"We're on a mission from God."

Today started out with another statistics practical. I'd enjoyed the first two more than I had expected, but this one topped them both, and more significantly it may turn out to be the basis for a paper. Without boring you with all the details, we were working on methods of estimating the completeness of the fossil record for certain groups of organisms. I wound up working with Emma, and we opted to look at sauropod ("long-necked") dinosaurs. It took us less than an hour to complete, and we wound up with nice, clean results that suggested that there are still a great many more sauropods to be found out there. We tried it again with ornithopods ("duck-bills"). Same results. This was all well and good and should make for an easy write-up, but here's where it gets really interesting. Simon saw what we were working on, and said that far as he knew, no one had ever done this type of analysis for sauropods, ornithopods, or any other group of dinosaurs for that matter. In fact, only one person has ever done so for dinosaurs in general: our own professor, Mike Benton. This had us mulling over the possibility of looking at all the major dinosaur groups and, if we found any interesting patterns, possibly publishing our results. Maybe it's just us being overenthusiastic, and who knows if we'd have the time for it, but we thought we'd check with Mike when he returns next week and see what he thinks. It's certainly an exciting prospect, and would be just about the easiest paper one could hope for. I'll keep you all posted.
This evening found me, as on most Fridays, at the Earth Sciences Department happy hour. From there, a contingent of us headed over to Neil's for curry and a viewing of "The Blues Brothers." The curry was excellent, and I'm happy to report that when they say their food is spicy here, they actually mean it. The movie was, as always, outstanding, and very apropo in light of the White Sox, I suppose (I maintain that it is far and away the best movie about Chicago). Of course, the best part of "The Blues Brothers" is the music, which we all joined in on when we knew the words (we had a very rousing chorus of Rawhide, in particular). Speaking of missions from God, tomorrow Graeme, Manabu, and I are making an excursion to the zoo. Will I finally track down the elusive stick insect? Stay tuned...