As if small Late Cretaceous (70 mya) Madagascar animals didn’t have enough to worry about when trying to get a drink of water from the local pond, what with Mahajangasuchus, a fearsome crocodile relative, Masiakasaurus, a toothy bipedal dinosaur with bizarre teeth jutting from the tips of its jaws, and Majungasaurus, the apex predator “T. rex” of its day, add the world’s deadliest frog to the list of potential creatures that might eat it.
Beelzebufo means “Devil toad,” so named because of its fearsome carnivorous capabilities and its overall similarities to certain toads of today. This Madagascar titan weighed over 7 lbs and exceeded 9” snout-to-vent (=SVL, the measurement used by frog researchers to discuss body length). The “top frog” on the island today, Mantidactylus guttulatus, is only 4” long, relatively slender, and weighs mere ounces.
Though formally named in 2008 by a multidisciplinary team of scientists (Evans et al. 2008), the first of its bones was discovered in 1993 by Dr. David Krause and his team of paleontologists. Its formal name is Beelzebufo ampinga, "Devil toad, shield," with Beel'zebul being a Greek term for a Devil and bufo meaning toad because it is thought to have resembled toads of today. Ampinga means shield, named for the "cranial hyperossification" (I love that term!), which is paleontologist-speak for the thick, massive bones on its head. It lived in the Maevarano Formation of Madagascar 70 million years ago.
The table below shows how Beelzebufo stacks up in the length (SVL), weight, and skull width game against the largest frogs alive today. Beelzebufo, at an estimated weight of 7 lbs, ties with the Goliath frog as the heaviest frog ever! These two giants leapfrog by 40%, the next heaviest extant frogs, the Marine Toad at a tad under 6 lbs and the African Bullfrog at 5 lbs.
Beelzebufo is related to the ceratophryines, aka the “horned frogs,” so named because some have large “horns” over their eyes. They are more affectionately known as Pac-Man frogs and are some of the most dangerous predators alive today. Why Pac-Man? They can open their toothy maws astoundingly wide and swallow creatures half their size, resembling the yellow ‘80s dot-eater in the process!
The Brazilian Horned Frog is the heaviest of the living “Pac-Men,” weighing 5 lbs. Despite its comparative svelteness, these Pac-Man frogs have giant heads with cranial hyperossification, allowing them to bite far above their weight class, as you will soon see.
Taxon |
SVL (in inches) |
Weight (lbs) |
Skull Width |
Years lived |
Goliath Frog -Conraua goliath |
13” |
7 lbs |
Est 4” |
|
African Bullfrog - Pyxicephalus adspersus |
9.6” |
5 lbs |
Est 4” |
16 |
Marine Toad - Rhinella marina |
9.4” |
5 lbs 13 oz |
Est 4” |
25 |
Beelzebufo ampinga UA 9629 |
9.2” |
7 lbs |
6” |
16+? |
Brazilian Horned Frog - Ceratophrys aurita |
6.7” |
5 lbs |
5” |
16 |
Beelzebufo has the most powerful bite of any frog that has ever lived. While most frogs have weak jaws and rely upon a long, sticky tongue to capture prey, the bones on Beelzebufo’s head are solid. This, plus a few other neat skeletal adaptations, provide a devilish bite!
Taxon |
Weight |
Bite Force (Newtons) |
---|---|---|
Beelzebufo |
7 lbs |
2,200 N |
Common Snapping Turtle |
163 lbs |
2,042 N |
Tiger |
392 lbs |
2,165 N |
Lion |
358 lbs |
2,024 N |
Crocodile |
60 lbs |
1,864 N |
Alligator |
53 lbs |
1,660 N |
Gray Wolf |
78 lbs |
774 N |
Coyote |
~24 lbs |
704 N (strain gauge) |
Spotted Hyaena |
~140 lbs |
4,500 N (strain gauge) |
Human |
~200 lbs |
587 N |
Even more terrifying? The Beelzebufo skull used in this study wasn’t fully grown! Fully adult Pac-Man frogs today have strongly fused skulls. Beelzebufo's wasn’t completely fused, meaning it was still growing! And the bigger the frog, the more powerful the bite.
The researchers used alligators and crocodiles with heads approximately the same width as Beelzebufo, which is why they weighed so little. So they sought out ~6” wide skulls to compare reptile bite strengths at similar head widths. The Common Snapping Turtle in the study also had a head ~6” wide. My takeaway from the study is that nature is an incredibly excellent engineer!
All that massive bite power was channeled into terrifying teeth! Though all Pac-Man frogs lack teeth in their lower jaws, they don’t miss them. Would you if you had ~150 teeth on the top of your mouth that look like this:
Those recurved, needle-sharp teeth slammed down with death-dealing force onto insects, fish, small vertebrates possibly including dinosaurs, and anything else that found themselves too near. Beelzebufo was likely a see-food predator - it saw food and ate. And everything was on the menu.
One of the animals that may have been somewhat immune was the armored (and oh-so-cute) Simosuchus, a small, herbivorous, heavily-armored crocodile cousin. Its armor might have withstood a bite (and broken more than a few teeth), but that’s about it. Anything else was lunch!
Remembering that Beelzebufo is a frog, one may be wondering, what about its tongue? Though we won’t be finding fossilized tongues anytime soon, we do have incredible videos of the tongues of modern Pac-Man frogs in action, thanks to work by Kleinteich and Gorb (2014). They videotaped the tongues in action, and their videos make it apparent these tongues fire out when the bottom jaw lowers. Check out the videos here!
One of the most astonishing aspects of the videos is how the tongue unfurls and grabs prey from its ventral surface. What I always thought of as the top of the tongue is actually the bottom, folded back upon itself, tucked away until needed. Watch the video a few times to see what I mean. It turns out that as the lower jaw opens, it helps to propel the tongue outward, and the tongue is folded upon itself for storage in the mouth, but that unfurling helps to add to its thwack factor when it hits prey. I always thought of frog tongues as precision weapons, with the tip of the tongue capturing the pesky fly. In Pac-Man frogs, those tongues act as heavy weaponry, aiding to stun and stick prey so its chompers can come down and finish the job.
Beelzebufo lived in an area with two seasons, one incredibly rainy, the other long, hot, and dry, just like Pac-Man frogs live in today. Frogs that live in areas with long periods of dryness tend to have short limbs, a spherical shape, and thick, dry skin to help prevent moisture loss. Pac-Man frogs have a neat trick to survive their harsh dry seasons; they dig burrows.
Pac-Man frogs use a special keratinized pad that sits atop the first metatarsal, which lets it dig a sizable hole to lay low in during the dry times. We don’t (yet) have evidence of this specialized toe on Beelzebufo, but I’ll bet it shows up (or something similar) in a future discovery.
Another clue to Beelzebufo’s burrowing lifestyle is the loss of its tympanic membrane, aka its eardrum. Burrowing frogs today tend not to have eardrums, as the need for hearing isn’t great when one spends so much time underground.
Though we don’t have all of Beezlebufo’s limbs, we have enough to suspect that they moved like Pac-Man frogs, which walk more than they hop, thanks to their heavy heads. They are ambush predators of the highest order, sitting patiently until the right moment to strike with that massive mouth, piercing prey with sharp teeth and giant tongues. You can google “Pac-Man frog eating” and find dozens of videos of people feeding their pet Pac-Man various creatures. I found the videos rather cruel and sad, but it does give one an idea of how incredibly voracious a massive Beelzebufo must have been.
If it moved like a Pac-Man frog, perhaps it engaged in pedal luring? Modern ceratophrynids have been observed wiggling their toes to attract prey! Check this video out here (watch for the moving toes towards the top of the screen). I do wonder if this might attract the wrong attention, say from an adult Masiakasaurus or teen-aged Majungasaurus.
Beelzebufo possesses the size, and bite strength, to qualify as the deadliest frog to have ever lived. Yes, there are frogs covered in bufotoxins (“frog toxin,” an actual term!) that can kill animals, and such chemical-weaponed frogs have likely existed, with various toxicity levels, for millions of years. However, these toxins accompany aposematic (warning coloration) skin and are for defensive purposes. Think about the cute but incredibly toxic poison arrow frogs. They are only deadly if they are harassed.
Beelzebufo has offensive capabilities unheard of among living frogs. Every bit as long and heavy as the largest frogs today, a biteforce that would make a tiger envious, a mouth size that gives Samantha Ramsdell pause, and a possible temperament that views any living critter, regardless of size, as food (pics below!) gets my vote as the most deadly frog.
Here are three examples of modern Pac-Man frogs biting above their weight class.
The sheer bravado of these frogs to attack animals that are twice as long and heavy as them is incredible. Remember that the Brazilian Horned Frog, Beelzebufo’s closest living relative, is 32% shorter, 40% lighter, and at least 20% smaller. They are veritable dwarves compared to Beelzebufo! Imagine how brazen it could be! If it ate small dinosaurs in the Cretaceous, today Beelzebufo would count baby tapirs, giant anteaters and armadillos, maned wolves, and even jaguars on the menu!
Purchase a cast of Beelzebufo from Fossil Crates and we'll donate a percentage of the sale to the Ankizy Fund, a charity that saves the lives of children in remote Madagascar villages near the fossil localities by providing life-saving preventative measures (like toothbrushes and mosquito nets) and life-changing educations by funding 4 schools in the region. Additionally, proceeds from a purchase will also go to the curation and collection of Madagascar fossils. One Beelzebufo purchase improves (and saves!) the lives of children, and fossils. Fossil Crates is proud to be part of helping Malagasy children thrive.
Báez and Perí 1990 Baurubatrachus pricei, nov. gen. et sp., un Anuro del Cretacico Superior de Minas Gerais, Brasil
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0274/6014/1133/files/baurbatrachus_holotype_baez.pdf?v=1679815006
Chavez et al. 2011 Two new records in the diet of Ceratophrys cornuta Linnaeus, 1758 (Anura: Ceratophrydae)
https://corbidi.org/Investigacion/Publicaciones/Chavez_EtAl_2011_Ceratophrys_cornuta.pdf
Christiansen and Wrote 2007 Bite Forces and Evolutionary Adaptations to Feeding Ecology in Carnivores
Duellman and Lizana, 1994 Biology of a Sit-and-Wait Predator, the Leptodactylid Frog Ceratophrys cornuta
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3892875
Evans et. al 2008 A giant frog with South American affinities from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2268566/
Evans et. al 2014 New Material of Beelzebufo, a Hyperossified Frog (Amphibia: Anura) from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905036/#pone.0087236.s002
Kleinteich and Gorb 2014 Tongue adhesion in the horned frog Ceratophrys sp.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5381498/
La Croix et. al 2011 Ontogeny of feeding performance and biomechanics in coyotes
https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2011.00847.x
Lappin et. al 2017 Bite force in the horned frog (Ceratophrys cranwelli) with implications for extinct giant frogs https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607344/#MOESM1
Paluh et. al 2020 Evolution of hyperossification expands skull diversity in frogs
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2000872117
In herpetology the term frog and toad has no phylogenetic value. In everyday use, toads are dry-skinned and bumpy, and frogs are smooth. But there are dry-skinned frogs (like the Pac-Man frogs). When most people think of toads, they think of bufonids, which are not too far away from the Ceratophryids.
https://cdn.shopify.com/videos/c/o/v/0a9000a6c92a4252afc809b18c4c2fc1.mp4
]]>I met Jorge in the mid-90s at an SVP meeting where we had an amicably animated conversation about sauropod caudal vertebral characteristics. It ended with, "Come to Argentina and take a look!" And I did.
I spent a month in Argentina in 1998, and a memorable chunk of that time was with Jorge in Neuquén, Argentina. He introduced me to Quilmes beer, maté, chimichurri, and the wonderful cuts of Argentine steak. I hung out with his wife and son and we rode around town in a cool Citroen with a neat raising and lowering suspension. We prospected for dinosaurs in Cretaceous rocks. What a bounty of riches with bone everywhere!
I spent every moment possible in the collections. The museum was small in comparison to the museums I had been working in. Small, yet mighty! For within were sauropods most wondrous. Rebbachisaurus tessonei (renamed Limaysaurus now, my notes have Rebbachisaurus boldly scrawled across them), Andesaurus delgadoi, a sauropod that to this day makes me puzzled and smile.
Andesaurus was cleverly "curated on display," the bones laid out in dirt on the floor, behind ropes. It looked like a dinosaur dig, and I certainly felt similar elations as I studied each of its hallowed caudal vertebrae.
The collection had non-dinosaur components with many fossil mammals, but what I remember most was a section of genetic anomalies, a two-headed cat and multi-legged calf, both preserved in jars, sticks with me to this day.
We chatted deep into each night about sauropods. What characters were homologous and how do we take the impact of variation into account while scoring characters? He spoke eloquently of the unending dinosaurs in his future and how Argentina was the "next big thing" on the paleontology scene.
Speaking of "big things," when I told Jorge I was going to look at Giganotosaurus he chuckled and said, "I've got something to show you when you return." Upon my return Jorge sits me down in his lab and says, "You saw it? You heard how big it is? Mine's bigger!", puts his hand up for me to wait, and leaves the room. He returns holding a gigantic dentary in a most, ahem, amusing fashion and places it with great flourish on the table in front of me. Sure enough, it *was* bigger (and ended up being the star of a paper he co-authored with Dr. Rodolfo Coria). Legend!
