conference at Dinopolis announcing the winner. Congratulations to all four, you’ve done great work!

At the same press conference the popular version of my Plateosaurus article that won last year’s competition was presented. It feels great to finally have the little book out 🙂 Also, a poster was hung in the Dinopolis museum’s Hall of Fame of Paleonturology winners –  weird to have my mug in a museum: