Episode 311 is all about Rapetosaurus, a titanosaur from Madagascar that’s recognized from each juvenile and grownup specimens.
Please tell us what you consider our present by taking our survey https://bit.ly/ikdsurvey20
Large due to all our patrons! Your assist means a lot to us and retains us going! Should you’re a dinosaur fanatic, be a part of our rising neighborhood on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/iknowdino.
You’ll be able to hearken to our free podcast, with all our episodes, on Apple Podcasts at:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-know-dino/id960976813?mt=2
On this episode, we talk about:
Information:
- SVP included talks on T. rex chunk drive, Archaeopteryx molting, the various varieties of dinosaur claws, and way more supply
- The Royal Saskatchewan Museum is celebrating Dinovember with a lot of digital occasions this month supply
- The Australian Age of Dinosaurs has 13 life-sized bronze dinosaurs supply
- Victoria, the younger grownup T. rex, can be staying on the Arizona Science Heart till January 3 supply
- Robin Ruggiero has been working within the New Jersey woods since 2019 making dinosaurs from downed timber and different objects supply
The dinosaur of the day: Rapetosaurus
- Titanosaur sauropod that lived within the Cretaceous in what’s now Madagascar (Maevarano Formation, in Mahajanga basin)
- Quadrupedal, herbivorous
- Estimated to be 49 ft (15 m) lengthy
- Juvenile was about 26 ft (8 m) lengthy, grownup most likely about twice as lengthy
- One specimen discovered might be an grownup, and primarily based on its femur estimated to be 54 ft (16.5 m) lengthy and weigh 10.3 tonnes
- Comparatively gracile skeleton
- Skeleton is similar to brachiosaurids and different titanosaurs
- Had a protracted neck and enormous physique
- Forelimb is about 87% the size of the hind limb
- Had a slender tail
- Had lengthy vertebrae
- Juveniles didn’t actually have osteoderms but it surely had osteoderms as an grownup
- Cranium was like a diplodocid, lengthy and slender
- Grownup cranium is estimated to be 15.7 in (40 cm) lengthy
- Had nostrils on the prime of the cranium
- Had pencil-like enamel, might strip leaves
- Kind and solely species: Rapetosaurus krausei
- Discovered by a area crew from Stony Brook College and members from close by Universite d’Antananarivo. Crew chief David Krause had been digging on the website in Madagascar since 1993
- Described and named in 2001 by Kristina Curry Rogers and Catherine A. Forster
- Genus identify comes from Rapeto, a mischievous big of Malagasy folklore
- Species identify is in honor of David Krause
- Holotype is an grownup cranium, and referred specimens embrace a juvenile skeleton and extra cranium parts
- Juvenile skeleton discovered immediately related to a nicely preserved partial cranium
- Some of the full recognized titanosaurs
- Helped present what a titanosaur cranium seemed like and helps present that Nemegtosaurus and Quaesitosaurus are titanosaurs (solely recognized from skulls)
- Helped make clear sauropod classification, and helped present what different titanosaurs most likely seemed like (ones had been solely partial skeletons had been discovered)
- Kristina Curry Rogers discovered a juvenile in 2012 when trying via crocodile fossils on the State College of New York at Stony Brook. She acknowledged it as a miniature titanosaur, since she’d spent 15 years finding out titanosaurs
- Juvenile fossils present in Madagascar in 1998 and 2003 however had been misclassified
- Currie Rogers and others did histology and CT scans to determine how Rapetosaurus grew (grew quick)
- Grew across the identical price as elephants
- At beginning, estimated to weigh about 7.5 lb (3.4 kg); primarily based on researchers discovering a hatching line within the bones that exhibits refined development modifications after hatching
- In only some weeks it grew 10 instances in weight
- Juvenile weighed about 88 lb (40 kg), and was most likely between 39 and 77 days previous when it died (presumably hunger attributable to drought)
- In all probability didn’t want parental care
- Form and proportion of its limbs seem to remain fixed (isometry), so it seemed like a mini grownup when it was younger (precocial). Additionally, its weight bearing bones had indicators of bone transforming, the place the skeleton resorbs previous bone tissue and replaces it, and that normally occurs as soon as animals can transfer round on their very own
- And, had skinny cartilage deposits in its development plates, just like fashionable birds which can be precocial (animals that want parental care have thick, irregular cartilages). The preserved cartilages additionally had a “distinctive construction that indicators hunger in residing animals,” in line with Curry Rogers
- In all probability spent its time foraging, sleeping, and avoiding predators
- Juvenile was about 11 % the physique dimension of the biggest recognized Rapetosaurus
- Lived on an island
- Lived in a semi-arid local weather, in an space the place sea ranges had been rising
- Different animals that lived across the identical time and place included fish, frogs, lizards, snakes, crocodylomorphs, mammals, and birds
- Dinosaurs that lived across the identical time and place included titanosaur Vahiny, dromaeosaurid Rahonavis, noasaurid Masiakasaurus, abelisaurid Majungasaurus
- Majungasaurus could have specialised in looking sauropods (tooth marks discovered on Rapetosaurus bones, so positively ate them, even when it didn’t hunt them)
Enjoyable Truth: There’s one (and perhaps just one) clawed amphibian: The African clawed frog.