Tapeta lucida have evolved a ton of times, and they’re probably not ancestral to birds. They’re typically associated with nocturnal birds – kiwis, kakapos, owls, and nightjars all have them, and they’re all over the bird family tree.
So the way to answer this question might be to first answer the question – were dromaeosaurs nocturnal? And this is one we may be able to answer. Unlike humans, dinosaurs have bones in their eye – yes, in their eye – called the sclerotic ring. (As their eyeballs are not spherical but more of squished spheres, these bones help the eye keep its shape instead of popping out into a sphere)
Nocturnal animals tend to have bigger eyes. This makes sense – a bigger eye means more light can get in, and when you’re always out at night you want to be able to see what you’re doing. By looking at sclerotic rings, some teams of researchers have concluded that Velociraptor was likely nocturnal. Are their methods sound? ….Maybe. One issue with sclerotic rings is that they’re not one bone – they’re made up of a ton of individual bones called sclera.
This means that after death, as the carcass is rotting, the sclera can become disarticulated. It can be difficult to tell the life orientation of the bones, and therefore the size of the eyeball, beyond a certain extent.
The certain extent we do have in Velociraptor indicates it may have been nocturnal (and therefore may have had tapeta lucida). This makes sense – it lived in a desert, and the desert is coolest at night.
Okay. Can we extend this to other dromaeosaurs?
The dromaeosaur Microraptor is now well-known for having iridescent black plumage. Lots of modern animals (especially birds) are iridescent; none of these iridescent birds are nocturnal. Again, this makes sense. If you have shiny plumage, it’s probably so other members of your species can see it, and that’s easiest during the day. So we’ve got evidence of Microraptor being diurnal.
Does this mean it didn’t have a tapetum lucidum? Not necessarily. If it evolved from ancestors that had them, they could have been retained, and there are some largely diurnal animals (mostly mammals) today that have tapeta lucida. So this could depend on the lifestyle of the earliest dromaeosaurs. And…here we don’t have a ton of evidence. A lot of the animals around the base of dromaeosauria have display structures that could indicate they were largely diurnal, but it’s not so cut and dry. At the moment we can’t really say if nocturnality was present in early dromaeosaurs, or even in other late dromaeosaurs. At most, we can’t say that they didn’t have them, and in at least some dromaeosaurs they might be justified by some evidence.
I’m here just minding my own business doing homework and he just starts biting me!
While you are worrying about whether beta readers will steal your ideas, there is a more genuine threat on the horizon.
When offered a publishing contract, please do all your research before you sign. There are a number of fakes and scammers out there, as well as good-intentioned amateurs that don’t know how to get your work to a wide audience. I won’t tell the heartbreaking stories here – there are too many.
Being published badly is worse than being never published.
It can destroy your career and your dreams.
The quick check is to google the publishing house name + scam or warning.
But, to be sure, check with these places first. They aren’t infallible (nothing is) but they can help you protect yourself. They are written and maintained by expereinced writers, editors, publishers and legal folks.
This is really important, so if you are a writer or have writer friends, or you are a writing blog, please reblog it.
Just to let you know, PublishAmerica changed their name to America Star Books.
HEAD’S UP, WRITER TYPES: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT PSA!
Also applies to many so-called freelance sites that are just content mills, and may not pay unless your work is used, even if the contract seems designed otherwise.
Listen, reading these is like legit reading horror stories. When it comes to publishing your writing, always, always, ALWAYS do your research. Not only will it help you avoid scams, but it will also be likely to help you land a much better fit for an agent/publisher/whatever. Knowing more is never going to hurt.
Omg!!! Thanks for the warning! Writers— reblog!
I’ve heard stories like this that are scarier than horror stories. This is an all time worst nightmare for a writer. Everyone reblog and make sure you keep your work safe!
Reblogging again for the links. Also check pred-ed.com and the Absolute Write forum. Then google Publisher’s name + scam and see what comes up. Do NOT use the BBB ratings, they are wholly unsuitable for rating publishers and regularly give A ratings to well-known publishing scams. You can also read my own post on publishing scams, have a link on the left of my blog ( can’t link here, I’m on mobile, sorry).
Equally important to know is that you can SELF-PUBLISH through a number of platforms these days. @ean-amhran and I used Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to publish both of our books. No editors, no contracts, no finagling with publishers who want to change your materials. Just direct-to-market material.