Argentina has created some of the finest paleontological collections over the last 30 years, surprising the world repeatedly with its incredible diversity and size. Unimagined taxa are seemingly an everyday find in Argentina, and Jorge was one of the titans that drove the science forward.
His indefatigable spirit and strength of will (and muscle!) created Proyecto Dino. From a discovery at the side of a lake to the destination-worthy venue it is today, Jorge's hands built it. But of course he had help, all titans do. I'm sure his willingness to freely share knowledge, as he had done with me, helped immensely with the Proyecto Dino endeavor. Dozens of fossil excavators, preparators, and academics trace a lineage to him. Paleontology was forever altered by Jorge's efforts.
I planned to see Jorge this year as we were working on some cool projects. It will be with a heavy heart when I visit Proyecto Dino, for I know I won't see him. But, through his determination and grit, I will get to see what he built. Jorge you are missed mi amigo!
BC 2/16/2023
]]>(If you are thinking about being a paleontologist, this blog captures the steps I took to track down information)
Mgiganteus1 didn't include a rationale as to why auto-redirect was the preferred solution. The Orthomerus page doesn't acknowledge "Protrachodon "whatsoever. Wikipedia is a wonderful resource for when a quick info hit is needed, but for academic research it can fall short. Individuals with access can make decisions without justification, change other's entries, and even have the power to revert changes made by someone who has done deep digging. I enjoy Wikipedia immensely but please remember to use it as a starting point for research, not as a "be all end all" source for answers. (Rant over :-).)
Knowing the limits of Wikipedia and preferring the primary literature, I thought I'd quickly "solve for X" by dusting off some old tomes, Ctrl-f a few 1800/1900s PDFs, and move on. Hilarity ensues...
Remembering the 1990s I then thought of my beloved Dinosaur Mailing List (DML), aka the dino listserv! For those of you who weren't around at the dawn of the internet, this was *the place* to be for paleontologists. The newest finds, hottest rumors, and sometimes vicious repartee transpired on a strangely Twitter-like listserv. It still exists by the way. (Props to Jura at reptilis.net for mirroring the archive and with instructions and how to sign up to the new one)
I found on the archive that George Olshevsky wrote the following in 1999 in response to a question from Mickey Mortimer about this taxon:
This is a synonym of Orthomerus. Nopcsa made up this name to give validity to his earlier family-level name Protrachodontidae, which had no type genus. Subsequently Abel (1919) and Huene (1929) reused Nopcsa's name in various contexts, but spelled it Protrachodontinae and Protrachodontinidae, respectively. None of these names has any scientific validity; they are historical curiosities.
I should have probably stopped here. It was 2 AM and I had work in but a few hours, but I was so curious about Olshevsky's sentence: "Nopcsa made up this name to give validity to his earlier family-level name Protrachodontidae, which had no type genus." When did he make up the name? Where does it first appear? Olshevsky didn't say, so off to the Nopcsa literature it was to be...
PDFs of Centuries-old Texts
I checked that old chestnut of Kuhn 1936 where I found Protrachodontinae, consisting of Orthomerus and Syngonosaurus, but no "Protrachodon." Huene 1929 and Abel 1919 both used, as George indicated, the term Protrachodonxxx but neither reference the genus "Protrachodon." Surely Nopcsa truly didn't create a subfamily without basing it off of a genus? That isn't permissible under the rules of zoological nomenclature. As an aside, cladistics allows one to do just this, maybe Nopcsa was ahead of the curve?
Werner (1919) mentioned that the classification of Trachodontidae into Trachodontinae and Saurolophinae is unsatisfactory. That it is more correct to place Orthomerus and Kritosaurus into the Protrachodontinae and Saurolophus, Hypacrosaurus, Corythosaurus, Trachodon, Hadrosaurus, and Claosaurus into the Trachodontinae. He cited Nopcsa 1918 for this reason. Naturally, off to Nopcsa 1918!
The salient part of Nopcsa 1918:
Google's translation: "In any case, recognize yourself, classification
of the Trachodontidae in Trachodontinae and Saurolophinae; it seems rather correct to put Orthomerus and Kritosaurus in a subfamily "Protrachodontidae"
and compare the Trachodontinae with the forms Saurolophus, Hypacrosaurus, Corythosaurus, Trachodon, Hadrosaurus, and Claosaurus.
Was this the earliest appearance of the Protrachodontidae? Where was the actual genus "Protrachodon"? Nopcsa knew the rules; you can't have a family or subfamily without a genus to be the bearer of the name. I needed to go deeper in time to see if I can find an earlier appearance.
Nopcsa 1915 lists what I believe is the first use of Protrachodontidae:
]]>
Young felt Chienkosaurus was related to Ceratosaurus based on the shape of the one complete tooth he found. As I researched this I wondered if Young had seen Ceratosaurus in person, or if he was only working from published literature which, at the time, consisted of precious little. There still isn't a lot of published Ceratosaurus images despite having great material, which is unfortunate as it is such a cool beast! Young only had the Ceratosaurus images below, and a few verbal descriptions, to work with.
Dong et al. (1983) suggested 3 of the 4 teeth (2, 9, and 10 in my figure above) belong to Hsisosuchus, a 10' long crocodylomorph that named in 1953, 11 years after Young named Chienkosaurus. Definitely 3 of the teeth certainly look different from the complete tooth, being wider at the base and more cylindrical. I wonder if Young believed the four teeth were different morphologically simply because he thought they belonged to different positions in the mouth?
Dong et al (1983). stated the remaining tooth isn't diagnostic past theropod, and, because the tooth comes from the same region and geologic layer, Guangyuan, as Szechuanosaurus, they compared V237 (1 in my Chienkosaurus image, the largest tooth) to the Wujiaba material from Zigong, aka Szechuanosaurus, and decided the tooth belonged to Szechuanosaurus, just from a different position in the mouth than the holotype teeth. As you'll read in the Szechuanosaurus description, this is a slippery slope and today both of these taxa are considered nomina dubia.
A left ulna, V193, loc. 47, comes in at 164mm long, 34 mm wide on the distal end, 43 mm on the proximal end. According to Young, "....it fits rather well with the ulna of Ceratosaurus nasicornis" which had been published with a length of 177 mm, 72 mm proximal end width, and 38 mm distal end width. Young writes, "I would prefer to refer this ulna to Chienkosaurus ceratosauroides". It is always scary, to me at least, to refer specimens to taxa based purely on size, we love to see morphological characters that link them together, which is tough when comparing an ulna from one locality with teeth from another. I'm sure today's researchers, if they think about this material at all, shrug and consider all of these teeth and fragmentary bones as representing a theropod, or theropods, of uncertain affinity. Happily, there are much better preserved theropods from this area, like Yangchuanosaurus and Monolophosaurus.
Considering what Young was working with, what would you do? I presume Young never saw the Ceratosaurus material in person, at least not at the time of the publication of Chienkosaurus, so he would have been working with the images above. He was in an area where dinosaurs had never been found before and, almost by definition, these would have been new to science, especially in the 1930s and 40s. There are a staggering number of dinosaurs named from a single bone, or from a smattering of teeth, even to this day. There are no official rules about when one can, or can't, name a new dinosaur. The true test is do researchers use your material in their studies. By naming Chienkosaurus Szechuanosaurus Young brought to the world's attention the fact dinosaurs were present in an area previously unknown.
I'll close out with a thought that has been percolating for awhile. I'm beginning to wonder if the Linnaean system is in need of a tweak. It is a fantastic system overall, and in general serves us well. However, in cases where there is clearly much better material known, perhaps it is time that we insert some level of common sense into the mix? I get the value of paying homage to priority, but when that introduces more complexity than good is that actually helpful? More to follow!
The rest of this article details the ugliness I dealt with when trying to figure out a simple question. The question? What genus is the fragmentary femur in the opening shot, and what genus (and specimen number) does this cast belong to? Both were called Szechuanosaurus and I thought it'd be easy to learn more about a dinosaur I wasn't familiar with. Tragedy ensues...
One of the most important (and frustrating I dare say) rules is that of priority. In the case where it is determined that two separate specimen numbers that had been assigned to two separate taxa, which name is the "official" one? We see this happen with beloved names like Eohippus (Marsh 1876) becoming Hyracotherium (Owen 1841) or Oreodon (Leidy 1851) becoming Merycoidodon (Leidy 1848), and even Brontosaurus (Marsh 1879) losing out to Apatosaurus (Marsh 1877). In each case it was later discovered that two separately named taxa were actually the same taxon, and the one that was named first becomes the official name, the other is relegated to junior synonym status never to be used again. The rule is the animal that was named first "the oldest", as defined by date of publication, receives priority and therefore "wins". However, what happens when two animals, such as Chienkosaurus and Szechuanosaurus, or Dystylosaurus and Supersaurus were named in the same paper (Young 1942 and Jensen 1985 respectively)? The names were published on the exact same date, so what is a researcher to do?
Dong et al. (1978) name Szechuanosaurus yandonensis in a faunal list describing taxa from the Upper Shaximiao Formation Wujiaba (Zigong) dinosaur beds but provide nary a description! Just the name, and not even with a specimen number! In the same paper they note a nearly complete Yangchuanosaurus shangyouensis skeleton as from the "...dark-red sandy mudstones in the middle-upper Shaximiao Formation of the Chongqing Group)", making it older than this new mystery species.
In 1992 Yangchuanosaurus hepingensis was named by Gao for a nearly complete skeleton with skull (ZDM 0024). However, this name lasted only two years as in 1994 Currie and Zhao moved it to Sinraptor hepingensis, citing a number of similarities with Sinraptor.
Carrano et al (2012) also point out that Szechuanosaurus as a name must be restricted to only the original teeth. However, one of their trees results in assigning ZDM 9011, the old S. zigongensis nee Szechuanoraptor, to a new genus! Yep, it is now known as Yangchuanosaurus zigongensis. Their study also lumps CV 00214, S. shangyouensis with CV 00215 (the holotype of Yangchuanosaurus, see below) to Yangchuanosaurus shangyouensis. For the sake of completeness, I'll note here they move a different species of Yangchuanosaurus, Y. magnus (CV 00216, also below) to Y. shangyouensis as well and yet another species, Y. hepingensis, to Sinraptor (agreeing with Currie and Zhao 1994).
Dong et al. (1983) create Yangchuanosaurus magnus (CV 00216) based on the following 4 differences from Y. shangyouensis (CV 00215): massive size difference, the absence of a small mandibular foramen, "...one of the maxillary depressions perforating the maxilla", and "...ilia and sacrum are readily distinguishable" on Y. magnus by virtue of "Four of the five sacral spines are fused with the anterior sacral centrum more robust than the other centra."
All of these characters are known to be variable in dinosaurs. Size is intuitive, a younger animal is smaller than an older one. In dinosaurs, the degree of sacral vertebral fusion is related to the age of the individual. The skull features listed are, at least in other theropods, known to be variable between individuals of the same size. If all four characters are variable then they can't be used to make them separate species, so they have to be the same species, and since Y. shangyouensis was named first (1978 vs 1983) it takes priority and becomes the name for both of them.
The did note that Y. magnus was the largest known Late Jurassic theropod from China at the time of their writing and, to my knowledge remains so, unless the fragmentary femur Camp found is larger, which I suspect it is. Still, Yangchuanosaurus is of large Allosaurus in size and nothing to be trifled with!
In 1923, theropod dinosaur backbones excavated from the Early Cretaceous of England were named Altispinax "with high spines" because, you guessed it, they had tall neural spines. Acrocanthosaurus "high spined lizard" was named in 1950 for its tall spines (yes, dorsals vs cervical but you try finding Acro dorsal illustrations :-)). The neural spines are 3x the height of the centra.
Contrast those with Allosaurus where the neural spine is 1.5x or so the height of the centra.
Yangchuanosaurus dorsals sit in an in-between spot, coming it at 2.5:1 ratio of centrum height to neural spine height. Thus the moniker "moderately high-spined" theropod.
These Asian theropods lived around 160 million years ago, 10 million years before Allosaurus, and their closest cousins are found in Europe. Yangchuanosaurus, Sinraptor, and even Metriacanthosaurus are all part of the Allosauroidea, a group of dinosaurs that are more derived than the "primitive" megalosauroids which show up around 170 million years ago.
My prediction is at some point in the next 100 years CV 00214, 00215, 00216 and ZDM 9011 will be better described, illustrated, heck even put in 3D scans, and our knowledge of them will change such that they will appear to be different species and, I'd wager, different genera. I'll leave you with this, what makes something a genus versus a species? The 2022 bird taxonomy update resulted in 82 new bird species being named: 5 brand new, 118 new via splits, and 41 lost via lumping. These changes from animals that we can see, hear, and DNA test! Dinosaur taxonomy is, at best, directionally correct, and at worse nowhere close to what really happened. But it is the quest that keeps us all going! :-)
Meet the red-legged seriema, Cariama cristata. This modern South American bird is the only surviving cousin to the famed "terror birds" like Phorushacos and Titanis, apex predators that roamed South America as recently as 2 million years ago. It is also the closest living bird, claw-wise, to Velociraptor!
Like "raptor" dinosaurs (paleontologists use the term deinonychosaurs), seriemas have a giant second toe claw. Though a tad more compressed laterally, and kept off the ground by means of a foot pad instead of hyper-extended toe bones, the end result is the same: a sickle-shaped, perpetually sharp "killing claw" just like Velociraptor.
