Interview with the Premiere Geology Doodle Humorist, Alana McGillis

Alana McGillis is an awesome and hilarious paleoartist whose recently published book, “Daring to Dig: Women in American Paleontology” is the best book you’ll read all year. It’s an awesome combination of amazing facts, stories, and gorgeous illustration and it’s available now from the Paleontology Research Institution in Ithaca, New York! Alana is a graduate of Smith College in Massachusetts, where she fell in love with geology and storytelling, and now works in outreach at San Francisco Maritime National Park. Meaghan sat down with her for a Skype interview. Read the below interview for information about Alana, information about the book, and some really, really good cat geology puns - and for more of all three of those things, you can visit her website at https://www.alanamcgillis.com, or follow her on twitter at @GilisDoodles!

THE BOOK IS SO GOOD YOU GUYS

Meaghan was so excited she spontaneously grew extra chins

...wait u guys don't do that when ur excited?

Meaghan and the Molds of Doom

In 2014 I made a terrible Christmas mistake.

For gifts, I like to give people nerdy homemade things, and I find that Christmas is a particularly convenient excuse to procrastinate on important tasks that I don't want to do (like study). For Christmas of 2014 I made chocolate molds of cool extinct animals, including a giant ground sloth and a 2D Dunkelosteus face. The molds were cute, the chocolates were tasty, the bacon-flavored lollipops I made in these molds were hilarious and kind of greasy, it was fun all around. Yet somehow this sparked a series of events that led to a replica of Cophecetus bleeding unset resin like a mysterious holy relic, hives from my fingers to my biceps, and a floor so splattered in epoxy we may need to pour more plastic on it just to even the whole place out.

Same same, and yet SO DIFFERENT.

Cenozoic Cheat Sheet

Meaghan likes to give homemade Christmas gifts. Last year she made nerdy science-themed chocolates, and the year before that she designed dorky mugs. This year, she decided to go a big more useful and create the only calendar that really matters... the Cenozoic calendar. Really, Meaghan was just kind of tired of looking up the NALMA (North American Land Mammal Ages) divisions and decided to make a cheat sheet for herself illustrated with her lab's favorite Cenozoic animals!  

Hadrianus, a big ol' tortoise

The Hopeful Monster Hypothesis

Warning: this is not a trailer review, though Hopeful Monsters does sound like a cinematic masterpiece. Rather, this is a discussion of a form of evolutionary theory: Hopeful Monster (or Discontinuous Variation if you prefer the dry scientific term, and who doesn't) is the hypothesis that suggests evolution proceeds through the same mechanism that basketball athleticism has: organisms who used to be a bit odd and possibly insanely tall now find their niche, excel, and rise to the top.

Prior to basketball, his height simply gave him neck cramps

A Lot of Oreodont Drawings

This summer Meaghan has been working as a Geocorps Paleontologist for the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, working on resolving John Day oreodont taxonomy. It's been a lot of fun, but it also means that oreodonts have been at the forefront of her mind literally all summer... so she's drawn a lot of them. As the summer has progressed, her oreodonts have become a lot more like My Little Ponies, with big feet and ridiculous expressions. Meaghan is now headed off to Kyrgyzstan for a month (to help this lady scientist with her dissertation work), and is too lazy to write blog posts ahead of time so in lieu of other blog material.... here are a bunch of Meaghan's oreodont sketches with her brilliantly witty commentary!

Coy Agrochoerus antiquus is an ass during hide-and-seek

Merychyus elegans just pranked the shit out of someone.

Incredible Science and Nature Art (By Other People)

Obviously the Vengeance Team has posted many things on our own artistic endeavors, including some things for sale at our store (BUY THEM WE NEED BEER WE MEAN CONFERENCE MONEY). Sometimes other people do awesome artistic things, too, and we thought that we'd take a moment to share some of our favorite science and nature themed artists and art.

Riusuke Fukahori of Goldfishing

This is not a box of real goldfish. This is an incredible 3D painting. Riusuke Fukahori paints layer upon layer of goldfish in different layers of resin, giving them an incredible 3D shape in their "liquid" suspension. Some of these things are huge, or have goldfish pouring out of one resin mold into another. See more here, or at his website.

Geology-Inspired Nail Art

Those nails are so gneiss

Recently Meaghan showed Amy some very cool "burned book" fingernail art and pointed out how much better it would be with scientific figures. Amy took on the challenge the next rainy day. The result? Geology-themed fingernails!!! Now we are bringing the nail magic to you, faithful readers, so follow the tutorial below to be the most stylish geologist* of the century!!!

