Midyear Checkpoint 2023

| Patricia Bujard

Setting goals in the beginning of the year is always a good thing, so why not check in and see how we’re doing at the midway point?

In January I set out to…

  • Prep for library story time
  • Fix book errors
  • Update dummy book
  • Outline picture book series

So how did I do?

For the library story time I am doing very well! The critters I’ve been fixing up will be featured on the library wall all month, which means an interview with the local newspaper as artist of the month. Also part of that will be a small display case for the few sculptures I have made and dinosaur toys that I use as lighting reference for my illustrations.

Since my art will be on display, we went ahead and scheduled a story hour on July 12th. It’s super exciting and terrifying at the same time, reading my stories to a potential crowd. Children are a very honest audience, so this will be a field test of my work out in the wild. I think it’ll be a great test of a variety of different skills, and I even get to sell my books and other things afterwards. That’s the terrifying part!

The second goal, fix book errors, also went very well. The latest edition is published on Amazon, and I really like how simple and user-friendly their platform is. They have free templates and clear instructions for everything, and even a little program that checks all your files for any potential problems, plus absolute control over my books. Amazon is huge and has a hand in pretty much everything these days, but this honestly seems to be the best path for me at the moment.

Goal #3, outlining the picture book series. I got the most important steps of this one done back in January. I basically ironed out what it was I wanted out of the picture book series, and even brainstormed a few outlines and titles for the other time periods. The rest will be an ongoing process of allowing it to grow over time as I develop the books.

Goal #4, update the dummy book…that was definitely a fail so far. Well, not a fail, just not a priority because it didn’t have a deadline like the first two and wasn’t as easy as the third. As soon as things calm down after the story hour and my oldest kid’s birthday party that same weekend, then I’ll have some breathing room to make a fresh dummy book. Perhaps doing that will help me figure out why I can’t seem to get any traction on the picture book. Well, aside from the need to do other mildly important things on top of the other big creative projects…you know, like feeding five children, making sure we don’t drown in laundry, and ensuring that the dust bunnies don’t rise up to attack us from under the couch. They’ve been making super soldiers out of the dog’s fur, because our 80lb dog sheds enough to make a clone of himself each week.

So priorities for the next half of the year…

  • Update dummy book
  • Update Tango
  • Add a new critter to the shop.

That’s all for now. I hope you’re managing to stay cool and comfortable this summer, and if you live in the U.S.A like I do, Happy Fourth of July!

And the Critter of the Month is…

It’s time to settle the debate. Not once and for all, but at least for now…

Is Chum a Hybodus fraasi, or Egertonodus?

I covered this the last time Chum was featured, but at the time there seemed to be only questions, and not answers. This time when I took a deep dive into research I discovered three papers that finally helped clear it up for me.

The first was all about the sharks (and their close relatives) from Upper Jurassic Germany. Specifically the types of formations that include the Solnhofen. This is what they had to say about Hybodus fraasi…

“Hybodus fraasi is a poorly known, medium-sized species that has originally been described and named by Brown [172] based on an almost complete but rather poorly preserved female skeleton from the lower Tithonian of Solnhofen (Figure 10). Maisey [173] tentatively transferred †H. fraasi to the genus †Egertonodus, originally introduced for †Hybodus basanus Egerton, 1844 [174], from the Lower Cretaceous of England. However, this taxonomic scheme was rejected by other authors [19,175], particularly due to the poor preservation of the holotype.” Villalobos-Segura et al., 2023

Oooh, I thought, so the idea of H. fraasi having a name change was never a for-sure thing to begin with? I was definitely intrigued, and immediately ran off to chase down the other papers. (figuratively of course. Can’t really run on the internet, and papers are rather sedentary things)

One of the two papers was in German, so I chose the one in English first.

“When erected, Egertonodus only included the type species and tentatively Hybodus fraasiBrown, 1900 from the Tithonian of southern Germany, although several crucial characters were unknown in the latter species (Maisey 1987). What is preserved of the teeth however, suggest that the dental morphology is very different from that of the type species. It is likely that several other nominal species of Hybodus may be placed within Egertonodus in light of future research, but at this time, we prefer only to include E. duffini described below in addition to the type species.” Rees & Underwood, 2008.

I was glad to have programs like Google translator so I could read the final paper. Jurgen Kriwet and Stefanie Klug (2015) echo the above statement. Even though Hybodus fraasi has teeth and skull with different characteristics from the type species of Hybodus reticulatus, the variations are not enough to justify a new genus. They argue that the differences may be simply due to individual diversity, and are too different from the creature assigned to Egertonodus than Hybodus itself. In any case, the fossil is not in good enough condition to be sure, and confirmed that even Maisey himself was uncertain in reassigning Hybodus fraasi as Egertonodus.

So there you have it! Chum the Hybodus is still a Hybodus, and I can breathe a little easier knowing that he’s not already out of date.

To celebrate, I fixed up Chum’s background a bit and had some fun painting water. Just click on the picture below or CLICK HERE to go to Redbubble and take a closer look.

See you August 1st for the next Critter of the Month!

This flashy gentleman likes to spend time with his special person. 🙂

Share your guess in the comments! He’ll be one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂

References

  • Villalobos-Segura E, Stumpf S, Türtscher J, Jambura PL, Begat A, López-Romero FA, Fischer J, Kriwet J. A Synoptic Review of the Cartilaginous Fishes (Chondrichthyes: Holocephali, Elasmobranchii) from the Upper Jurassic Konservat-Lagerstätten of Southern Germany: Taxonomy, Diversity, and Faunal Relationships. Diversity. 2023; 15(3):386. https://doi.org/10.3390/d15030386

  • Kriwet, Jürgen & Klug, Stefanie. (2015). Knorpelfische (Chondrichthyes).

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