Velociraptor is often portrayed as using their 2"+ claw to slash prey open. I don't believe that is actually how it used these claws though! I was part of a team, led by Brigham Young University paleontologist Taylor Oswald, that carefully studied how seriemas use their killing claws. We built upon the work of Dr. Denver Fowler and his team, who coined the cool term RPR (pronounced 'ripper'), the Raptor Prey Restraint model for how "raptor" dinosaurs used their "killing claws".
We observed these oversized claws were *not* used to slash open prey like in the movies. Instead it was used to pin prey to the ground, while the seriema's sharp-tipped beak punched a hole into its prey. The seriema would forcefully throw its head back, taking with it a chunk of flesh.
We believe Velociraptor and its cousins, with sharply clawed hands and a mouth full of vicious teeth, dispatched prey the same way. After running down a lizard, mammal, or small dinosaur, the Velociraptor would stomp it with its foot, the "killing claw" needling the victim. As the soon-to-be meal wriggled to get free, twisting in pain from the claw tip stuck in its back, the Velociraptor bit down then ripped back with great force, tearing a chunk of flesh free. All the while it was slicing its victim open with its sharp hand claws. The "killing claw" wasn't used to slash its victim open so much as a kind of knife with its hands and teeth acting as the fork.
Though they can fly, seriema hunt from the ground, relying on sharp senses and fleetness of foot to spot and run down food. The Mesozoic "raptors" did the same, long legs and sharp senses keeping watch for prey and long legs allowing them to run it down.
The "killing claws" of seriema and "raptor" dinosaurs are an example of convergent evolution. In fact, within birds (aka dinosaurs), Digit II repeated becomes enlarged. There is some kind of genetic predisposition for this particular claw to become modified in birds, think of the cassowary's stiletto and the carcharodontosaurid Meraxes fascinating Digit II.
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Saurophaganax maximus "King of the Lizard Eaters, Maximum", is legendary in size, yet how long and heavy was this massive Late Jurassic theropod dinosaur? Despite its epic size, very little has been published on this giant carnivore, I believe in part because what is known was heavily damaged while being collected and none of the bones were found articulated.
While watching a road crew at work a pair of cowboys discovered a bone graveyard in northwest Oklahoma near the town of Kenton, 2 miles from the New Mexico border and 10 miles from the Colorado border.
Most of the bones taken from the site in the 1930s belonged to a number of very large Apatosaurus. I've measured the sauropod material and one individual has to be one of, if not the, largest Apatosaurus specimen yet excavated. That is a story for another day though :-)!
The bones were "excavated" by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers from a place called Quarry 1 within Pit 1. I use excavate in quotations because all of the work was done by people who had zero experience in collecting or preparing fossils. They were given jobs by the Government during the Great Depression and this crew was assigned to take the bones out of the ground. They used gunpowder to blow 'em loose and heavy hammers and chisels to separate bone from rock. Unfortunately for paleontologists today, the matrix is of a very similar color to the bone, meaning unskilled hands carving away the surrounding rock were often removing the exterior of the bone, removing nearly all diagnostic characters to get to the spongy bone that they could recognize as bone. Langston (1989) does a fantastic job recounting the detailed history of this locality. Seeing what could have makes me sad.
Please be aware that this oft-cited photo of material in articulation was a complete fabrication! It was staged in 1941 for a Natural History Magazine story, where the name Saurophagus first appeared in print. The photo was actually taken 380 miles away from the fossil locality and was staged using the best, and largest, limb elements, which were placed into a pit dug in the side of a hill. Yikes!
The name Saurophagus proved to have already been used, on a lizard-eating bird no less, and thus had to be changed by the laws of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. In 1995 Chure chose Saurophaganax.
The only character Stovall used to differentiate the Oklahoma material from Allosaurus was size. Size is an awful character to use and thus later researchers often called the animal simply a giant Allosaurus. Chure (1995) noted many of the bones were upwards of 25% larger than the largest known Allosaurus. Paleontologists never like to use size for the following reason: how would we know if smaller bones found elsewhere were the same kind of animal as the giant version?
Chure, an Allosaurus expert, carefully studied the material and designated the holotype to be an anterior dorsal neural arch (OMNH 1123) because it nicely preserved a character found only on Saurophaganax, a parasagittal lamina (also called paraspinal lamina). He referred numerous additional bones to Saurophaganax but noted most of them are identical to Allosaurus, simply larger. Saurophaganax is the sister taxon to Allosaurus.
Chure (1995) provides 4 images (his Figure 2, E-H) of a giant right femur, specimen 01708 (labeled OMNH 1708 in Chure 2000). He lists the total length of the femur as 1,135 mm, a tibia (OMNH 01370) as 907 mm, and MT III, the third toe bone and longest in the foot, as 470 mm. Keep in mind these elements do not necessarily belong to the same individual as, based on the presence of 3 left metatarsal II bones, there are at least 3 large individuals from the locality. A 4th MT II indicates the presence of a 4th Saurophaganax are in the quarry if you are keeping score :-).
Chure (2000) referred a number of bones to Saurophaganax, I've selected a few of my favorite observations from that amazing tome.
Skull
Two skull bones (quadrate, postorbital) and 3 teeth are known. The skull bones are morphologically all but indistinguishable from Allosaurus. The teeth are too damaged to make any useful comparisons other than to say they are large and sharp.
Cervical Vertebrae
The first cervical vertebra, dubbed the atlas (OMNH 1135) by anatomists because it holds up the head, differs from Allosaurus in 3 very technical ways that I won't list here. Suffice to say we paleontologists love our morphology! It is also of note that an atlas of Torvosaurus is known.
Dorsal Vertebrae
2 dorsal vertebrae (OMNH 1906, 1450) have a large foramen that Allosaurus lacks. One must be cautious with pneumatic characters as these large holes could be due to the great size of the individual or simply variation.
Chevrons
The chevrons, bones that sit underneath and in between the caudal vertebrae, are differ greatly between Allosaurus and Saurophaganax. In Saurophaganax they look like those of Tyrannosaurus and many ornithomimids, being hatchet-shaped "meat cleavers" versus the "regular" chevrons of Allosaurus.
The similarity of the chevrons between tyrannosaurids and Saurophaganax is a result of convergent evolution, these animals were doing something similar with their tail, quite different from what Allosaurus was doing. I'd love to see a biomechanical study on them!
Tibia
The giant right tibia (OMNH 1370) shows some minor differences from Allosaurus. Another right tibia ("bone no. 4666") was once suggested as a holotype (Lucas and Hunt 1985). Yet again, other than size, it isn't distinguishable from Allosaurus tibiae. It isn't clear if the tibia of Lucas and Hunt (1985) is the same tibia as OMNH 1370. I believe it is as Chure (2000) only lists 2 tibiae, a left (OMNH 2149, distal end only) and the aforementioned OMNH 1370.
Metatarsals
The longest metatarsal in the foot is MT III, of which 3 are known from the locality (two left, OMNH 1191 [figured in Chure (1995)], OMNH 1192) and the right (OMNH 1924), all of which have ends that have been carved horrifically.
Hand Claws
The giant claw (left digit I, OMNH 780) is massive but otherwise looks like Allosaurus, just on massive growth hormones :-). It certainly makes the huge Torvosaurus hand claw look small, something I didn't think was possible!
Keep in mind these claws would have had keratinous sheaths on them, extending them possibly an additional 30% in length!
Femur
The famed femur is what y'all are here to read so here you go:
The large(st?) Allosaurus is AMNH 680, which Chure (2000) gives as being 1008 mm long for the right and 991 mm for the left. These femora are straight, as is the 1090 mm Acrocanthosaurus (Harris 1998), and Tyrannosaurus which clocks in at 1,300 mm (Osborn, 1906). Saurophaganax has a 1,135 mm long femur but, as you can see in the above illustration, it has a bow to it unlike all other large North American (and the world?) theropods. As I write this a cast of that giant Saurophaganax femur is resting against me. It looks so tiny when I contrast it with the Apatosaurus femur on my other side...
While researching this article I ended up going down a number of rabbit holes. A series of rabbit holes is called a warren and below is some of the fun stuff I found at the bottom of the warren of giant theropod limbs.
Cast measurements
Researchers often take measurements from casts. I noticed Persons and Currie (2016) provided measurements of a cast of the Tyrannosaurus holotype CM 9380 (the changing from AMNH 973, which was what T. rex was originally numbered, is a fascinating story in its own right!) of 1,269 mm total length.
However, Osborn (1906) provided a length of 1,300 mm measured from the original bone. Persons and Currie list a circumference of 534 mm for the same cast. However, these measurements being made from a cast makes me suspect it is actually ~2% smaller. Does anyone have a circumference of the actual bone instead of a cast measurement? I have added a predicted number for what a least circumference measurement of the holotype T. rex will be (I love a good test!).
Mathew Wedel wrote an amazing post (here) about the differences he found when he compared his measurements of a cast of a Supersaurus (=Dystylosaurus) dorsal vertebra versus when he measured the actual bone. He notes that, on average, his cast numbers were 2% smaller than the actual bone numbers.
My personal experience mirrors that as I have compared cast versus actual bone numbers and also noticed a ~2% difference, with the cast measurements being smaller. Importantly, Wedel noted it depends on the dimension being measured, as some of his numbers were 3% smaller, while others were 1.6%.
I tested this on the Saurophaganax cast versus Chure's measurements of the actual bone. It isn't ideal as I haven't measured it myself (yet :-)) but I did find it fascinating that the cast measurements were 2% shorter and 1.6% less thick.
Table of Measurements of bones I found interesting
Genus | Specimen # | Total Height mm | Circumference |
Allosaurus | AMNH 680 | 1008* | 381* |
Acrocanthosaurus | SMU 74646 2B-1J | 1090 | 388 |
Tyrannosaurus | CM 9380 (AMNH 973) | 1,300 | 547** |
Tyrannosaurus CAST | CM 9380 (AMNH 973) | 1,269*** | 534*** |
Saurophaganax | OMNH 01708 | 1,135 | 440 |
Saurophaganax CAST | OMNH 01708 | 1110**** | 433**** |
*Total Height from Chure (1995). Circumference from Campione et al. (2014).
**Osborn (1906) listed the length at 1,300 mm while other authors use 1,269 which seems to have been based on a cast measured by Parsons and Currie (2016). I have uplifted their cast circumference by 2.04% here as Osborn did not provide a circumference on the original specimen.
***Taken from Persons et al. (2019) who's # of 1,269 for total length appears in Persons and Currie (2016) which was from a cast of CM 9380 (AMNH 973).
Saurophaganax measurements were taken from Chure (1995). Persons et al (2019) give different Saurophaganax measurements: 1,130 mm for total length and 435 mm for circumference. I do not know where these numbers came from, perhaps they measured the original specimen?
****Cast was 2.2% shorter and 1.6% thinner versus Chure (1995) measurements.
The Acrocanthosaurus measurements come from Harris (1998). Currie and Carpenter (2000) list NCSM 14345, as 1,277 mm total length and 425 mm circumference. I didn't include it in the above table because, well here is the specimen as it is preserved, you make the call!
Being incomplete, I left it out of my data table but I did want to mention it as the authors say "it was at least 110 cm long" and estimated it at 128 cm. I suspect that estimate has been used by many when modeling Acrocanthosaurus size, which is perfectly fine as long as folk are aware it isn't complete as preserved.
The two (reasonably known) largest Jurassic theropods are Torvosaurus and Saurophaganax. Comparing them directly isn't as straightforward as I would have liked as none of the material is articulated and both come from quarries with more than one individual, thus greatly hampering vertebral comparisons.
Unfortunately no femur is known for Torvosaurus and not enough cranial elements are known from Saurophaganax. A claw comparison (scroll up to see it) is interesting but may be more a reflection of phylogeny (allosaurid versus megalosaurid) than actual length or weight. It is awesome, though, to compare those claws side by side!
All measurements in the table below are in mm. Torvosaurus measurements come from Britt (1991) and Saurophaganax from Chure (1995). Measurements with an * were done by me via measuring the scale bar and then extrapolating while zoomed in at 200%+. Not ideal I know but that is all I had to work with.
Tibia
Tibia | Torvosaurus | Saurophaganax |
Length | 725 | 907 |
Circumference | 327 | ? |
Winner | Saurophaganax |
Advantage: Saurophaganax
Metatarsal III (longest toe bone in these animals)
MT III | Torvosaurus | Saurophaganax |
Length | 365 | 470 |
Circumference | 200 | ? |
Winner | Saurophaganax |
Advantage: Saurophaganax
Humerus
Humerus | Torvosaurus | Saurophaganax |
Length | 429 | 550* |
Circumference | 205 | ? |
Winner | Saurophaganax |
Advantage: Saurophaganax
Cervical Vertebrae
Atlas | Torvosaurus | Saurophaganax |
Length | 50 | 40* |
Height | 61 | 50* |
Winner | Torvosaurus |
Advantage: Torvosaurus
Dorsal vertebrae
Dorsal Vert | Torvosaurus | Saurophaganax |
Length | 135 | 100* |
Winner | Torvosaurus |
Advantage: Torvosaurus
Britt provides a number of Torvosaurus dorsal centra lengths, ranging from 112 to 135 mm. Only one dorsal centrum for Saurophaganax is provided, and via scale bar it is approximately 100 mm long. Its position in comparison to those of the Torvosaurus isn't clear and there doesn't seem to be any complete Saurophaganax centra for total width or height comparisons of the neural spine.
