On the ground...

Made it to Lima on Tuesday night. First flight was delayed, I had 5 minutes to run to the second flight before they closed the doors..Close call! The flight to Peru was one of the bumpiest I've been on... Add an old German man in front of me screaming at the stewardess for bumping his arm during drink service and you can imagine how happy I was to be on the ground... Renting a room from a friend of the paleontologists at the Museo de Historia Natural, Javier Prado and so far so good. Walked the 30+ blocks to the museum this morning... However, I opted for a taxi on the way back, since it was dark and I had my laptop with me... The first two days at the museum have been interesting as usual. Besides the sharks, which I will get to, I was fortunate enough to see the type specimen of Leviathan melvillei, the recently described, very large sperm whale. Along with a small, but VERY well preserved dermochelyid still in its jacket, a new archaeocete whale skull, and a host of other treasures...

The reason for my journey down here, though, is sharks, or tiburones if you wish.... I am particularly interested in the lamniforms as discussed in my previous blog. The Museo de Historia Natural, Javier Prado just so happens to have an extraordinarily complete skeleton of Cosmopolitodus (or Carcharodon if you will humor me) hastalis on display. I actually put up a picture last time, so I won't repeat. This specimen contains both upper and lower jaws full of teeth and portions of the neurocranium. Although, the specimen is ventral side up, and the dorsal side has not been prepared... In the next week and a half I will be measuring, photographing, poking, and maybe a little bit of prodding (haha) the specimen, so stay tuned. In the meantime, a paleontologist here at the museum collected one of the most complete carcharhinid (requiem sharks) skeletons I have ever seen. A nice spinal column of vertebral centra, a partial neurocranium, and both palatoquadrates (upper jaws) and Meckel's cartilages (lower jaws). Surprisingly, even after having two people work on it with air scribes all day, still no teeth! I say surprisingly, because typical shark fossils are just isolated teeth... So to have all the cartilage preserved, and not see any teeth is not a normal occurrence. However, I suspect the teeth are still in the jaw cartilages, and once the specimen is turned over, and the other side is prepared, we should be in for a treat....

I am off to Ica in the morning to spend the weekend in the desert collecting. So, look forward to updates and new pictures sometime next week!