Mesozoic dinosaurs
tetrapodzoology | August 25, 2008
One of the few things that everybody knows about dromaeosaurs - the sickle-clawed maniraptoran theropods best represented by Velociraptor from Mongolia and Deinonychus from Montana - is that they possessed a peculiar tail. Super-long zygapophyses and chevrons formed a bizarre, inter-twined array of body rods that ran the length of the tail and apparently assisted in its function as a dynamic stabiliser [image, © Greg Paul, shows Velociraptor versus two troodontids].
In describing this remarkable conformation in Deinonychus, Ostrom (1969) suggested that these bundles of bony rods would have…
tetrapodzoology | August 22, 2008
Well, what an interesting time I've had. Firstly, many thanks to everyone who left a comment - however silly or clueless - on the 'novel Mesozoic archosaur' I posted here a few weeks ago. As those in the know correctly stated, the cartoons depict the Brazilian Cretaceous theropod Irritator challengeri in its original guise as a gigantic flightless pterosaur. Now known without doubt to be a spinosaurine spinosaurid (Sues et al. 2002), Irritator was - astonishingly - first published (Martill et al. 1996) as a coelurosaur and as part of Tom Holtz's Bullatosauria (a since-disbanded…
tetrapodzoology | July 20, 2008
The idea that non-avian dinosaurs might have been able to climb trees is (I assume) not all that familiar to people outside the field of dinosaur research, but within the field of dinosaur research it has become an increasingly familiar idea within recent decades. Thanks to the discovery of such theropods as Microraptor and Epidendrosaurus, we do now have small forms exhibiting some features suggestive of a tree-climbing (or scansorial) way of life. Perhaps surprisingly however, the idea that dinosaurs might have climbed trees goes back a long way, and well pre-dates the dinosaur renaissance…
tetrapodzoology | July 15, 2008Better late than never, I've only recently gotten hold of Zhou et al.'s paper on the enantiornithine bird Pengornis houi, published online in Journal of Anatomy back in January but now available in hard-copy. I must say that I really dislike the new trend of publishing things in special, online versions prior to their 'proper' publication. Anyway... Pengornis (which is from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of Dapingfang, Liaoning, China) is particularly interesting for several reasons...
It's very well preserved, with one of the best-preserved skulls of any Mesozoic bird [skull…
tetrapodzoology | July 6, 2008
You blog readers are so fickle. Write several thousand words on a spectacular group of carnivorous mammals that have never previously been the subject of any sort of semi-popular review, and get bugger all attention. Write about 50 words and post two pictures, and - hey - the whole world goes nuts. Anyway, thanks to everyone who had a guess on the 'mystery' fossil. Some of you were pretty close to the mark, but evidently no-one who commented has checked Naish et al. (2007), the bird chapter of Martill et al.'s CUP volume The Crato Fossil Beds of Brazil (previously discussed in this article…
tetrapodzoology | June 6, 2008
If you're a blogger, then you choose when and how often you blog, what you blog about, and even whether you blog at all. There's no pressure, do what the hell you like. I've always been determined not to do stuff on Tet Zoo that I don't want to. No participation in pointless, boring memes for example. But if people send me books to review then, yikes, I suppose I better get reviewing them...
A recent-ish addition to the Tet Zoo library is Don Glut's Dinosaurs The Encyclopedia: Supplement 5, a 798-page synthesis of new stuff in the dinosaur literature, as of April 2007. Don published…
tetrapodzoology | May 21, 2008
Tone and I recently threw out* tons of old clothes, and among the many t-shirts I'd been hoarding was the one shown here: I had it made in 1993 for the Jurassic Park premiere, how sad is that. Consider it a protest directed at Spielberg's hideous feather-less dromaeosaurs (recall that, even in 1993, many of us were confident that dromaeosaurs should be depicted with feathers). The wording says 'Scaly protobirds no thanks! Feathering the theropods: a matter of principle' (kudos if you know the derivation, though it's horribly obvious). I never got beaten up for wearing the t-shirt in public,…
tetrapodzoology | May 13, 2008
I have a lot on at the moment, so getting this finished wasn't easy - but I managed it. Here we are with the rest of my recollections from 'Dinosaurs (and other extinct saurians) - A Historical Perspective', held at Burlington House (home of the Geological Society of London) on May 6th and 7th (part I here). This time round we look at the second day of talks, as well as the posters and whatever else I can think to write about...