Caudal Vertebrae
Caudal Vert | Torvosaurus | Saurophaganax |
Length | 127 | 130* |
Width | 90 | 130* |
Height | 280 | 320* |
Winner | Saurophaganax |
Advantage: Saurophaganax
Keep in mind there is no way to know if we are exact positions so take these comparisons with a packet of salt.
???
What should we take away from the measurement comparison? In one sense, not much. We are working with disarticulated elements w/o direct comparisons, with measurements made by different researchers (meaning we can't know for certain they picked the same spots) and I used numbers estimated via scale bars (yikes!).
Where we can make direct comparisons, limb-to-limb, preserved Saurophaganax elements indicate it had longer limbs. What I don't have is a circumference comparison which would allow us to compare robustness, an indicator of weight.
I look to the vertebrae as a weight proxy and the neck and back bones of Torvosaurus in this comparison are larger, suggesting a heavier neck and back. However, my favorite part of these animals, their tails, is where Saurophaganax shines. *HOWEVER*, other than the atlas, we are in no way confidently comparing position to position, which in vertebrae means nearly everything.
I'll defer to engineering-minded skeletal specialists and artists to continue the fray. I went into this warren thinking Torvosaurus was an unassailable giant and conclude (for now) that not all is as bright lined as I thought going in, and that Saurophaganax truly is a giant that does not get the love, or press, that it should. Prehistoric Planet 2 needs to include these big beasts!
I'll leave you with this thought, these two animals may have actually faced off. I say this based solely on geography, their ranges may very well have overlapped! Imagine that, two titans vying for supremacy over a prolific hunting ground somewhere in southeastern Colorado 150 million years ago...
Bibliography
Britt, B.B. 1991. Theropods of the Dry Mesa Quarry (Morrison Formation, Late
Jurassic), Colorado, with emphasis on the osteology of Torvosaurus tanneri. Brigham Young University Geology Studies 37: 1-72.
Chure, D.J. 1995. A reassessment of the gigantic theropod Saurophagus maximus from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Oklahoma. USA. in: Sun, A.L. and Wang, Y.Q. (eds.) Sixth Symposium on Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems and Biotas, Short Papers. China Ocean Press, Beijing: 103-106.
Chure, D.J. 2000. A new species of Allosaurus from the Morrison Formation of Dinosaur National Monument (UT-CO) and a revision of the theropod family Allosauridae. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Columbia University, New York, 964
Currie P. J. & Carpenter K. 2000. - A new specimen of Acrocanthosaurus atokensis (Theropoda, Dinosauria) from the Lower Cretaceous Antlers Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Aptian) of Oklahoma, USA. Geodiversitas 22 (2) : 207-246.
Harris, J.D. 1998. A reanalysis of Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, its phylogenetic status, and paleobiogeographic implications, based on a new specimen from Texas. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Bulletin 13: 75 pp.
Lucas, S.G. and Hunt, A.P. 1985. Dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation in New Mexico. New Mexico Journal of Science 25(1): 1-12.
Osborn, H.F. 1906. Tyrannosaurus, Upper Cretaceous Carnivorous dinosaur (second communication). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History XXII: 281-296 + plate XXXIX.
, . 2016. An approach to scoring cursorial limb proportions in carnivorous dinosaurs and an attempt to account for allometry. Sci Rep 6:19828.
Persons, S. W.; Currie, P. J.; Erickson, G. M. (2020). "An Older and Exceptionally Large Adult Specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex". The Anatomical Record. 303 (4): 656–672.
Ray, E.G. 1941. Big for his day. Natural History 48(1):36-39.
]]>(a video version of this article can be watched below)
This giant carcharodontosaurid theropod dinosaur was named after a dragon in Game of Thrones, Meraxes. The species name simply means "giant" and large it is! Its skull is approximately 4' 2" long (127 cm) and it weighed over 9,000 lbs, or 4 1/2 tons in weight.
Discovered in 2012, it took 4 separate field seasons to excavate the material. It was found in mudstone covered by sandstone, suggesting the animal died alongside a quite stream or lake and then was buried by a high energy flash flood. The bones were collected alongside vertebrae of titanosaur and rebbachisaur sauropods. It lived in the Late Cretaceous of Neuquen province, Argentina, approximately 90 million years ago.
It lived in the Huincul Formation, the same formation that the carcharodontosaurid Taurovenator lives in, suggesting niche partitioning was happening among these large theropods, much like we see in the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation of the western United States where at one locality we have Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Marshosaurus, Stokesosaurus, and Torvosaurus all living side by side!
How big of a skull?
The skull is longer than that of Acrocanthosaurus by a few inches but is significantly smaller than the giant Giganotosaurus. Since "Giga"'s discovery the size of its head has been of great debate. Meraxes bones are nearly complete and undistorted and allowed Juan Canale and his team to determine a more accurate estimate of the partial cranial material of the Argentine behemoth. Their work indicates the skull was between 5'2" and 5' 6" long (158 - 169 cm)!
Interestingly, though they address the size of fragmentary Carcharodontosaurus and Spinosaurus specimens, suggesting the former reached 5'5" long and the latter's claims to be > 6' may not be true, they did not mention any of the giant Tyrannosaurus partial skulls, including possibly the longest of them all, "Scotty".
Meraxes lived in rocks younger than Giganotosaurus but older than Mapusaurus, all within a few million years of one another. I am always amazed that the carcharodontosaurids, these dominant and giant predators, die out long before the Very Bad Day. They were replaced by abelisaurs, super-short armed theropods and the enigmatic megaraptorids. Before they went extinct, however, the diversity of carcharodontosaurids is nothing short of amazing and I fully expect many new genera to be named in the coming years. However, why they went extinct is unknown, the last of their kind currently known was Shaochilong that lived in Asia around 80 million years ago.
How old?
The study conducted a histological analysis of the limb bones and determined Meraxes died somewhere between 39 and 53 years of age. This is nearly double that of Tyrannosaurus! It grew at a rapid rate for much longer than its distant Allosaurus cousins and reached maturity at a far later age than any other known theropod. This specimen, MMCh-PV 65, is currently the oldest known dinosaur yet aged.
Why the small arms?
Amazingly, it was found with a nearly complete forelimb, including most of the fingers and wrist bones. This was a first for the carcharodontosaurids and, to the surprise of everyone, the arm was very short, only .4 the ratio of the femur, similar to that of tyrannosaurids and abelisaurids, which not probably coincidentally have giant heads as well. The authors proposed a clever reason for why the arms didn't grow smaller over time, that being the large scapulocoracoids these three taxa possess. Such a large shoulder blade means lots of muscle was attaching to it and, since muscles have two heads, the other end had to attach to the humerus. As long as the shoulder was large the humerus would have to be a minimum size for all the musculature to attach to. Until something in their evolution selected for smaller shoulder blades, they posit there is a minimum arm size, which seems to be .4 the length of the femur. Though tiny, these small arms are all quite muscular, suggesting they were being used for something, either to better hold prey for a precise bite or having something to do with mating are the most likely reasons.
Meraxes demonstrated that these giant theropods did not have the wickedly massive claws of the Jurassic giants such as Torvosaurus, Saurophaganax, or even their distant cousin Allosaurus. Surprisingly to me Meraxes has one very long, and sharp, toe claw that even has a sharp ridge on the bottom of its surface. I suspect it was used like dromaeosaurids, for prey manipulation. It would stomp on prey, possibly much smaller than itself, and while holding it underfoot it would use that massive mouth to bite and rip backwards, removing hundreds of pounds of flesh in one go. This, to me, makes more sense than treating sauropod dinosaurs as walking meat lockers. :-)
The skeleton had a surprisingly fused, and pneumatic, sacral and proximal caudal region. We see this in many sauropods as a way for a giant animal to have a modicum of lightening while still providing for attachment points of powerful muscles. I wonder if we'll see such proximal tail pneumatization in other large carcharodontosaurids that will be discovered in the future?
Skeleton of Meraxes from Canale et al. 2022
What an incredible find this animal was and I hope they are able to find not only additional specimens of Meraxes but also most of Taurovenator, for as of today it is known from a single skull bone.
Information from Canale et al. 2022
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Origins of the 3rd Tuesday of May and June 1st as Dinosaur Days
Dinosaurs are so cool they have TWO days set aside for their awesomeness, June 1st and the 3rd Tuesday of May, seemingly by decree of the public. I think I've figured out the origin of the 3rd Tuesday of May Dinosaur Day (aka International Dinosaur Day). What I haven't yet sleuthed is the origins of the June 1st day. Let's dive into what I was able to discover.
Third Tuesday in May International Dinosaur Day
The 3rd Tuesday of May was seemingly first celebrated in 2016 by what appears to be an elementary school teacher named Duane McDonal of Florida. I have found no "International Dinosaur Day" before 2015. No social media hashtags, no internet forum posts, nothing. However, the websites that talk about all the fun, not-government-official holidays share the same origin story, which actually has nothing to do with the origins of the day but rather simply reswizzle the words from an October 8th, 2015 post about the word dinosaur's origin on a Facebook page dubbed International Dinosaur Day.
Here is the oldest appearance I was able to find on it:
From the page, International Dinosaur Day on October 8th, 2015 (the day of the page's creation):
"Beginning on May 17th, 2016 the first International Dinosaur Day will be celebrated. Our goal is to encourage student interest in Science, all things Fossilized and certainly all things Dinosaur. Join in your own capacity and help promote this new celebration to help students all over the world develop a deeper interest in Dinosaurs and the peripheral fields of Scientific Endeavor."
On March 18th, 2016 the page posted:
"This date was selected by Teachers to encourage student interest in Dinosaurs and the peripheral fields of Science over the summer break. The 3rd Tuesday is after all the high stakes testing and before the summer break from school."
April 17th, 2017, from the aforementioned Facebook page:
June 1 Dinosaur Day
This one has me stumped. The earliest I can find of June 1st being a "Dinosaur Day" is at Joe Wos' Mazetoons.com site. I believe this is the beginnings of the June 1st date right here. I don't know if he intentionally chose June 1st to be "Dinosaur Day" or if he was simply launching his mazes and June 1st was the day that made sense to do so based on his schedule. Coincidentally (?), the first blog post he made was in October 25th, 2015, 17 days after "International Dinosaur Day" was proclaimed.
I wonder if individuals searching for International Dinosaur Day found his blog post and presumed that that was the official day? Or if a search engine marketeer optimizing website traffic noticed people searching for "dinosaur day," did their own searches, saw both dates, then wrote an article to lead to people clicking on their site? Some other reason?
Searching for hashtags on social media sites doesn't produce any kind of concerted use of #DinosaurDay before 2019. For instance, Instagram's first use of #dinosaurday#### on June 1st is 2018 has a #dinosaurday2018 on June 1st (a single post).
I'm open to any info should someone know its origins. For now I'm going with Joe Wos! And I have gained a great appreciation to the power of the people. :-)
If anyone knows where and why June 1 became another day of dinosaur celebration (not that anyone is complaining!) please let me know.
Thank you kindly!
BC
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Skorpiovenator was named in... 2008 and it is most definitely a real dinosaur. This incredible Late Cretaceous Argentine abelisaurid is known from a spectacularly preserved skeleton missing only parts of the tail and its arms. The name means "scorpion hunter," so named "...because of the abundance of living scorpions moving around the excavation". Yikes!
Abelisaurs are wildly successful Gondwanan theropods known from all over the southern hemisphere with new taxa being named every hear. Skorpiovenator lived alongside the theropods Mapusaurus, Taurovenator, Ilokelesia, Gualicho, Tralkasaurus, Aoniraptor, Ovroraptor, Huinculsaurus, the sauropods Argentinosaurus, Choconsaurus, Cathartesaura, and Limaysaurus, and unnamed iguanodonts.
Abelisaurids are famous for two amazing features, their bizarre arms and their crazy cool skulls. How much of the Skorpiovenator arm complex exists? The field photo and available cast do not show any evidence of a shoulder blade, nor any of the arm bones themselves. The descriptive text says, "...lacking the right forearm...", implying the left arm is present, however, the accompanying skeletal illustration shows only one bone drawn in the left arm, either the radius or the ulna. Character 88, "Forelimb zeugopodium composed by short and robust radius and ulna", is marked as a '1', meaning at least one of the forearm bones is present. However, the character reads "radius and ulna", implying both are present, which is not supported by the illustration. Character 90, "Distal end of radius/ulna...", is marked with a question mark, suggesting whatever forelimb bone(s) collected are either missing the distal half or were not prepared for the study. There is no other mention of the forelimb in the text. No subsequent papers have mentioned its arms either. The missing components of the tail were touched upon in the original description but for reasons unknown, nothing else was said about the shoulder or arms. Though I hope the left arm is complete and simply needs preparation I am of the opinion it doesn't exist other than a fragment of a forelimb bone (Tracy Ford's Paleofiles lists it as an ulna). One of the best abelisaurid forelimbs discovered thus far is that of Majungasaurus. It has a gigantic shoulder blade for such little hands. The four fingers, if one can call them that, consist of metacarpals (the wide, flat part of your hand), then a 1-2-1-1 phalanx count. This means it had only 1 "finger bone" (the first bone you can see at the base of your finger), then 2 bones on the next finger over, then the remaining fingers had only one finger bone each. It may not even have had claws! What the heck they were doing with stumps I have no idea. The entire arm was short, making T. rex arms seem kingly. Maybe they slap-fought for dominance? Were they somehow used for display to attract mates? Skorpiovenator's completeness led me to hope an arm was present but, alas, it seems not to be the case.
