Lindsay Zanno

Date of Birth: The Cenozoic Era

Birth Name: Lindsay E. Zanno

Height: 13 feet with nine-inch claws

VITAL STATISTICS:

I have a deep-seated love of paleontology.  If someone was crazy enough to decide they wanted to chat me up, they’d have 2000% of my attention if they decided they wanted the topic to be the paternal instincts of Mayasaurs as evidenced by excavated egg mounds. And right now there is no person on the face of the planet I’d rather converse with about this than Dr. Lindsay Zanno.   No lie; I’d walk right past my dino heroes Jack Horner and Robert Bakker to buy Zanno a refreshing Singapore Sling.

If the Burpee Museum is to be trusted:

Lindsay E. Zanno earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree, Summa Cum Laude studying Biological Anthropology at the University of New Mexico in 1999, her Master’s (2004) and PhD (2008) in Geology at the University of Utah, and is now the John Caldwell-Meeker Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geology at The Field Museum of Natural History. Lindsay has over a decade of domestic and international field experience in the fields of mammalogy, primatology, anthropology, and paleontology and has named four new dinosaurs. For her PhD Lindsay studied a bizarre group of raptor dinosaurs thought to be plant-eaters. As a postdoctoral researcher with the Field Museum, she is continuing her research on this and several other poorly understood raptor dinosaur groups and using this data to help decipher their evolutionary and paleoecological history.

I know, I know: pretty standard, right?  Plus, I’m pretty sure “paleoecological” is a made-up word… what?  It isn’t?  Oh.

Anyhow, this was originally going to be a five-part big fat geek crush list, but Zanno sprang onto my radar this past July 17 when MSNBC reported on this li’l guy right here:

Nothronychus graffami.  13 feet of theropod goodness complete with nine-inch-long scythe-like claws.  BAM!  But get this: analysis points to the fact that this sucker was omnivorous and possibly an out-and-out herbivore!  Those claws?  Zanno’s co-author says they were probably for, “digging into termite mounds, mucking on the bottom of a lake or pond like a goose or moose, and raking leaves into its mouth from a mangrove forest like a ground sloth.”

Mucking around? A theropod?  Are joking?  Like a moose?  Theropods do NOT muck around like a moose! Allosaurus and Troödon do not muck around like a ground sloth!  They kick ass all day, every day, from when the sun rises over the Late Triassic to when it sets for the last time in the Late Cretaceous.  Word to YOUR MOTHER!

[drops the mic and leaves]

…

[runs back to pick up mic]

Sorry, got a little caught up there.  But still: a herbivore therapod?!  Can you believe that shit?  I know what you’re thinking: “This is the paleontological equivalent of her whipping her blouse off and dancing on a table while singing La Vie En Rose.  This lady is CRAZY!”

Yeah: CRAZY LIKE A DEINONYCHUS!  Honestly, how can you not fall madly in love—deep in your porous, bird-like bones that most leading paleontologists say suggests a link between dinosaurs and modern avians— with someone who takes your preconceived notions about the world, things you hold dear, and turns them on their head?  Man!

Plus: totally hot.

REASON I’D SABOTAGE THIS RELATIONSHIP: Continuously tell her that she makes my ornithischian hip look like a saurischian hip!

Eh?  EH!  Get it? HaCHA!

Tags: Aesthetiophilia, Paleontology, Pictoriphilia // 2 Comments »