Dinosaur supertree

What is the importance of this discovery?
Two things. We have made one of the biggest supertrees yet attempted - with 440 species. The more species you include, the more possible trees might exist - for 440, the number is huge, more than the number of atoms in the Universe. A year or two ago, this wouldn’t have been possible, but now, with ever-faster and larger computers, problems like this can be tackled. Second, we have used statistical approaches for the first time to determine the real pattern of dinosaurian evolution and to test for times of unusually high rates of diversification.

What is a supertree?
A supertree is a tree made up from many ’source’ trees, the original published trees. In this case, we tracked down 155 published trees, some of which covered only a family, others a larger group. These are then combined to produce the best fitting single solution. Of course, the source trees, published by dozens of palaeontologists around the world, include all sorts of conflicts and disagreements. So the supertree methods have to find ways to find the ‘majority’ or strongest verdict.

The best (only) good thing about the NYTBR now is the Bauman Rare Books ad on the back page.

LA Times to Fold Standalone Book Review - 7/21/2008 12:28:00 PM - Publishers Weekly

According to a former staffer, the Los Angeles Times is folding its standalone Sunday book review section, laying off two dedicated book editors.

Despite the folding of the section, the longrunning Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is expected to continue, but Wasserman observed that without the Book Review itself, “the book festival will be a hollow joke.” He urged readers and writers “to join with us as we protest this sad and backward step.”