Skorpiovenator's skull doesn't have the horns of Carnotaurus, however it does have a very rough face, with lots of texture. It is possible the skull was covered in thick, extremely robust , bumpy scales. The scales may have even been like armor, they were that thick!
The skull photo in the original publication reminded me of the marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) I studied in the Galapagos. On numerous occasions, I observed them fight one another. They pushed their bumpy heads against one another, the long toes and toe claws grasping for purchase on the sand and rocks. I marveled at one battle where the smaller competitor, to me, won the match for it was able to push the larger one around using better technique (or perhaps just was lucky with the substrate). The larger male at one point was rolled over and took the opportunity to bite the smaller male. The head butting pushed the larger male's head repeatedly into rocks, resulting in a bloody lip. Yet, for reasons I know not, the fight simply stopped. Ah lizard culture :-)!
Perhaps Skorpiovenator used its skull in a similar fashion, slow-speed headbutting that relied upon its powerful legs (those tiny arms wouldn't be able to do anything!) and rigid neck region to push an opponent back or even knock it down where it could kick and bite if the loser didn't acquiesce.
Or, perhaps they used their heads to side-strike opponents like giraffes do today. The bumpy-textured skull was robustly built, keeping the brain safe, and the neck bones are quite rigid, giving it. Such bashing would be quite the sight to see!
Abelisaurid tails have some of the most beautiful caudal ribs one will ever see! In fact, the way they are built, it is quite likely the base of the tail was quite inflexible. This tracks with modifications in the dorsal and cervical vertebrae, suggesting the vertebral column was rod-like and fairly inflexible.
Pyroraptor, "fire thief", is a "raptor" (technically a dromaeosaurid) from the Late Cretaceous of France, ~72 million years old. The name "Pyro" was chosen because it was discovered in an area cleared by a forest fire. The "raptor" comes from possessing a killing claw like its more famous cousin Velociraptor.
The known (handful) of bones suggest Pyroraptor would have been around 5' long and less than 20 lbs. Using phylogenetic bracketing it is believed it would have had feathers. However, there is zero indication it was aquatic, had webbed toes, or swam after prey as it is portrayed in Jurassic World Dominion.
Controversy has surrounded our fiery friend since it was named in 2000. Researchers have wondered if the bones are unique enough to justify it as being named its own genus, if it is actually a Variraptor, a French raptor named 2 years earlier, and is it even a traditional "raptor"? Let's dive in and discuss.
The authors stated all of the bones found at the dig site belong to a single individual. They named a single bone, a complete "killing claw" from a left foot, as the holotype. A left toe bone, and bones from the right side of the body including a killing claw, smaller toe claw, and ulna, plus two teeth make up the paratype. Referred material include 5 toe bones, 2 hand bones, a right radius, a caudal vertebra, and a dorsal vertebra (not figured or described in their paper).
None of these bones were articulated. The site produced at least 4 other kinds of dinosaurs, 4 kinds of turtles, and an alligatoroid. However, the bones appear to be the right size to belong to the same individual, there are no duplication of elements, and the bones do look like those of other "raptor" dinosaurs, suggesting they likely belong to the same individual animal.
Controversy 2 - Do these bones merit the naming of a new dinosaur?
For paleontologists to name a new dinosaur they need to identify a unique feature, or a suite of characters, that only appear on this type of dinosaur. The characters used to justify Pyroraptor's uniqueness are not unique as they appear in other "raptors". Though not ideal, if this is the first time a raptor from France was being named some paleontologists would be OK giving it a new name as it is quite probably a new kind of dinosaur. However...
Two years before Pyroraptor was named, the first French raptor, Variraptor ("Var thief") was named from rocks of a similar age. The holotype consists of a dorsal vertebra articulated with a sacrum possessing 5 sacral vertebrae. From a second locality a humerus, femur, sacral vertebra, and dorsal vertebra were referred to Variraptor. Nearly a decade later, an ilium that may belong to the holotype sacrum, an ulna, and teeth from the holotype location were described. Teeth, claws, another sacrum, and a femur from new localities were referred to Variraptor.
The authors of Pyroraptor argued the characters used to name Variraptor were not diagnostic and they considered the name invalid when naming Pyroraptor. With no overlapping material between the two animals it was impossible to compare them to one another. The referral of an ulna to Variraptor meant there was a bone that could be compared. However, though the ulnae did differ with Pyroraptor's having a depression on it, it isn't 100% certain the ulna actually belongs to Variraptor. In fact, because the Variraptor material comes from multiple localities it is possible we are looking at three French raptors. It should be noted that, because Variraptor was named first, should overlapping bones show they are the same animal, that animal would be called Variraptor.
It is also possible, if not probable, that neither of these specimens would have been named if found in a part of the world where raptors are common but, because these were among the first raptor bones found in France, they were named because raptors haven't been found in France before. This is similar to how the late 1800s paleontologists named nearly every bone found, regardless of how poor the material was, as it was something new from that area.
Controversy 3 - Is it even a "raptor"?
When people think of "raptors" they think of Velociraptor, Deinonychus, and Utahraptor, all which are dromaeosaurids (which take their name from Dromaeosaurus, the first "raptor" ever named), possessing large killing claws kept off of the ground so as to remain sharp. It was thought they evolved in North America and the radiated out around the world during the Cretaceous. However, finds in the last few decades have indicated things aren't so clear cut and that, in fact, there is an entire group of Velociraptor cousins that lived in South America, the unenlagiines. Named from the first of their kind discovered in 1997, Unenlagia ("bird half"), this group of Gondwanan raptors differ from North American dromaeosaurids in that their killing claws are smaller (proportionately), their foot grip strength is less, and their toe bones suggest they were faster. All of which indicate they hunted smaller prey than their Laurasian counterparts.
Watch an extended video here:
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What's an... Atrociraptor?
Names are important. They allow us to speak about dinosaurs in a general sense. Instead of saying, "CM11338 looks different from USNM 10865" one can say, "Camarasaurus looks different from Diplodocus". The use of these genus-level names automatically includes all other specimen numbers that have been assigned to those dinosaurs. We can certainly discuss the merits of certain specimen numbers belonging to certain a certain genus but, overall, a genus is defined by a specific suite of characteristics that no other genus possesses.
Genera with similar enough suites of characters are grouped into a Family level, which allows a way to talk about groups of animals much easier. A Family level of organization allows us from having to talk about all of the individual genera, "tiger, lion, leopard, and cats" to simply saying "Felidae" when we want to talk about cats at a higher level. The same can be done when we want to talk about "wolves, jackals, foxes, dogs, coyotes" we can simply say Canidae. Using a Family-level relationship term makes it easier to discuss evolutionary trends across groups of animals, for instance. When I say felid or canid a vision of cats and dogs comes to mind to all members of our discussion.
There is a group of scientists that study names, and there is an organization that maintains naming rules, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, ICZN for short. After all, lots of people may think a name is cool and use it for different kinds of animals. Why should a Komodo dragon not be called a Tyrannosaurus? After all it truly is the "Tyrant Lizard" of its range! Naming animals the same genus would cause all kinds of difficulty in using names, if Komodo dragons had been also called Tyrannosaurus, how would you know which animal a person is talking about? And it certainly would preclude the use of Tyrannosauridae in talking about Tyrannosaurus and its relatives, it would just be confusing!
Tyrannosaurus lends its name to a Family of carnivorous dinosaurs, the Tyrannosauridae, that were the apex predators in their respective days. From the "classic" meat-eaters like Albertosaurus, Daspletosaurus, Gorgosaurus, and Tarbosaurus to those you may not have heard of, Alioramus, Bistahieversor, Dynamoterror, Nanuqsaurus, Lythronax, Teratophoneus, and Zhuchengtyrannus, all of these animals were typically the heaviest, strongest, and most fearsome animals wherever they lived and they all shared characters that suggest they are all related to one another in the way canids are dogs and felids are cats. Since the 1970s, when dinosaur studies exploded, the Tyrannosauridae has been the de facto term used for the most awesome of theropod dinosaurs (ok, I'm biased here, I like Tyrannosaurus!). To scientists and dino-fans, Tyrannosauridae means something specific. But what about Deinodontidae? What dinosaurs come to mind when you see that term? Nothing, right? As it turns out, one can make an argument, using the ICZN rules, that Tyrannosauridae isn't the appropriate term we should use, but, instead, all tyrannosaurs as we know them today should be called members of the Deinodontidae! What??? Yep. Rules are rules.
To understand why this travesty of name changing could conceivably happen I encourage you to read a paper that came out in April of 2020 by Changyu Yun, with the wonderfully academic title of, "Case 3185 - Tyrannosauridae Osborn 1906 (Dinosauria Theropoda): proposed conservation by reversal of precedence with Deinodontidae Cope, 1866 and Dryptosauridae Marsh, 1890". Be warned, you will need a scorecard to follow the craziness of the early days of paleontology, the forefathers of paleo named new animals off of scrappy, sometimes non-diagnostic, material. Their early work (in their defense it was early, no one really knew what was going on, they did the best they could I like to believe!) has led to some interesting challenges in the 21st century of paleontology naming. Yun does a fantastic job of justifying why Tyrannosauridae should stay the name and not be changed to Deinodontidae.
Lest you think this is all pedantic, that there is no way the ICZN would go with Deinodontidae, remember they are a governing body and they follow the rules. The rules clearly state the first name takes precedence. Eohippus, the "Dawn Horse", (such a lovely name for one of the earliest horses), was changed to Hyracotherium because it was discovered that the material named Eohippus was the same as that of Hyracotherium and, since the latter was named first, Eohippus had to go. Even though the name means "hyrax beast" has nothing to with horses. Anatosaurus became Edmontosaurus. Brontosaurus became Apatosaurus (no, I don't think Brontosaurus should have been "resurrected"). Could the much-beloved, worldwide-embraced, term Tyrannosauridae actually be replaced? Technically, yes. That person would be universally derided as a villain (ok, maybe not THAT harsh) and forever linked with ruining a perfectly grand Family name, the Tyrant Lizard Kings (great band name!). Thankfully the amazing data assembled by Yun makes it not only difficult but, if he wins his case, it would be impossible. The wheels of nomenclatorial justice grind slowly...
Addendum - recently Tyrannosaurus rex was split into 3 species. It was published in a peer-reviewed journal and met all of the initial rules for being a legal name change. Whether it stands remains to be seen!
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Toe Claws on its hands! (Toe claw on bottom right side of image)
Utahraptor toe claws (note similarity to hand claws)
Known from multiple locations in southern Utah, Utahraptor material is entirely disarticulated, meaning none of its bones were found attached to each other. Instead it was found in what I lovingly refer to as a "bone salad", a scenario where over 20 big animals died and were on the surface for quite awhile and thus scavenged and subjected to rainstorms, wind, and trampling, only to be buried in a flash flood. It is relatively easy to identify individual bones belonging to nodosaurids versus iguanodontids versus sauropods versus theropods, but when working on entirely new animals it becomes more difficult to know which claws go to which sized individual, or in the case of Utahraptor, which claws went on the hands versus the foot!
When Utahraptor was named in 1993 the very first identifying character used was its giant hand claws. In 2001 it was learned that the large hand claws are actually toe claws, the hand claw had a much different morphology, very recurved, resembling a meat hook, rather than the slashing blades on display around the world. This conclusion was confirmed in 2007 by a study that provided instructions on how to differentiate the hand from toe claws. Using this knowledge a second hand claw of Utahraptor was identified!
Notice how recurved it is!
Not as recurved as the hand claw
What we don't know is which hand claw goes with which toe claws. We don't know how large the hand claws were as the two known hand claws are small and might go to a small individual. However, they could go to a larger individual, which would indicate it had much smaller hand claws than we believed it had. Until we find one articulated we won't know for sure. Our best hope is the megablock being worked on in Salt Lake City!
Utahraptor captured the world's imagination when it was named due to its massive size. Up until it was announced, the largest known dromaeosaurid was Deinonychus. An enterprising author visited Dr. Ostrom, the man that named Deinonychus, and saw how amazing it was, armed with its "killing claw", a massive second toe claw that was kept off the ground so as to be perpetually sharp. Dr. Ostrom also showed this author, Michael Crichton, another killing machine, the tiny (25 lbs or so) Velociraptor. Crichton took the name Velociraptor, made it even larger than Deinonychus, and wrote a best-selling book that became a movie released June 9, 1993. The public gushed over the effects, and the amazing "raptors", and thus was born a massively successful franchise that put dinosaurs front-and-center to an adoring world.
Enter Utahraptor! Paleontologists were quick to dismiss the fact the Velociraptors in the movie were larger than the largest at-the-time known dromaeosaurids (= raptors to the public), and were especially disappointed to see Velociraptor, one of the smallest of these animal types, to have been made so large. Then, June 18, 1993, only 9 days after the movie came out, Utahraptor was published, making the on-screen "raptors" small fries in comparison to this 20'+ long, 1,000 lb. + gigantic killing machine. When it was published it had the largest hand claws of any dinosaurs outside of the therizinosaurs, and the largest killing claw of any animal ever discovered!
