Getting ready for the SVP conference

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting is coming up in a few weeks, and we'll have a Mastodons of Unusual Size poster presentation there. Work on our poster is underway, and I'm hoping to send it to the printers next week. Here's a draft of one of the graphs we're including on the poster:

 

This shows the length to width ratio for lower third molars. Each column (or color) represents a state. Since this is length/width, the higher the value, the narrower the tooth.

The blue symbols on the left are the California specimens, and the two pale blue points in the second column are Idaho. Notice how they are much higher than for any other state, indicating that their teeth are narrower.

There are some outliers in other states (CO, KY, MO, and MI) that are very narrow; don't let them fool you. Only 2% of the non-California specimens meet or exceed the average for California; in fact, only 6% are within one standard deviation of California's average. The widest California tooth (the only one below the 2.00 line) is still narrower than the average for the non-California specimens.