Edinburgh and Leith, castles, museums, and crags

Antrodemus valens1 Leidy Morrison Formation, Upper Jurassic, Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry, Utah, USA. Antrodemus was an Upper Jurassic representative of a group of carnivorous dinosaurs, the Carnosauria, which used their hind limbs for walking, and, when moving fast, held out their long tails to counter-balance the weight of the body in front of the hips. In the course of their evolution during the Mesozoic the carnosaurs became giants culminating in Tyrannosaurus of the Cretaceous period, the largest flesh-eater ever to have lived on land with a length of 15 metres (about 50 feet), a weight of at least 8000 kilograms (about 8 tons) and standing 5.5 metres (about 18 feet) tall. Some specimens of Antrodemus reach a length of 9 metres. It was a hunter living largely on the flesh of giant herbivorous dinosaurs2. Its victims were attacked by the sharp claws on the three powerful fingers of the hand and by its biting teeth. The large skull had a springiness in its construction which was an adaptation for bolting large masses of meat. Although the skull was lightened by the presence of gaps (fenestra) in the bone it required a short strongly-constructed neck for its support. The mounted skeleton is a fibre-glass cast prepared from the original bones, some of which are exhibited in case 12 to the left. * A cast of the thigh bone of Diplodocus, one of these giant herbivores, is exhibited to illustrate the size of these giant animals.

¹ Your humble guide suggests that in fact the specimen should be labeled as Allosaurus fragilis as suggested by DinoData, and as it is displayed in the Jurassic diorama at the Royal Ontario Museum. ... But hey, I'm just a provincial.

² While I'm pretending to be smarter than I am, I should point out that some folks say Allosaurs are way too small to kill the animals you find their teethmarks in. You could resolve this either by casting Allosaurs as scavengers rather than killers, or by suggesting that they might have hunted in groups rather than solo. It makes for a good 3-way debate. The main moral is that presenting three possibilties on the exhibit copy makes curators anxious, even when it is the right thing to do.

For dinner Wednesday, we hooked up with Fee. We went to an Indian place in the Old Town called Zest.

• Robert Gibbings (1889-1958) "Clear Waters" (1920), a wicked woodcut of a female figure
• Emil Nolde (1867-1956) "Kopf" (1913), with a strong African influence
• Armand Fernandes (known as Arman) b. 1928, "Violincelle dans l'espace" (1967-1968), a broken cello encased in clear plastic.