We now know the hand claws on the mount, and the ones named to be a unique feature of Utahraptor, are actually toe claws, and the hand claws were smaller and, in many ways, even more terrifying as they have a meat hook/fish hook quality to them, being so recurved that they would have gripped and ripped flesh off in large, deep chunks. The bony core of these images were, in life, covered with a keratinous sheath making them upwards of 40% longer! And much, much sharper.
Bibliography
Original description of Utahraptor by Kirkland et al. (1993)
Paper showing how to tell the Utahraptor hand and foot claws apart by Phil Senter (2007)
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The title of largest Jurassic predator is up for grabs. Torvosaurus certainly makes a great case for being the heaviest, and longest, of the known Jurassic giant-killers!
Originally named in 1979 by Galton and Jensen from material excavated at the Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry in western Colorado, the animal was an overnight sensation for here was a giant predator found amongst the bones of the longest dinosaur ever discovered, Supersaurus.
Torvosaurus means "wild, savage, cruel lizard" and its massive teeth and huge claws certainly earn the moniker. The teeth are some of the largest around short of Tyrannosaurus itself, rooted they measure over 8" in length with some possibly reaching 11" long (T. rex rooted teeth top out at 12"). Torvosaurus' teeth are long, serrated daggers jam-packed into a megalosaurid mouth.
Torvosaurus, once described, started turning up all over the Morrison Formation, both in collections as well at new dig sites. Edmarka and Brontoraptor are two examples of giant theropod dinosaurs that were once thought to be new dinosaurs, however they both are actually specimens of Torvosaurus.
Torvosaurus had gigantic toe claws. One of the largest claws ever discovered in the Morrison Formation, taking a backseat only to the massive claws of Saurophaganax, was referred to Torvosaurus in the original description.
Other giants vying for the title include the aforementioned Saurophaganax, which has its own unique history, much of which was spent being identified as an Allosaurus. Very little is known of Saurophaganax, a few vertebrae and a large femur.
Speaking of Allosaurus, Cope named Epanterias as a sauropod because of the giant size of the vertebrae, however it turns out they belong to a giant-sized Allosaurus that approaches, if not surpasses, that of Torvosaurus.
Maddeningly, all of these animals are fragmentary, with bits of giant bone teasing us that there are monsters we know not existed. A new skeleton of Torvosaurus, dubbed 'Elvis', should bring much light in the next few years to this animal. The mount combines the Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry Torvosaurus material with that of Elvis, making a spectacular skeletal display!
2021 was another banner year for dinosaurs! Let's go through, month by month, and revisit some of my favorites!
Thank you kindly,
BC
China continued to provide amazing specimens, here one can read about a brooding (not in a sad or angry meaning :-)) oviraptorid atop a nest of eggs with embryos inside! Brooding is seen in modern birds, and this is yet more evidence of the ties of birds and dinosaurs.
Amazing use of CT scanning on a skull of the rebbachisaurid Limaysaurus shows the future of paleontology. The authors were able to CT scan a skull and learn lots of new information including that it had much larger olfactory capabilities than the titanosaurids they lived alongside.
March
Thanks to another amazing Mongolian find we learned even more about ankylosaurid armor from this new, as-yet-unnamed, specimen. The armor was found in situ, meaning in place, and it definitely shows how the side scutes were attached. Amazing!
April
May
September
October
The coelophysoid theropod Pendraig was named in October. This coelophysoid theropod from the Late Triassic had a small body and may have lived on an island.
November
December
This is but a fraction of the new dinosaurs that were named in 2021. Additionally, technology plays a growing role in the description of new dinosaurs by virtue of 3D scanning and imaging. I cannot wait for the discoveries in 2022! Stay tuned for our very own brachiosaurid work ;-)!
Spinosaurus is one of the largest predatory animals to ever live on land. At over 50’ long it is the longest known theropod (meat-eating) dinosaur. Possibly exceeding 7 tons it is one of the heaviest carnivorous dinosaurs as well, outweighed only by Tyrannosaurus rex.
Spinosaurus was named in 1915 by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer. The bones were discovered in Egypt but taken back to Germany for study and display. In World War II the museum holding the bones was destroyed. Thankfully, Ernst had detailed illustrations of the bones made while he studied them. These images allowed paleontologists to confirm excavations made since the 1990s were of Spinosaurus.
Spinosaurus is the first known semi-aquatic dinosaur. Its affinity for water wasn’t known until recently as Stromer reconstructed it as a regular meat-eating dinosaur walking around on 2 legs, simply with an interesting tall spine on its back.
Discoveries in the 2000s revealed it had heavier-than-average bones, short hind legs in relation to its body and other theropods, a long snout with teeth adapted to catching and holding slippery prey, and a tall tail that may have been used for propulsion like a crocodile.
The degree to which Spinosaurus spent time in the water has been hotly debated in the 2020s with one group suggesting it spent nearly all of its time in the water while another camp points out the huge drag the giant sail would cause, plus the fact the eyes and nostrils are positioned such it wouldn’t be able to breathe while stalking prey like a crocodile can and its body isn’t flexible like aquatic predators that are able to quickly move to capture fish. New discoveries will continue to enhance our understanding of this fantastic dinosaur!
Spinosaurus is named for the up to 6’ tall spines on its back. These spines are made up of the top parts of the dorsal vertebrae (back bone), resembling the sails of the non-dinosaur Dimetrodon and the iguanodontid dinosaur Ouranosaurus. No one knows what the sail was used for, or even if it was a sail, some have suggested it could have been a giant hump covered with fat and skin. It is possible it was used to help regulate its body temperature, turning towards the sun on cold mornings and away on warm days. It certainly had the space to be a fantastic display device, possibly even flashing with different colors or maybe even patterns! Many animals today use parts of their body as display structures to attract mates and threaten predators or potential rivals. An interesting suggestion is the sail worked to herd prey (primarily fish) into a smaller area for easier capture, or possibly as a shade that would cause prey (mostly fish) to swim closer to the giant dinosaur, allowing it to more easily ambush its victims.
Spinosaurus had three fingers that ended in claws, the thumb claw being the largest. Its long fingers and powerful arms suggest it used its claws in prey acquisition. Possibly the long, slightly recurved claws were used to slash at aquatic animals like fish.
Fossil Crates sells a 1/7th Scaled Skull of Spinosaurus. Click here to order.
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Looking for a statement piece? Something that will brighten an entire room? Look no more! Fossil Crates offers full-sized skull casts of prehistoric creatures!
Daspletosaurus, a cousin of Tyrannosaurus, is one of our largest offering at over 3' long.
Dromaeosaurus, one of the fiercest "raptor" dinosaurs.
Xiphactinus, the "Bull Dog Fish," is as impressive of a skull as you will find.
Check them all out here.
How about a Uniquely Personal Paleontology Experience?
Ever wanted to speak with a paleontologist one-on-one? Now you can! Speak with Fossil Crates paleontologist Dr. Brian Curtice via video conference. Learn more here.
We hope this guide was helpful. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at Brian@Fossilcrates.com
Thank you kindly!
BC
It would take 4 full seconds for the fastest man in the world to run from nose to tail. It is longer than 3 large school busses parked fender to fender. One animal would occupy nearly half a football field! Meet Supersaurus, the longest dinosaur yet discovered. Dr. BC's minimum numbers place it over 128' long, but he thinks it was more likely nearly 140' long. Though really, really long it isn't the heaviest dinosaur to ever live, that honor goes to Argentinosaurus. The heaviest animal that ever lived? That title belongs to the living Blue Whale. See our neat chart comparing them, as well as the largest mammal that ever lived, Paraceratherium, and a Tyrannosaurus.
Supersaurus vivianae, "Vivian's Super Lizard" was named by Jim Jensen in 1985. He found a shoulderblade over 8' long, an impossibly long length, especially considering the next closest shoulderblade of similar shape was "just" 4' long. The shoulderblade belonged to a kind of long-necked, long-tailed dinosaur known as a sauropod, and more specifically to one of the longest neck-and-tailed ones, the diplodocids.
Jim continued collecting and soon found another shoulderblade over 8' long. And a neck bone nearly 5' long, by far the longest neck bone of any animal ever discovered. Over the ensuing nearly 3 decades, paleontologists from Brigham Young University uncovered additional bones belonging to Supersaurus, including the tallest tail bones and, until the discovery of Argentinosaurus, the tallest back bone
Dr. BC recently studied newly prepared bones of Supersaurus at the Brigham Young University Museum of Paleontology, as well as two new specimens of Supersaurus. One you can see on display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis. Nicknamed 'Jimbo' it is an incredibly cool skeleton to see with the original fossils underneath it. The other, 'Goliath', is heading to the Grandview Museum of Natural History in China but, thanks to COVID, its shipping had been delayed and he was able to study it before it heads to its new home.
All three of these supergiant sauropod dinosaurs are extremely close to one another in size. The fact 3 dinosaurs of the same genus are so similar suggests this was the average size Supersaurus reached, hinting that much, much longer individuals are yet to be discovered!
Supersaurus has sometimes been thought of as a giant Barosaurus. Dr. BC suggested such a thing many years ago and others have done so in the recent past. However, with 3 partial skeletons showing the same characters, we now know how to spot a Supersaurus, as long as we have the tail!
How do we know it was so long? Thanks to the hard work over many years at the Brigham Young University Museum of Paleontology preparing hundreds of tons of dinosaur bones, they have uncovered a number of new neck and back bones. We now have nearly 50% of the presacral vertebrae, a huge number for sauropods. We have 80% of the sacral vertebrae as well. The tail consists of upwards of 80 individual bones, and though we don't have even 25% of the tail we do have important representative parts throughout the tail. Plus we have a complete, articulated tail of Apatosaurus, a close cousin of Supersaurus as well as good tail chunks of Barosaurus and Diplodocus. Dr. BC took the known specimens and determined how long each body segment would be, then extrapolated the lengths of Supersaurus based off of these known ratios using 3 different Supersaurus specimens. He also measured each vertebra and then, using existing animals, determined the percentage of size change between each position. The largest mystery in Supersaurus was where does the giant BYU 9024, the huge cervical vertebra, go? Is it the longest bone in the neck? Or should Dr. BC model it as if it was much farther forward as it certainly resembles that of a much smaller, further forward neck bone of Barosaurus. After modeling it both ways, and comparing the model to 'Jimbo', Dr. BC concluded the vertebra is farther back, making the animal "only" 128 - 138' long (39-42 meters). Part of its newfound length comes from understanding that its tail is similar to Apatosaurus yet the vertebrae are 20%+ longer!
The dark black is a back bone near the shoulders, the one in the middle is near the hips. The white bone is the tallest back bone I could find of Diplodocus. Notice how much tinier the centrum (the round part at the bottom) is.
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It would take the fastest sprinter in the world 4 full seconds to run the length of the newly crowned "World's Longest Dinosaur." I studied new material of Supersaurus, a sauropod (long-necked, long-tailed) dinosaur that lived around 150 million years ago in the Late Jurassic of Colorado and Wyoming. My conclusion, published in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meetings, is that it exceeded 128 feet (39 m) and likely was 137 feet (42m) from nose to tail, claiming the “world’s longest” title from a number of titanosaurs. To put the length into perspective, Supersaurus is longer than 4 fire trucks, or 3 large school buses, or even 2 semi-trailers. Were two Supersaurus to kiss, they'd cover nearly an entire football field! In addition to being the world's longest dinosaur, it is vastly longer than today's longest animal champ, the blue whale, which measured "only" 110' long.
Supersaurus holds many records in the animal kingdom. It has the longest shoulder blades (>8'), neck bone (>4.5'), neck (>50'), and tail (>60'). The base of the tail is also the deepest at over 6’ tall before muscles are added. It has one of the longest legs of any dinosaur at over 12'. Everything about this animal is otherworldly in proportions. Thanks to 39 years of work, we now have 3 specimens to study from 3 different locations. All demonstrate the same thing, that Supersaurus was a stunningly long animal.
Long animals have unique challenges. For instance, its brain wouldn't register a minor tail injury for up to 30 seconds, and even something drastic, such as the severing of the tip of its tail, would take over a full second for it to realize something bad had happened.
The tail of Supersaurus ended in the animal kingdom's longest whip at over 30' long. The whip portion of the tail was made up of bones about the length of a human's middle finger, wrapped tightly in muscle, sinew, and scales. With hip muscles the size of a car, the amount of power it could generate would have turned the tail into a devastating weapon, severely crippling anything approaching it from behind. The tip of the tail may even have created a sonic boom by breaking the speed of sound!
Dr. Ray Wilhite, a veterinary anatomist and sauropod expert at Auburn University, says, “Supersaurus lives up to its larger-than-life moniker in having a super complex history, super interesting morphology, and super-sized anatomy.” Dr. Wilhite has extensively studied the Supersaurus appendicular (non-vertebral) elements. He pointed out that previous illustrations of Supersaurus have had the shoulder blades misoriented. The Supersaurus illustration for this work takes his new studies into account.
Despite being the longest dinosaur, it was built comparatively lightly with numerous air sacs in its body, similar to birds. Such weight reduction suggests Supersaurus weighed much less than the super heavy titanosaurs like Argentinosaurus, tipping the scales somewhere between 60,000 lbs - 90,000 lbs or more. Supersaurus, however, weighed more than 5 adult male elephants or 9 average cars. Argentinosaurus, the heaviest animal to ever walk the land, came close to doubling Supersaurus in weight; however with its whiptail Supersaurus takes it in overall length.
