Distractions -- Nothing About The Bakken -- October 22, 2018

Distractions. LOL.

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Ford

First Ford. From CNBC. Ford starts US production of the Ranger pickup for the first time in years. Why is this noteworthy?

When I saw that, I replied to the read (not-ready-for prime-time):

It looks like Ford's strategy is to really, really capture the pick-up market. Laser-like focus on this segment of auto industry.

When I look around DFW and look at the business articles, it really looks like Nissan, Toyota, Honda are going to be the big 3 going forward, along with VW which I always forget. For being the biggest automobile company in the world, I certainly don't see much VW that excites me. But everywhere, here in the DFW area, the Nissan is incredible -- seems to have monster vehicles in every category: Altima, Rogue, and then all the huge monster pick-up trucks.

At this site: https://www.tfltruck.com/2018/01/2017-pickup-truck-usa-sales-war-summary-won/.

Large and mid-size.

In absolute numbers, Nissan a "no-show" compared to GM and Ford.

In large size: Nissan: 149% increase in sales year-over-year. 149% increase. -- We're seeing that in Texas.

I would have to look but I think Ford runs the risk of pricing themselves out of the market; Nissan bang for buck is compelling.

In mid-size, Ford did not make the top 5 (at that link) unless I missed it.

That may explain why getting back into Ranger (mid-size or small-size?).

So, is the Ranger small-size or mid-size.

Wow, I love connecting the dots. Ford must have looked at the same 2017 numbers and noted they -- the company noted for pickups -- did not even show up on the top five list for mid-size pickups.

The Ranger: midsize, according to the linked article. 

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Birds

The evolution of birds is very, very confusing to me. 

It's pretty much a given that modern birds evolved from therapods, dinosaurs.

But there were other flying chordata during the Mesozoic period that confuse the picture. Notworthy are the pterodactyls, which were flying reptiles, but not flying dinosaurs. They had their fifteen minutes of fame and died out.

It is the "Hesperornies" that confuse me. From wiki:

Hesperornis (meaning "western bird") is a genus of flightless aquatic birds that spanned the first half of the Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous period (83.5–78 mya).  

One of the lesser-known discoveries of the paleontologist O. C. Marsh in the late 19th century Bone Wars, it was an early find in the history of avian paleontology. Locations for Hesperornis fossils include the Late Cretaceous marine limestones from Kansas and the marine shales from Canada. Nine species are recognised, eight of which have been recovered from rocks in North America and one from Russia.  

Like many other Mesozoic birds such as Ichthyornis, Hesperornis had teeth as well as a beak, which were used to hold prey. In the hesperornithiform lineage they were of a different arrangement than in any other known bird (or in non-avian theropod dinosaurs), with the teeth sitting in a longitudinal groove rather than in individual sockets, in a notable case of convergent evolution with mosasaurs. 

The teeth of Hesperornis were present along nearly the entire lower jaw (dentary) and the back of the upper jaw (maxilla). The front portion of the upper jaw (premaxilla) and tip of the lower jaw (predentary) lacked teeth and were probably covered in a beak. Studies of the bone surface show that at least the tips of the jaws supported a hard, keratinous beak similar to that found in modern birds.