(Granted, it means you’ve got to do a LOT more work yourself with editing and formatting and cover art, but it’s worth it to miss the headache of trying to bargain with publishing houses or avoid scams.)
Be vigilant, fellow writers!
If you choose to self publish then HAVE A PLAN and think things through.
And hire an editor. Please, for the love of all that is holy, hire an editor. It’s expensive, but you will get a better book out, a better reputation…
If you’re going to publish electronically, make sure you also get someone who can LAY AN EBOOK OUT PROPERLY.
I have spent money on Kindle books, many of them reprints of older works, whose formatting is so messed up as to render them unreadable.
I actually recommend using the Smashwords Style Guide even if you don’t use Smashwords.
It lays out how to neatly format an e-book in a wonderful step by step format, and you can get it free from Smashwords. Just leave off the couple of things that are (very obviously) Smashwords specific.
If you can’t stand dealing with the meticulous detail, then by all means hire somebody, but most people can learn to format an ebook correctly and once you’ve done it a couple of times it takes about an hour tops.
Because the redirects aren’t working for me, I’m going to assume others might have trouble with these links, so for those who need it the URL for the website to Writer Beware is:
These are not publishers’ guilds, notice; you sometimes see scammers trying to defend themselves against Writer Beware exposes by claiming that they’re “small press” or “indie” and Big Publishing is somehow out to get them – but all of those guilds are run by and for writers, to help support them and represent them in the field. It is the closest writers have to having unions, and there’s no direct competition between them (you could literally be an in any of those guilds are the same time as each other, in addition to others, and I believe a number of authors are).
Writer Beware is a wonderful resource, and I highly recommend it. It’s both a good general guide to the scams people run/red flags to watch out for (such as giving up your copyright entirely as opposed to specific rights, or being charged to publish something or have it edited, when they’re trying to act like they’re a “normal” publisher), and a frequently-updated list of the latest specific known scammers, both in “fake agents” and fake/scammy publishers categories. (The company formerly known as Publish America is one of the most famous and egregious cases, but by far not the only one)
Additionally, for SF and fantasy writers, the SFWA’s own list of qualifying markets that one can be published in as a prerequisite to be able to get into their guild (remember, it IS a profession-based guild), is a great guide to normal markets for those genres that have standard contracts that aren’t abusive or scammy, and their guidelines include some of the industry-standard minimums for “per word” etc rates, so even if some new magazine market isn’t on their list, you can tell if it’s suspiciously far outside the usual per-word or whatnot standards. (It’s likely the guidelines for Mystery Writers of America etc also would be useful in that vein)
Even if you’re unpublished or don’t want to join their guild, they’re a wonderful group and resource, and I highly recommend their site and Writer Beware in particular!
The other sites mentioned above, such as “Preditors and Editors” should be still valid if you Google them, and are often rec’d by Writer Beware, but Writer Beware is the one I’m most familiar with. 🙂
Also, you should never have to pay an agent or anyone a “reading fee”! DO NOT PAY PEOPLE TO READ YOUR WORK!!! Run away from so-called agents that charge a reading fee! They are considered unethical in their own industry!
Also related to agents: Should you go this route and seek one, DO NOT PAY ONE DIME TO THEM upfront! A real agent only gets paid when he sells your book to a publisher! The average cut is about 10-15% of the first sale profits, if I remember right, with cuts of film and other rights maybe being more, when sold. At most, writers should only be responsible for the costs of phone calls and postage.
Also one time he was supposed to write a violin and piano duet, and he wrote the violin part, but he didn’t really feel like writing the piano part, or was too lazy etc. When the concert came up (he played the piano while a fiend played the violin) he set up a blank piece of paper (so people would think he was reading music) and improvised. After the concert he wrote it down so it could be published
okay i’ve reblogged this before but can we just give a shoutout to the orchestra that had to sightread the overture to an audience at the premiere of an opera
Poor child has to suffer cause his dad is an asshole who didn’t let his baby mama have an abortion. This is why we need to talk more about reproductive justice
To all the guys who say abortion isn’t fair because, “what if the guy wants to keep the baby?” It’s just never good enough. You want to force women into carrying your child, then you want to force women to be part of that child’s life, even though they were very clear that they didn’t want a child.
It’s never enough. It starts with being forced to go through a pregnancy, then you’re forced to parent a child you never wanted because it’s not fair for the father to do all the work, pretty soon she’ll be a single mom because it turned out dad only liked the idea of a kid not the actual responsibility.
Skorpio's Art 