UCMP is proud to announce the completion of its web exhibit on archosaurs — I guess you could call it a Diapsida exhibit but we’ve chosen to focus on the archosaur lineage.
It’s roots go back to the end of the spring semester, 2006. Former UCMP grad student John Hutchinson (Ph.D., 2001, now a Professor of Evolutionary Biomechanics at the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College) had updated a number of the museum’s web pages on dinosaurs, and he was asked whom he’d recommend for writing new material on the archosaur lineage. John suggested that we approach grad student Matt Wedel in the Padian Lab, and that summer the research, reading, and writing began.
Matt sent the bulk of the content for the archosaurs exhibit to me in May of 2007, but that was also the year Matt earned his Ph.D. and got a new job. Between the job and family, it was tough finding time to work on the final bits of archosaurs.
Meanwhile, I tracked down images, formatted the text that I had for the web, and continued to check in with Matt periodically. In May of 2010 Matt sent me the final pieces of archosaurs, the most important being his text on modern crocodilians. For the next several months, I worked with Matt to resolve some issues surrounding the archosaur phylogeny and I continued to hunt down images. By November, the exhibit was finally ready … except navigating among the numerous pages within the exhibit was quite difficult, so we decided to postpone its launch until UCMP Webmaster, Josh Frankel, could implement a solution. With the navigation issue resolved, archosaurs is now up and ready for the public. It only took us about six years!
The museum appreciates not only Matt’s expertise, but his dedication — he was determined to complete the archosaurs exhibit no matter how long it took. And now it’s finally “done” … although as Matt will be the first to tell you, the perceived relationships between organisms — particularly extinct ones — are always in a state of flux (due to new evidence and interpretations). So maybe Matt isn’t completely done with archosaurs after all ….
Matt Wedel is currently Assistant Professor of Anatomy at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California.