So, the day kicked off with Phil Currie's talk on the history of dinosaur hunting in Asia. Yes, Phil Currie. After talking about the AMNH expeditions of the 1920s,…
tetrapodzoology | May 11, 2008
So, was it really 'the best conference of all time'? Hmm, maybe, but it was excellent and all went well (more or less). On May 6th and 7th I attended 'Dinosaurs (and other extinct saurians) - A Historical Perspective', a meeting featuring a packed schedule of talks and posters devoted to Mesozoic fossil reptiles and how they've been discovered and interpreted. Ably abetted by John Conway yet again, I made it to London on time for the field trip on the 5th to the Crystal Palace animals, and on the 8th and 9th went on a trip to the Isle of Wight (going both into the field and to Dinosaur Isle…
tetrapodzoology | April 28, 2008
At a vertebrate palaeontology workshop held in Maastricht in 1998, some colleagues and I sat in a bar, lamenting the fact that nobody cared about anatomy any more, and that funding bodies and academia in general were only interested in genetics. Given the poor to non-existent coverage that anatomy gets in many biology courses and textbooks, you might think that anatomy has had its day and that - as some molecular biologists told us in the 1980s and 90s - all the anatomical work worth doing had been published in the days of Owen and Huxley. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if you…
tetrapodzoology | April 14, 2008
Before I begin, let me say: yay Raeticodactylus. Would say more but haven't had time (plus I've had no internet access for the last few days). Last year Dave Martill and I published part 1 of our review of the British dinosaur fauna (Naish & Martill 2007). While several published lists provide overviews of Britain's dinosaur assemblage (Swinton 1934, Olshevsky 2000, Weishampel et al. 2004), it seemed like a good idea to produce a more extensive review, especially given the substantial taxonomic confusion that surrounds British dinosaurs, and the large amount of recent work that has…
tetrapodzoology | April 2, 2008
As I've mentioned previously, 'Dinosaurs - A Historical Perspective' happens on May 6th and 7th: pretty soon! This two-day conference will be held at the Geological Society's Burlington House in Piccadilly (London), and we now have all the required information available online: if you're thinking of attending it is mandatory that you check out the circular, look at the programme, and then deal with your booking. Read on for more details...
Events kick off on May 5th when we have a visit to Crystal Palace in Sydenham (trip costs £10). I've seen the Crystal Palace animals several times, but if…
tetrapodzoology | March 29, 2008
I've mentioned on and off lately that Tet Zoo the book is now go. The manuscript is complete, and right now (when not working on other things) I'm dealing with the editorial tidying-up. The book won't, I'm sorry to say, be anything technically new: it's simply a compilation of the better articles from Tet Zoo ver 1, arranged chronologically. And, because of word-count, it only incorporates articles going up to September 2006, so there's still tons of stuff that can be used for later books (should book 1 prove popular enough that others are worthwhile)...
Adapting Tet Zoo articles for a book…
tetrapodzoology | March 27, 2008
Continuing the theme of discussing 'things in the news', we arrive, finally, at dinosaurs. The previous 'late news' pieces looked at fossil anurans and pterosaurs, and assorted mammals. So what news has been announced recently-ish in the world of dinosaurs? Well, frankly, there are always so many newly announced dinosaurs that it's difficult to keep up. But...
... particularly cool is the recent description of the basal abelisaur Kryptops palaios and the carcharodontosaurid Eocarcharia dinops, both from the Aptian-Albian Elrhaz Formation of Niger (Sereno & Brusatte 2008) [in adjacent…
tetrapodzoology | March 24, 2008
Maybe it's because I write too much, but I am frequently surprised and sometimes a little freaked out at the strange coincidences that have so often cropped up during my time here at Tet Zoo. Long-time readers will recall the several occasions when we've looked at hypothetical intelligent dinosaurs: it started back in 2006 with my contention that ground hornbills (bucorvids) should be regarded as the dinosaurs most convergent with hominins (here). Humanoid dinosaurs like Dale Russell's hypothetical big-brained troodontid - the 'dinosauroid' - are (in my opinion) utterly unrealistic, relying…
tetrapodzoology | March 21, 2008
Dr David Hone is well known for many scientific achievements. For the description of the new rhynchosaur Fodonyx (Hone & Benton 2007a). For his papers on Cope's rule and macroevolutionary trends in archosaurs (Hone & Benton 2005, Hone et al. 2005). For his PhD work on the phylogenetic position of pterosaurs (Hone & Benton 2007b). For the organisation of the awesome Munich pterosaur meeting. And for the philanthropic wonder that is the Ask A Biologist site. But even such a noble creator can spawn a monster. Yes world, I give you the horror that is lol-sauropods, brain-child of…
tetrapodzoology | February 15, 2008
And so, here we are, at the end of it all. Ankylosaur week has come and gone, but oh what a week it was. As I said at the beginning, the whole aim was to save myself work and time by not producing anything new - and this worked, more or less. Did I clear the backlog? Did I hell, but at least I tried...
So which ankylosaur ends the series? Initially I had hoped to cover bizarre little Liaoningosaurus paradoxus but, I won't lie, my choice of taxa has, in part, been inspired by the presence of attractive images and, sad to say, for little Liaoningosaurus I've found squat other than the photo…
tetrapodzoology | February 15, 2008
Another day, another ankylosaur. This time: Silvisaurus condrayi. Known only from the Albian-Cenomanian Dakota Formation of Kansas and described by Theodore H. Eaton in 1960, Silvisaurus is a surprisingly well known, though enigmatic, nodosaurid. Because Eaton provided a life restoration in his paper (albeit it not a very good one - read on. It's shown here), Silvisaurus is one of the few nodosaurids which has been widely depicted in the popular literature. The production of a life restoration, while not regarded as integral to a scientific description, does mean that your animal will get…
tetrapodzoology | February 14, 2008
Welcome to day 5 of ankylosaur week. This time, we look at Panoplosaurus' sister-taxon Edmontonia. Edmontonia was a large (6-7 m long) Campanian-Maastrichtian nodosaurid that lived right across North America...
Two species are presently recognised. The type species, E. longiceps, named by Charles M. Sternberg in 1928 for a specimen from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, is today known from multiple units of both the USA and Alberta [adjacent image shows the Drumheller Edmontonia model].
The second species, E. rugosidens, was first described in 1930 by Charles Gilmore for a specimen…