05 May 2009

'Nother Toolshop Animatic: The Head Map

I created a sort of "mashup" of the previous two and added a temporary music track. (The ultimate version will have something different.) Click on the thumbnail (might take a moment to load):


Still clunky, but I'm just fleshing out the ideas at this point. Enjoy!

3 comments:

  1. Mike, the idea is great, really!

    By the way, don't you think that it could be used as a tool that illustrates how phylogenetic nomenclature actually works? I mean, you could for example show what happens to a taxon name with a self-destructive definition under different phylogenetic hypotheses. It would differ from these animations, and I don't know how difficult would it be, but it could clearly demonstrate that taxon names are actually searching for their places (like a letter [taxon name] with an address [phylogenetic definition] that is searching for its addressee [clade]).

    Just an idea. Maybe someone already did it... Anyway, people still think that there is something difficult about it, and a lot of them don't understand it. For example the name "Aigialosauridae" would be a good candidate for such a "simulation". I was thinking about its optimal phylogenetic definition, and the final version is something like "the most inclusive subclade of Mosasauroidea "(Mosasaurus hoffmanniDolichosaurus longicollis)" containing Aigialosaurus dalmaticus, Carsosaurus marchesettii and Opetiosaurus bucchichi but not Mosasaurus hoffmanni, Tylosaurus proriger or Plioplatecarpus marshii". Or just something like that... (Although in this particular case the name probably shouldn't be defined at all...)

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  2. This is really awesome Mike. For ease of understanding for non-specialist viewers it might be easier if all of the heads faced the same way. Also, I'm mostly back in communication land again...

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  3. Wow, Great job on this mashup, Mike! Totally Fantastic choice of music.

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