Episode 521: Kelsie Abrams from the Burke Museum. From digging up dinosaur bones to getting ready fossils, Kelsie Abrams is concerned with fossils from the sphere to the museum show. She additionally shares her distinctive perspective as a paleontologist with a background in archaeology.
Interview:
Kelsie Abrams, the paleontology fossil lab supervisor on the Burke Museum of Pure Historical past and Tradition in Seattle, Washington. Observe her on Instagram @pinup_paleontologist
Sponsors:
The dinosaur of the day: Uteodon
- Iguanodontian dinosaur that lived within the Late Jurassic in what’s now Utah, U.S. (Morrison Formation)
- Appeared much like Camptosaurus
- Had a rounded again, cumbersome physique, walked on two legs, had a protracted tail
- Had a protracted head and brief arms
- May stroll on all fours or two legs
- Had fused wrists
- Estimated to develop as much as 20 ft (6 m) lengthy and weigh as much as 880 lb (400 kg)
- Though one smaller estimate is it was solely a bit over 8 ft (2.5 m) lengthy
- Kind species is Uteodon aphanoecetes
- Holotype (CM 11337) is a partial skeleton
- Genus title means “Ute tooth” (named for indigenous folks of Utah and Colorado)
- Species title means “hidden in plain web site”
- Named in 2011 by Andrew McDonald
- Some debate over its classification
- Initially O.C. Marsh assigned the specimen to Camptosaurus medius in 1894, and Charles Gilmore confirmed in 1925
- A partial skeleton was present in 1923 at Dinosaur Nationwide Monument, which Gilmore briefly described in 1925 and referred to Camptosaurus medius
- In 1925, Gilmore wrote that the skeleton was in a big block of sandstone and the limb and hip bones had been “kind of disarranged”
- Gilmore additionally wrote: “In revising the genus in 1909, C. medius was retained as a sound species and an try was made to characterize it. Owing to the unprepared state of the better portion of the sort supplies, which had been studied at the moment, the outcomes obtained had been removed from passable”
- In 1980, Camptosaurus medius was synonymized with Camptosaurus dispar
- In 2008, Carpenter and Wilson totally described the skeleton Gilmore had described and designated it the holotype of Camptosaurus aphanoecetes, and so they referred all specimens of Camptosaurus present in Dinosaur Nationwide Monument to this species (they had been all discovered between 1909 and 1923)
- This included a braincase
- In 2011, MacDonald discovered sufficient variations to rename it Uteodon
- MacDonald referred all these fossils to Uteodon in 2011, based mostly on a novel characteristic in a braincase (a bit protruding additional within the again)
- Different fossils included a part of a proper leg and foot
- Different bones had been present in a block, as a mixture of bones from a pair Camarasaurus and an ornithopod. The braincase was in that blend, whereas the correct hindlimb was from a unique set of bones discovered
- In 2015 Carpenter and Lamanna argued that the braincase and the correct hindlimb weren’t from the identical particular person and located the braincase to truly be Dryosaurus (a Late Jurassic ornithopod)
- Based mostly on the remaining fossils (the hindlimb in addition to a partial skeleton and the specimens present in Dinosaur Nationwide Monument), discovered that Uteodon was the identical as Camptosaurus and Uteodon wasn’t legitimate (synonymized them)
- Mentioned that what made Uteodon distinctive, was really harm to the fossil
- Additionally argued that different options MacDonald mentioned had been distinctive to Uteodon had been lacking, or artifacts of various views of pictures
- But in addition mentioned there have been nonetheless some distinctive characters, so it went again to being the species Camptosaurus aphanoecetes
- Uteodon turned Camptosaurus aphanocetes once more
- Lived in an space with rivers and wetlands, and a salt lake
- Different dinosaurs that lived across the similar time and place embrace the sauropods Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, iguanodonts like Dryosaurus and Camptosaurus, Stegosaurus, and theropods like Allosaurus and Torvosaurus
- Different animals that lived across the similar time and place embrace frogs, snails, turtles, lizards, crocodylomorphs, pterosaurs, and early mammals
Enjoyable Truth:
Komodo dragons might assist clarify why there’s a weirdly low inhabitants of herbivorous dinosaurs within the fossil file.
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