To me, a full adult Supersaurus need only fear lightning. None of the potential predators posed a threat unless it was ambushed while drinking and it was grabbed by its head. Even then, the sheer power of its neck could have lifted a predator 20' off the ground! Speaking of drinking, the neck pose of this illustration is not meant to be representative of its resting position, rather I asked for a look as if it was going to get a drink of water. The nearly horizontal vertebral column is aesthetically pleasing to me and bucks the current trend of all sauropods being illustrated with their necks at strong angles from the horizon. I call it "classic lines capturing an action pose."
Longer specimens certainly existed. The 3 we have found are all very close in size to one another, which we can take to mean this is the *average* size adults attained. I wouldn't be surprised if we find individuals that exceed half-a-football field on their own.
Fossil Crates is working on a fantastic Supersaurus traveling exhibit for 2022 that will include casts of the longest bones ever discovered. Look for it at a museum near you!
Below are some fun images with additional Supersaurus information. Please don't hesitate to email Brian@FossilCrates.com if you'd like to discuss more about this marvelous dinosaur! Or join PaleoPortals for access to unique videos and twice a month live Zoom calls with actual paleontologists.
The Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry map from 1972. All giant diplodocid elements were found in the "Supersaurus pocket" of the quarry. There has been no large diplodocid element found anywhere else in the giant quarry, in fact, all of the remaining diplodocids are small, much smaller than at other quarries, despite having fully fused neurocentral sutures.
There is no duplication of large elements either. The scapulae, ischia, and pubes are all paired, one left and one right, each of the right size to be the mate of the other. A number of cervical vertebrae have been discovered that sit anterior to the largest cervical vertebra, BYU 9024. Dorsal vertebrae, such as the proximal dorsal #4 (and what was named as the holotype of Dystylosaurus) and distal (the holotype of Ultrasauros) dorsal vertebra, around #8, have no duplications either. All of the recently prepared dorsal vertebrae were found from the "Supersaurus pocket" and are of the correct size and morphology to go to the same individual. 'Goliath,' the newest Supersaurus discovered (heading to the Grandview Museum of Natural History), has preserved the ~#3 and 4 and ~#8 dorsal vertebrae. The proximal dorsals have bifurcated neural spines! Looking at Dystylosaurus in light of the new material shows how the Dystylosaurus vertebra also had a bifurcate spine. 'Goliath' also has a complete hindlimb, and we are now looking through the BYU collection to see if we can find hind limb elements as we have most of the sacral elements and vertebrae surrounding it. However, the flow of rivers carries appendicular elements differently than axial elements, it may be the limb material was carried away during preservation. Or by hungry theropods wanting 'sauropod wings' :-).
There was a suggestion that BYU 9024, the giant cervical vertebra, belongs to Barosaurus. I believe that BYU 9024 belongs with Supersaurus, based on parsimony at the very least. It was found in the Supersaurus pocket, it is diplodocid and is the right size to belong to the remaining large diplodocid elements. It does resemble Barosaurus but the mid-caudals of Barosaurus resemble those of Diplodocus. It isn't the first time diplodocid axial elements have looked like other diplodocids. Knowing now that the Dystylosaurus dorsal slightly has bifurcated spines (image below, dark area is mirror of the existing spine) based on a second specimen of Supersaurus ('Goliath') has brought the skeleton of this animal into a much clearer picture.
A taxonomic issue revolves around the holotype specimen. Jim Jensen made it BYU 12962, a right scapulocoracoid. I am working on developing diagnostic characters, but I can't hang my hat on any yet. Had he added other specimens to as the holotype, instead of referring them, it would be a much easier situation to address. The fact we have numerous elements that belong to a single supergiant sauropod individual with established diagnostic characters present in the caudal vertebrae but can't append them to the holotype is an interesting situation to be in. I am reminded of the Diplodocus holotype, YPM 1920, and how undiagnostic those are, yet they survived an ICZN challenge to have the holotype moved. Carpenter and McIntosh provided some characters, but it isn't diagnostic enough to keep as the name-bearer of the diplodocids. I suppose I could name a new taxon for the remaining elements, then either have that taxon subsumed under Supersaurus or have Supersaurus become a nomen dubium. For now, I will continue using Supersaurus as the name.
How do we know what is a Supersaurus? It is in the tail! This illustration shows some of the differences.
Dr. Wilhite says, "The subvertical scapula-coracoid doesn't make sense from an anatomical point of view. The glenoid cavity faces backwards when the scapula-coracoid is oriented near vertical. In that orientation, you either have the humerus angled far backwards or trapped in the cranial part of the glenoid cavity. Jacqueline Richard's Masters thesis found marks on the ribs of Camarasaurus that support a more horizontal scapular position. One of the big questions is how far could the scaps move during locomotion. I have always thought they were more like the scaps of birds than mammals, but that is something I need to figure out. Mammal scaps, except for those with large clavicles, are highly mobile and sit subvertical."
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Did some dinosaurs dine exclusively on ants? Myrmecophagy, literally "ant eating", exists in modern reptiles, birds, and mammals. My beloved pangolin (watch them walk bipedally here and here!), aardvark, aardwolf (insect-eating hyena relative!), armadillo, and eponymous anteater (aka Myrmecophaga, "ant eater") acquire the majority of their calories by way of crunch (ants/beetles) and/or squish (termites/larvae).
Eusocial (the scientific term for highly social organisms) insect eaters have reduced dentition, massive forearms, huge claws and cool, sticky tongues that turn termite mounds into Slurpees. Their claws enable them to dig through all but the hardest of earth and bark to munch upon colony-dwelling food sources, their sticky tongues being an efficient way to capture lots of morsels at once. Their teeth either disappear completely (think anteaters and echidnas) or become mostly undifferentiated needles.
The combination of powerful arms, odd hand claws, tubular snout, and peculiar teeth is present in a little-known group of theropod (meat-eating) dinosaurs called the alvarezsauroids.
What's an alvarezsauroid? A long-legged, short-armed, large clawed single finger with a tubeish snout theropod dinosaur. The first one ever discovered, Alvarezsaurus calvoi was named in 1991 from Late Cretaceous dinosaur fragments that resembled nothing else that had been discovered. The genus was named after historian Don Alvarez and the species after paleontologist Jorge Calvo. In the 1990s it was often interpreted to be an early flightless bird. As more specimens have been discovered in South America, Europe, and Asia we now they were widespread and grew smaller of time.
Their skeletons are fascinating with massive chest musculature, (comparatively) huge ulnae with giant olecranon processes, and a single, gigantic claw on a short arm (in comparison to their body size). This suite of features appears in fossorial animals (the scientific term for burrowers). However, burrowing animals tend not to possess tremendously long legs nor long snouts as neither of those features work well when living underground. Additionally, burrowing animals need to, well, burrow, and it is unlikely alvarezsauroids could actually use their arms to shovel dirt out of their way.
The alvarezsauroids short, stout arms do allow for lots of power, and having a single massive claw on a stout arm is an advantage for ripping open bark and earthy mounds. This rend-and-reap approach is seen today in myrmecophagous animals. My favorite is the facultatively bipedal pangolin. The pangolin bops about bipedally using its long tail as a counterbalance to its beefy forearms. The two-legged walking seems to allow it to cover more ground to hit more "fast food" restaurants in an evening. Myrmecophagous animals don't eat the entire colony, rather they rip open a section, it until the defense gets too harsh, then move on, thereby allowing the colony to replace its denizens.
Taking a closer look at alvarezsauroids, their teeth are tiny and they are lacking in the front of their tubey snouts. Modern tube-snouted animals have long tongues. Perhaps the alvarezsauroids did as well? Their jaws were clearly weak indicating they weren't devouring large chunks of flesh like their theropod cousins, nor were they cracking seeds with their jaws like other relatives. envision alvarezsauroids running about like the pangolin, covering large amounts of ground in a short amount of time to reach the next insect oasis.
To my knowledge termite mounds like what we pictured in this article have not been found (yet) in the Cretaceous. Evidence of their wood consumption is present in numerous petrified wood pieces around the world and a number of termites are known from mid-Cretaceous amber, so we know they were around. Ants appear to have been rare in the Cretaceous so perhaps the term termitophagous is more apropos?
As flowers began to dominate the world, insects, especially the eusocial ones, exploded in numbers and diversity across the Cretaceous. Alvarezsauroid physiology seems to have made them perfectly positioned to take advantage of this new food source. A recent paper suggests alvarezsauroids shrunk in size across the Cretaceous as they shifted to myrmecophagy. The majority of ant-eating animals today are of small body size, weighing less than 30 lbs. The oldest alvarezsauroids, at 6-9' long, were larger than their descendants, which became smaller over time, smaller than most of today's myrmecophagous animals.
Did dinosaurs eat ants? I believe there is a strong likelihood that the alvarezsauroids did take advantage of tiny termite protein packets, using their speed to avoid predation themselves as well as to efficiently navigate to the next colony.
Thank you kindly,
BC
PS- Thank you Dr. Nick Longrich for your many hours of SVP late-night conversation on myrmecophagous alvarezsauroids back in the 00s!
PPS- One might think, based upon its name, that the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) is the largest of these specialized feeders at nearly 100 lbs., however the Sloth Bear (Melursus ursinus), at over 400 lbs, dwarfs its fellow insect eaters!
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Herbivore
Carnivore
Ambassador Rapator is one of the most handsomely dressed yet mysterious and least known of our dinosaur representatives. Opalized, the lone bone definitely has a regal quality about it. Discovered at the famous Lightning Ridge locality, Rapator was named from a single, nearly 3" long, metacarpal I (hand bone). Or is it the first phalanx (finger)? Paleontologists debate not only the position of the bone but also the meaning of Rapator itself. Violator? Plunderer? Is it a typo? Rapator isn't saying and neither is its namer from 1932, the famous von Huene.
The bone is similar to Australovenator and, if it was a megaraptor (and hand bones predicted length), the animal could approach 30'! Since it was found in rocks 10 million years older than Australovenator it is unlikely to belong to the same genus.
Ambassador Rhoetosaurus is a giant among giants! Named after the titan Rhoetus, and for good measure, as Rhoetosaurus was a veritable Jurassic titan at 50’ long and 10 tons. Much of the vertebral column, bits and pieces of hindlimb, and a nearly complete hindfoot are known from this wondrous sauropod. The four claws on its hindfoot, and a host of interesting bony characteristics on the tibia and vertebrae, highlight how distinct, and unique, Rhoetosaurus is even amongst the sauropods.
Carnivore
Ambassador Imperobator has a name befitting a leader. The "Commanding or Powerful Warrior" is the etymology given to the name by its authors Ely and Case in but 2019. One of the youngest-named dinosaurs, it lived around 72 mya in the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica. Known only from a partial left foot and lower leg which included a claw, plus fragments of a right foot, a length of between 10-14' has been suggested, based on comparisons with dromaeosaurs, of which it was originally thought to be.
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Carnivore
Tyrannotitan (with 87% of the vote)
Ambassador Tyrannotitan, the “Tyrant Giant” as named by the famous paleontologist Fernando Novas and compatriots in 2005, is accustomed to authority, being the preeminent predator in the Late Cretaceous of Argentina 110 million years ago.
Living in a humid, flood-plain environment this 40’ predator feasted upon anything that captured its fancy, and tended towards a diet of sauropods in all likelihood. As an Ambassador, Tyrannotitan will be keeping its urges to consume in check while representing the South American carnivores with dignity and respect.
Tyrannotitan is known from 3 partial skeletons and was important in increasing the understanding of carcharodontosaurids around the world.
Herbivore
Amargasaurus (with 90% of the vote)
Ambassador Amargasaurus is a beloved dicraeosaurid sauropod that lived around 125 million years ago in Argentina. Named in 1991 by Leonardo Salgado and the father of modern paleontology in Argentina, Jose Bonaparte, it is known from a majority of the skeleton and named for the location it was discovered near, La Amarga, though it translates to "Bitter Lizard".
At 30' long and 3 tons, Ambassador Amargasaurus was positively dainty for a sauropod. Fossil Crates' own Dr. BC studied this animal in 1998 and was amazed by its extraordinarily long neural spines. How this double row of spines looked is a mystery. Were they individually covered in a keratinous sheath? Did they comprise two sails? One giant sail completely covered in skin? The tall spines are found in South America, Africa, and China over millions of years, indicating whatever they were they worked well!
Carnivore
Alioramus with 52% of the vote
Ambassador Alioramus won the closest race in all of the contests, eking out a victory of Shaochilong. The "other branch" tyrannosaurid was named in 1976 by Kurzanov from a partial skeleton excavated in the Late Cretaceous (~70 mya) of the Gobi Desert, Mongolia.
At 20' long and nearly a ton, this tyrannosaurid was one of the preeminent predators of its day. Capable of eating all but the largest of sauropods that it co-existed with.
Ambassador Alioramus has one of the flashiest skulls of any theropod, with many bumps, lumps, and protrusions.
Herbivore
Protoceratops with 55% of the vote
Ambassador Protoceratops narrowly defeated Sinankylosaurus for the privilege of representing the numerous herbivores of Asia. The "first horned face" was named in 1923 by the paleontologists Granger and Gregory from material collected in the Late Cretaceous (around 74 mya) of Mongolia.
