PLoS Blog

Paul Sereno’s paper wasn’t – by any means – the only PLoS ONE paper published last week to have been covered by the press and by bloggers.

After the massive media buzz surrounding the last paper published in PLoS ONE by Paul Sereno, in which he and colleagues described the anatomy and behaviour of Nigersaurus taqueti (dubbed “the Mesozoic cow” by the press), you can imagine that we were quite excited to receive another paper from the University of Chicago Palaeontologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.

One of the more “interesting” experiences of my journalistic career was co-authoring an Op-Ed for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002 on the lack of evidence for prostate cancer screening using the PSA test.

The English Monarch has two birthdays – their real date of birth is celebrated in private with family and friends and the official date (which could historically be moved should their real birthday fall at a time of year when the weather was inclement) which is celebrated in public through the Trooping of the Colour Ceremony and a fly-past over Buckingham Palace in London.

PLoS ONE also celebrates twice (but far less grandly) –first there’s the date we opened our doors for submissions, 4 August 2006 (the date of our conception) and then there’s the date we launched (our birth), 20th December 2006.

This week saw the publication of another dinosaur study in PLoS ONE. In the article, entitled, Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms, Thomas Kaye, at the Burke Museum of Natural History, and colleagues reported that material recovered from dissolved dinosaur bones by palaeontologists in 2005 (and believed to be dinosaurian soft tissue) may actually have been slimy biofilm created by bacteria that coated the voids once occupied by blood vessels and cells.