*Admittedly not too hard to be when most of us wear sales-rack REI quick-dry shirts and paint-stained mom jeans, completing our outfit with a sweat-stained fishermans hat. Still, we bet that look (Field Gear Chic) would go great with strat column fingernails!

Paleontologists Give the Best Presents

Last year, Meaghan made epic personalized nerd mugs and fake tattoos for her lab mates. It was a great Christmas - she got to not be poor AND be smug, which is a difficult combination to come by. Naturally this year, she wanted to outdo her previous year's efforts and come up with something crafty and sciencey that could solidify her position as the Martha Stewart of Science. Fortunately for Meaghan, there exists such a thing as "Non-Toxic Food-Grade Silicone Paste."

This is a little different from the typical casting supplies that paleontologists work with, in that it is meant for eating and is incredibly easy to use. Select or make the item you would like to mold, mix equal qualities of blue and white, and smoosh the mixture all over the item for about an hour. Boom. Silicon molds. 

Initially Meaghan had grand plans of using the new 3D printer at University of Oregon to print out mini replicas, but they have some daft rule about "academic intentions" and she couldn't figure out how to bullshit her way through it. Instead Meaghan made small sculpey clay replicas of an oreodont skull, and a flat medallion of a Dunkleosteus head, and a flat giant ground sloth. She also grabbed a bear skull that was just lying around (long story).

Adorable Art With Dead Things

IT'S BEAUTIFUL

We've often described our decorational scheme as Serial Killer Chique, largely because as paleontologists we are both inclined to think of bones as beautiful rather than icky. To make animal innards palatable decorational choices for our friends and guests, we've started to experiment with different craft techniques.

Nerdy Shit to Give Your Friends When You're Too Poor For ThinkGeek.com

So, it's wedding season, as well as our annual celebration of the consequences of the midwinter doldrums (aka, summer birthdays) which means that everyone is walking that fine social line between not looking like a cheap asshole, and abject poverty. While we can't say that we have a DIY nerd!gift for everyone, here are a couple of Meaghan and Amy's favorites!

1) Homemade Temporary Tattoos 

Cuz you can't buy gold like this in the stores.

Paleosol Cupcakes, Part 2 of 2

We hope you're ready, world.

You're probably not, though, because this blog post contains scientific sketches of cupcakes and there ain't nobody prepped to handle that shit. Let's delve deep into the world of paleopedology baked goods, a sentence that by all rights should never have entered this universe but is somehow here anyway.

CUPCAKE #1: MOLLISOL

Mollisols are grassland soils. Because grass forms a thick blanket of vegetation on the ground, it creates a lot of organic material (chocolate cake and white cake mixed together). Mollisols often have calcareous nodules ("pearl" sprinkles) and gypsum layers (silver sprinkles), but also have crumb peds which are basically small lumps of dirt inside the overall dirt. Here we have a well-drained mollisol - the small Bt horizon  wasn't constantly soaked with water, so instead of turning green it oxidized (rusted) into a reddish layer, or in this case, red velvet cake.

This one comes with a super epic cooking video, in which Meaghan pronounces 'calcareous' the Canadian way (aka... incorrectly).

Disappointingly, Meaghan's camera battery died soon after that video was filmed. The rest of these cupcakes shall have to stand without explicit, Star-Wars-style cooking directions.

CUPCAKE #2: HISTOSOL

Paleosol Cupcakes, Part 1 of 2

For those of you not in the know, some people study dirt. While this is fortunately not an affliction either member of the Vengeance Team suffers from, it is an actual thing, and sometimes it is actually a very interesting thing. Of the poor souls who study dirt, paleopedologists are probably the best off because at least their dirt is really really damned old: they study paleosols, literally "ancient soils."  Paleosols record evidence of past climate, organisms and ecosystems, which grants them an automatic +10 interest points over modern soils.

Paleosols tend to have poorly articulated layers (soil horizons) only visible to very experienced dirt-interpreters. In this way, they are much like most of Meaghan's experiments in baking ("Is this a layer cake that has suffered some sort of faulting? Did you mean to leave large unconsolidated lumps in this cake for some reason?"). As such, Meaghan felt that baking paleosol study tools was the perfect way to celebrate the completion of her first year of graduate school. That's right: when Meaghan thinks of celebrations, she doesn't think about drinking, she thinks about nerd-baking... and that's why she's in graduate school.