Protoceratops are known from skeletons inside eggs through ancient individuals, leaving Ambassador Protoceratops with quite the legacy to uphold. One of his ancestors was found locked in a combat-to-the-death with a Velociraptor, a sand bank collapsed and killed both of them. Around 6' long and upwards of 300+ lbs, Protoceratops are suspected to have provided parental care to their young, something likely not lost upon one of the oldest known dinosaurs in our Ambassador group!
]]>This June, Fossil Crates has teamed up with the Arizona Museum of Natural History to present a totally unique Dinosaur Virtual Summer Camp experience, led by Dr. Brian Curtice.
Begin in a dino-filled museum built by Mixed Reality Rooms and end with an interactive fossil hunt, the summer camp is designed to maximize camp members' interactions with actual paleontologists.
Each day I will cover a different aspect of dinosaur behavior. We will discuss how to become a paleontologist and what the life of a paleontologist is like. We will even have special guests to talk about specific topics. On the last day we will hunt for fossils in the Flaming Cliffs of Mongolia!
A crate of fossil casts of the dinosaurs in the museum is available for purchase. I will be using the casts in the crate to demonstrate how paleontologists learn about the past.
The Virtual Museum requires a desktop or laptop, it does not work on mobile devices. A camera and microphone are required to enter the Virtual Museum, though those that don't want to be seen or heard can cover their camera and mute their microphone.
The discussions we will have are geared towards those 10 and older. I don't overly simplify the content as I respect the intelligence and interests of my fellow dinosaur enthusiasts. Younger participants are welcome, however, and we will work to make sure everyone has a great time. Families are welcome to visit the Virtual Museum together.
I am honored to host the summer camp and am excited to meet the next generation of paleontologists and dinosaur fans!
Thank you kindly!
BC
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International Dinosaur Day 2021 is upon us. What is it? Aside from a time for the world to come together for a day and celebrate all that is amazing about dinosaurs, it is also the date that Fossil Crates announces its Ambassadors. Two dinosaurs, one carnivore and one herbivore, are selected to represent their continents throughout the year. Let's take a moment to celebrate the 2020 Ambassadors for their service (in order of carnivore then herbivore)!
Taylor would love any feedback on the paper so feel free to leave comments or email me, Brian@FossilCrates.com, and I will get them directly to Taylor.
I truly believe you will enjoy this manuscript. I might be a bit biased, though, as Taylor features some of our seriema work :-)! Stay tuned as a manuscript is in process discussing seriema predation tactics.
Thank you kindly,
BC
]]>Dr. BC shares with us 3 takes on the latest paleontological finds, new looks on old specimens, and other thoughts from the depths of his paleo-obsessed brain!
Spinosaurus: Ambush shore predator or aquatic pursuit predator?
Spinosaurus continues to baffle! The latest debate? Was it an ambush shore predator (a la herons and storks) or an aquatic pursuit predator (like a crocodile or an otter)? I'm taking my traditional "both" answer on this one.
Spinosaurus was over 50' long with massive claws, a long snout, and a variety of swimming adaptations like pachyostotic bones and probably webbed feet.
The new paper suggests it sat patiently on the water's edge like a Great Blue Heron or a 50' long stork and picked off prey. With a strong, s-shaped neck and a long snout with nostrils near the eyes, it certainly could have picked off critters from the shore like storks and herons today.
In my opinion, if it saw a big fish it wanted to eat, it could easily have plunged into the water and hunted it down, swimming with its powerful tail and, if in shallow water, using its wide feet and long arms with scythe-like claws to hunt down and gobble up the giant coelacanth Mawsonia.
it certainly wasn't as active as an otter or a porpoise and possibly not even as well-adapted to aquatic predation as a crocodile, but with a burst of speed and huge reach with its snout and neck, it would have an excellent chance of picking off big, slow-moving fish.
Life rarely is "either/or" when it comes to big animals, but framing the discussion as such, requires both sides to dig deep into the details, which makes the science better as a whole.
Dr. BC, was it better at one scenario than the other? That wasn't the initial question, so I'll keep my thoughts silent for now:-)!
Sexy, Toothy Wolves with Hooves Taken Down by a Mouse Deer
Mesonychids out, Indohyus and the Raoellids in! I have believed mesonychids gave rise to whales seemingly forever. It is a story I have told many times, how the "wolves with hooves" gave rise to the whales, and we know this thanks to the shape of their teeth. However, while researching the origin of baleen (yep, even in my spare time, I'm reading about this stuff :-)) I discovered about 10 years ago there was a massive paradigm shift regarding where whales came from.
Molecular evidence indicates whales are closely related to hippos, but the fossils suggest mesonychids are their relatives. This kind of bone vs. gene conflict happens regularly (Canis dirus vs. Aenocyon dirus, anyone?), and it can't be helped. If anything, it will become more prevalent as the ability to extract genetic material from fossils improves.
As fate had it, a student was preparing a fossil and broke the skull's ear bone open (it happens) and the supervisor recognized the bone as one having characteristics of a whale. The bone belonged to Indohyus, an ultra-cute, cat-sized, deer-like animal of which they fortunately had a partial skeleton of, including the ankle. To be a whale, one needs to have a special kind of ear bone, and, as an added bonus, early whales (the ones with working legs) also have a unique ankle. Indohyus had both! This provided fossil corroboration of the genetic data as the Raoelleids were known to be semi-aquatic mammals distantly related to hippos. I was delighted to learn this new-to-me info but saddened to see whales not deriving from the only toothed, hoofed critters.
Megalodon: Cannibalism in the womb
Megalodon (Otodus megalodon) is the largest predatory shark at over 50' long! It had the most powerful bite of any predator that ever lived, strong enough to bite through the chest of a whale to reach its heart and lungs. Everything was massive about Megalodon, including its babies, which were born nearly 7' long and 500 lbs. They attained such a giant size by eating their siblings! Otodus megalodon is the stuff dreams (or nightmares) are made of.
The largest predatory shark ever discovered, its upper size limits have been debated for years. A paper by Dr. Shimada came out this month that looked at the "growth rings" of an extremely rare series of over 100 vertebrae excavated in the early 1900s in Belgium. Shark skeletons are made of cartilage, so they almost never preserve, but in this case, a Megalodon shark died and sank into a patch of water that seems to have been calcium-rich and turned the cartilage to bone.
The backbones let Dr. Shimada and his team count growth rings to determine how old the shark was when it died. In modern sharks, a concentric ring is added once a year. With over 100 vertebrae, they were able to determine the size of the shark, and because they knew the age of the shark by counting the growth rings, they were able to determine how fast it grew.
By looking at the size of the center of the vertebra (which is the first growth ring) they could tell how large the shark was when it was born (very cool!) and discovered it was 7' long and around 500 lbs. Some of today's sharks practice cannibalism in the womb, where siblings eat their siblings until there is only one (or a few if they are equally matched) left. This extra protein lets them be born at a large size, allowing them a greater chance to survive. Though it had long been suspected this was the case with Megalodon, this paper demonstrated they were born large, verifying this hypothesis.
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The Red-legged Seriema (Cariama cristata) is the closest living bird I can think of to a dromaeosaur foot-claw-wise. The Wildlife World Zoo(thanks Bree for letting us interact with Ellie the Seriema!!!) was super awesome and allowed me to study their seriemas.
Note the "killing claw" equivalent (oversimplifying I know) of a dromaeosaurid (="raptor" of Jurassic Park fame, like Velociraptor), its tip is quite sharp as it is held off of the ground.
Though it walks on all 3 toes the middle and outer claw tips are worn down as they touch the ground. The inner claw, however, is quite sharp as it rarely touched the ground in my observations.
The medial super sharp claw was also more strongly recurved. I watched it manipulate prey items and it used that "killing claw" to "steer" its prey, to hold it down. It preferentially used that claw to hold items that it then used its beak to bite and rip (its beak is hooked).
The keeper advised she hadn't seen it use its claw to kill but had seen it jump-kick and it seemed to be using the claw to slash.
I took hundreds of claw pics (they probably thought I was crazy :-)) and 20 minutes of video. It was super cool to be inside the enclosure!
Some of our friends in Brazil (thank you @direita_sigma) advised they keep these birds around to keep the poisonous snakes down. Genetics is an amazing thing as Ellie had never seen a snake before yet, lo and behold, when she saw one (even a plastic one such as this) she promptly jumped, hopped, then grabbed it and thwacked it hard to the ground multiple times (bottom blurry pic, I had no idea it was happening as I was shooting through the lens, mea culpa for the lack of sharpness!).
Ellie was extremely inquisitive, so much so that while I was taking her picture she opted to get very close to me and peck at the camera strap.
We included a few pics of her preparing to "strike" at keys (see above). She does the same with mice. You can see the big "killing claw" which she uses to smash down on top of the keys, holding it in place while she then grabbed it with her beak. I observed her move the plastic snake in the same fashion (no good pics though sadly). Bree (our host) advised Ellie seems to use the foot to hold/steer prey.
BYU's Taylor Oswald introduced me to the "ripper"/RPR/Raptor Prey Restraint model that seems to have originated with Fowler et al in 2011 from what I could discern from a brief search (Check out Figure 1). They propose dromaeosaurids would grasp prey and use the "killing claw" to grip it while bodyweight holds it in place, the long tail giving balance with arm-flapping to hold it on top of the prey so it can go to work with its teeth (they go into much more detail, great read btw!).
Seriemas phylogenetically appear to be related to "terror birds", the 10' phorusrhacids. Interestingly I haven't seen any of the giant, extinct skeletons with a "killing claw" like a seriema (but, not being a phorusrhacid student, they may very well exist).
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As reported by incredible shark expert Dr. Kenshu Shimada and his team of scientists, the largest predatory shark to ever live, Megalodon (technically Otodus megalodon), gave birth to a 6'+ long baby shark that grew so large by... eating its siblings! It grew 6"/year and lived up to 100 years old!
Megalodon is a shark that grew to 50' long and weighed nearly 40 tons. Its teeth (casts available for purchase here) exceed 6" in height, dwarfing the giant Great White Shark (Figures 1 and 2).
Fig 1. A tooth from a ~20' Great White Shark compared to a set of medium-sized Megalodon teeth.
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Fig 2. The Megalodon may be a tad inflated in size, but the comparison is still valid, showing that Megalodon is a whale-sized shark!
Dr. Shimada and team studied the vertebrae of the most incredible Megalodon fossil ever excavated. Specimen number IRSNB P 9893 (also know as IRSNB 3121) is a series of ~150 disarticulated, but associated, vertebrae of the giant shark that were found in Belgium in the 1860s. Shark skeletons are made of cartilage, which doesn't tend to fossilize. However, in extremely rare cases, a cartilaginous animal dies in a spot where the water chemistry ossifies (turns to bone) the cartilage, which is what happened here, much to the world's good fortune!
The largest vertebrae are 6" wide, absolutely gigantic for a shark. More important than their size, though, is their preservation, as some were so exquisitely preserved as to have their annual growth rings! The team used computerized scans to determine how old the shark was when it died, as well as determine how long it was when it was born and its length at death. How cool is that?
They concluded this specimen was 'only' 30' long and was 46 years old when it died. Stunningly, it was over 6' long when born! The team's analysis suggests Megalodon could live up to 100 years, and because it grew ~6" a year, it may have achieved a length of 50', making it larger than many whales alive today.
Some sharks today give live birth to a single, large baby that achieves its size by eating its siblings in the womb. This is known as oophagy (literally, 'egg eating'). You can find videos of it online (not for the squeamish). The growth rings indicate this individual was born over 2m long (over 6'). Being born so large means the shark has a great chance of surviving to reproductive age.
Fun Facts
-Suggestions that Megalodon exceeded 50' in length do not stand up to scientific rigor, nor do weights exceeding 40 tons.
-Megalodon has been ascribed to the genus Carcharocles, Procarcharodon, Carcharodon, Megaelachus, and Otodus. The consensus in early 2021 is it is Otodus, which means Fossil Crates needs to make some changes to its documents!
-Megalodon had regional endothermy which means it was 'warm-blooded' and could regulate its temperature in cold waters. 'Warm-bloodedness' means it was able to generate instant bursts of energy to allow it to take down prey anytime, anywhere.
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We hope this guide was helpful. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at Brian@Fossilcrates.com
Thank you kindly!
BC
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Thank you for your posting on International Dinosaur Day, which is tomorrow. The only uncorrected error in your posting is that the day is celebrated on the third Tuesday in May, not always on the same date. Here is the official synopsis: International Dinosaur Day is an annual event celebrated on the third Tuesday in May. It was started by teachers to generate interest in Dinosaurs and the related subjects of Math, Science, Reading and the related subjects as well. Art, creativity, speech, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Music and even Physical Education can be enhanced with Dinosaurs as the subject matter. Students on the Autism Spectrum are very often keenly aware of Dinosaurs. The third Tuesday in May was selected as it is after all the high stakes testing and just before all of the End of the School Year hoopla. Celebrating International Dinosaur Day prior to summer break will also spur an interest in visiting museums, libraries and natural areas as students seek to know more about these fascinating creatures and all extinct animals. These endeavors will in turn help to promote conservation of our remaining natural resources."
My conclusion is that, from the minds of a teacher and his colleagues in Florida (as best I can tell), a holiday has taken off! After all, who doesn't love to celebrate dinosaurs and why argue? :-)