Episode 415: An enormous ornithomimosaur in Mississippi

Episode 415: An enormous ornithomimosaur in Mississippi. Plus Ornithoscelida is lifeless; Stegoceras head-butting; Dinosaur chunk forces; Sculpting an Amargasaurus head; and far more

Information:

• A brand new very massive ornithomimosaur was found in Mississippi supply
• Ornithoscelida is lifeless, however the dinosaur household tree may be getting one other replace supply
• Scientists discovered that the early dinosaur Coelophysis had a variety of variation in how they grew supply
• The pachycephalosaurid Stegoceras could have head-butted supply
• There’s a brand new predictive modelling framework to estimate dinosaur chunk drive supply
• Scientists reconstructed an Amargasaurus head supply
• Phys.org featured Doug Boyer, founding father of MorphoSource, a digital repository of museum specimen 3D scans supply

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The dinosaur of the day: Udanoceratops

• Leptoceratopsid dinosaur that lived within the Late Cretaceous in what’s now Mongolia (Djadokhta Formation)
• Estimated to be about 13 ft (4 m) lengthy and weigh 1500 lb (700 kg)
• Largest identified leptoceratopsid, up to now
• Walked on 4 legs
• Paleoart reveals a brief tail
• Cranium was about 24 in (60 cm) lengthy
• Had a brief, deep cranium
• Had a brief frill, and no horns on the nostril or over the eyes
• Had sturdy, deep jaws, and a curved decrease jaw
• Had a parrot-like, toothless beak
• Herbivorous
• Most likely grasped or cropped vegetation with its beak and sheared and crushed with its tooth
• Most likely ate robust vegetation
• Holotype discovered within the Eighties
• Described in 1992 by Sergei Kurzanov
• Sort species is Udanoceratops tschizhovi
• Genus title means “Udan’s horned face”
• Genus title refers to the place the fossils had been discovered (Udan Sayr locality of the Djadokhta Formation)
• Holotype is a big particular person and features a well-preserved, almost full cranium, and vertebrae
• In 1993 a cranium was assigned to Udanoceratops
• Cranium was almost 3 ft or 1 m lengthy and got here from the close by Bayan Mandahu Formation, in keeping with Tomasz Jerzykiewicz
• In 2020, Lukasz Czepinski mentioned the cranium most probably belonged to Protoceratops hellenikorhinus
• Viktor Tereshchenko referred a juvenile specimen to Udanoceratops in 2004
• Specimen got here from the Baga Tariach locality, which Tereshchenko mentioned was a part of the Djadokhta Formation
• In 2010, Mahito Watabe and others discovered that the Baga Tariach locality correlated the very best with the Barun Goyot Formation
• The specimen has been assigned “Udanoceratops” sp., and ?Udanoceratops sp (means there’s some uncertainty)
• In 2006, V. S. Tereshchenko advised Udanoceratops was “facultatively aquatic” and that on land Udanoceratops might transfer each rapidly and slowly (“fast and gradual locomotor modes”)
• Stated there was “fascinating information” from earlier papers that help the thought of protoceratopoids being buried in ways in which counsel that they had an “affinity to water our bodies in the course of the animal’s life (amphibiotic mode of life)” (that means having an amphibious life)
• Principally, no “traces of lengthy transportation earlier than burial” which suggests they had been buried near the place they died
• Checked out a variety of protoceratopoids, together with Udanoceratops, and studied options “which can be presumably related with specific diversifications, mode of life, and locomotion”
• Stated Udanoceratops had 10 thoracic vertebrae (higher and center of the again), a considerably versatile neck
• Discovered that the higher and center again space “is comparatively weakly cellular” whereas the decrease again “reveals a excessive mobility”
• Stated protoceratopsids had been “in all probability amphibionts and comparatively good swimmers” based mostly on the flattened tail with excessive neural spines (good for swimming actions). Additionally the presence of mollusks in some nests, and the distribution of nests help the water thought
• Stated based mostly on the tail, “Bagaceratops was in all probability most aquatic, adopted by Protoceratops, Udanoceratops, and probably the most terrestrial Leptoceratops”
• Undecided how extensively accepted the aquatic concepts are
• Different animals that lived across the similar time and place embody Avimimus (oviraptorosaur), Bagaceratops (ceratopsian), Protoceratops (ceratopsian), amphibians, crocodylomorphs, mammals, turtles

Enjoyable Truth:

Scientists discovered that there could have been a typical origin 407 million years in the past for nose-breathing vertebrates to speak with sound.

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