Schools out - it's time for SCIENCE! And baking!

PaleoArt: 2 Really Nerdy Illustrated Paleo Jokes

Hey guys, just a short sweet post to whet your appetite for the sloth-nanigans that are gonna be going down this week. Shit's about to get real. And real slothy.

 

Didn't get it? Well, here's the nerd breakdown so you can see Meaghan and Amy's true comedic genius. On the left is a mylagaulid, or "Horned Gopher." Most rodents are r-selected - they make lots and lots of babies and hope that some of them survive - as anyone who has ever owned a couple of hamsters or rats can tell you. So technically speaking, yeah - all rodents are horny, even if mylagaulids got a lot more heat for it (because they have horns).

Didn't get it? Well, you've clearly missed out on some very critical parts of pop culture. Also that's a Dunkleosteus, and they're straight up terrifying.


All drawings were made by Meaghan with Artist's Loft Watercolor pencils and outlined in Uni Superink, then edited and cropped in GiMP with the blessed, wonderful pathway tool. They were then put on mugs using the magic of Target, and given as Christmas presents.

PaleoArt: Osteostracan Jokes

Here is a little known science fact for you all: for the first 4 billion years or so of creation, Nature appears to have spent most of is time in a drunken haze. That's got to be the only explanation behind foot-long spiders, because the only person who thinks that is a good natural phenomenon is a person whose mind has been pickled in whiskey and bitter hatred. But Nature didn't just create enormous sea scorpions or 8-legged puddles of jello somehow strong enough to kill sharks. Nature also messed around with vertebrates.

Osteostracans

These are Osteostracans, which as far as anybody can tell were created when Mother Nature decided that she needed an armored tennis racket. These jawless jewels of the Devonian probably filtered through mud or ate whatever was dumb enough to swim into their mouths, and if you believe Walking With Prehistoric Monsters they had an ongoing evolutionary showdown with the bullies of the deep, sea scorpions. They also had great big bony heads that made them look like they all wore funny hats that seemed totally fashionable at the time but that they were pretty embarrassed about later on.

Creatures as bizarre as these deserve to be the subject of visual puns.

Osteostracorn

Osteostrincorn

Osteostrackan

Osteostracan't

All images made by Meaghan with water color pencils, pens and copious amounts of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

PaleoArt: Multituberculate Jokes

Multituberculate

This is a multituberculate. They were a big branch early on the mammalian tree, they had some really wonky teeth, and now they're all dead - which is a sob story shared by most of life on earth. They were named after the many bumps (tubercules) on their teeth, and there is (currently!) no evidence that multituberculates were obsessed with rutabagas, parsnips, carrots, yams, or potatoes.

The following are not real animals. They are good* puns.

Manytuberculate

Monotuberculate

Zerotuberculate

*actually, let's be real - they're pretty great puns.


All drawings made with mechanical pencils and outlined uni super ink pens. First drawing colored in with Artist Loft's watercolor pencils.

PaleoArt: Tinsel Toebone Edition

Life at the Vengeance Team household is always exciting and thrilling, but every once in a while it is punctuated by a moment that rises above the others. Recently, Meaghan entered her house to find the following beauties sitting out on a counter as if someone had ritually sacrificed a My Little Pony to the glitter gods. While she was briefly worried that a BeDazzler-wielding serial killer had left a tribute on her kitchen counter, the array of Mod Podge and Glitter Glue spread around it like a Tunguska event clearly indicated it was just a regular Friday living with Amy.

Below are Amy's sparkle-drizzled lovelies in all their splendor. Enjoy!

Bones were collected during field work in Dillon, Montana and decorated with Stickles and Liquid Pearls line of Rangers glitter glue. Presumed identifications include Marmot (skull and jaw bone) and Mule Deer (Toe and Astragalus).

PaleoArt Jello Shots Edition

In addition to being scientists, world travelers, philanthropists in very limited senses, and generally awesome, Meaghan and Amy are also paleoartists. Here are some recent works of brilliance, cast in alcoholic jello.

Diving Cladoselache

Indarctos oregonensis in tar pit

Stegosaurus demonstrating low buoyancy typical of pneumaticity-lacking ornithischians

Chondrichthyes in lava

The GRAND CANYON of jello shots. No literally, this is the grand canyon carved out of 6 layers of booze-ridden jello stratigraphy, overlaid by a final, nearly-toxic river of vodka and blueberry jello. You're welcome, everyone. You're welcome.