©Nobu Tamura |
STL Science Center
31 August 2013
Camera Shy
30 August 2013
New Old Partial Dinosaurs
©Mark Witton |
29 August 2013
Famous Falcarius
Falcarius, as noted on Monday, was the subject of its own dedicated documentary produced by the Discovery Channel. The fame, however, does not stop there. Falcarius has also been modified into games, or just plain created as a character in some people's games.
Falcarius has also appeared in a few books, some about feathered dinosaurs. This assumes, and it appears to be the general consensus at the moment, that Falcarius was at least partially feathered. Drawing it with the steps in a dinosaur how-to-draw book also includes feathering, which is usually fairly difficult for most amateur artists that are using how-to-draw books. Toys and statues have also been created by companies and artists depicting Falcarius. Cartoons, our semi-normal fame related outlet, seem to be lacking when it comes to Falcarius, strangely.
28 August 2013
More Than Arms
Falcarius is so much more than arms and leaf shaped teeth. It is a rather long dinosaur that tells us a lot of information about the other members of its family both before and after it in addition to being a member of that very unique family. Falcarius has a long neck and a long tail counterbalancing that neck and its bipedal stance allows for a great reach with the head that is on the end of the neck. The arms of Falcarius were also unique in that they were robust and were capable of extending through a rather interesting range of motion. Though very much like their Maniraptora sisters, Therizinosaurs developed a different set of motions in their forelimbs. In fact, Zanno 2006 states that 20% of the synapomorphies of Maniraptora and Therizinosaur actually show that Therizinosaurs were reversing their pectoral girdle conditions and thus the range and types of motions they were capable of producing in their forelimbs. Twenty percent is a significant change from similar animals. Not requiring their forelimbs to grapple with prey and instead using them in a different manner entirely, such as reaching for vegetation, would certainly alter their range, and therefore their anatomical makeup, significantly over many generations. This, then, makes sense that Falcarius is little changed as a basal ancestor, but the fact that it still possesses many of those changes and represents transitional stages of those changes is significant.
References:
L. E. Zanno. 2006. The pectoral girdle and forelimb of the primitive therizinosauroid Falcarius utahensis (Theropoda, Maniraptora): analyzing evolutionary trends within Therizinosauroidea. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 26(3):636-650
References:
L. E. Zanno. 2006. The pectoral girdle and forelimb of the primitive therizinosauroid Falcarius utahensis (Theropoda, Maniraptora): analyzing evolutionary trends within Therizinosauroidea. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 26(3):636-650
27 August 2013
Lindsay Zanno's Abridged Works
Not that everything thing Lindsay Zanno has ever written has been about Falcarius or anything, but Dr. Zanno spent a good deal of time with Falcarius and wrote, or coauthored, quite a few articles about different aspects of Falcarius' anatomy. We know quite a bit about Falcarius thanks to the work of many different paleontologists, but the names that came up the most in the early articles were Zanno, Kirkland, and Sampson; coincidentally, the tooth shape mention I made on Saturday was corrected by Dr. Kirkland, if anyone missed that. In 2005 Kirkland et al. officially named Falcarius (an article that can be found here) and described the animal in a short but detailed paper. Phylogenetic analyses from this paper placed Falcarius as the "basalmost therizinosauroid known". Zanno went on the next year to analyze the pectoral girdle and forelimb of Falcarius, which is of interest to everyone given those rather unique and interesting claws. She discusses clade placement in the paper, which is very interesting, but if anyone was wondering what the range of motion for that nifty forelimb was, that is also addressed, so no worries! The systematics lovers that are now appalled at my casual dismissal of the former part of the 2006 Zanno paper should try to find a copy of Zanno's 2010 article examining the osteology of Falcarius and placement of Falcarius and other basal therizinosaurs within their family and clade. It makes up for my dismissal of the previous papers section on systematics, I promise.
26 August 2013
Falcarius and the Video Question
Discovery, a few years back, aired a show dedicated to Utah's dinosaur graveyard at Crystal Geyser Quarry. The show follows the evolution of a theropod line of herbivores from carnivorous ancestors and attempts to parallel that evolution with the initial radiation of dinosaur evolution from a single bipedal carnivore ancestor.
The show is separated into 5 clips and, for the time being exists on YouTube starting with the video shared here. Given the nature of Discovery shows being slowly taken off of the internet due to copyright rules, if you want to watch this online do so as quickly as possible!
25 August 2013
Falcarius, Too Scary for Kids?
In terms of links friendly to younger readers Falcarius scores very low in search returns. That in itself is not a problem really, if there is someone around to help them read the harder to read items that are out there related to Falcarius. Intermittent internet issues today have made my search even more difficult as well. However, I did turn up some easier to understand fact pages through the Natural History Museum of Utah and Bob Strauss' writings for About.com. Both sites can be read by younger readers, but as they are not written specifically for younger readers, they may be a little higher reading level than I usually like to expose kids to. Tomorrow I should be able to find a bit more to share and will also hopefully have more time to share things as well.
24 August 2013
Some Short Anatomy
©Gaston Designs |
The teeth of Falcarius are rather peg-like. In some other animals, like Diplodocus, we find these sorts of teeth and they are mainly for sheering leaves off of the twigs and branches from which the dinosaur fed. Because of this it is also highly likely that Falcarius ate in a very similar manner. Use of the hand like that of a sloth, for pulling down branches, while the teeth strip the leaves from the plant. The teeth are not designed for crushing and chewing plant matter in a highly efficient manner. There are a few teeth that appear to be for crushing plant matter, but they are very few and more toward the posterior end of the mouth. This probably entails the use of a gizzard in the digestive system, though as yet we do not seem to have compelling evidence of this organ structure.
23 August 2013
Therizinosaurs!
Therizinosaurs are some of the creepiest dinosaurs I can think of. Our dinosaur this week, Falcarius (One species: Falcarius utahensis), is considered a valuable transitional discovery between other theropods and true therizinosaurs. Study of this Utah discovery in conjunction with the recently discovered Beipiaosaurus from China have allowed researchers to discover a lot more and draw a lot more logical conclusions about the evolution of the family of therizinosaurs. Falcarius, meaning "sickle" in Latin, was named for its high curvature claws present on its hands. A fairly long dinosaur, Falcarius has quite a stretch at the neck as well as quite a reach with its forelimbs. Typical therizinosaurs are assumed to be some of the only theropods that are obligate herbivores; ornithomimids are the other major family of theropods thought to be partially herbivorous but are proposed to have been much more omnivorous in nature. Falcarius was discovered by Larry Walker in 1999 in the Crystal Geyser Quarry of eastern Utah. James Kirkland, who we mention a lot in Utah related paleontology, was called in to head the geological survey team in 2001 that began to recover the bones of this dinosaur from the quarry. By 2005 a couple of thousand specimens had been recovered comprising the total remains of at least 300 individuals. Since that time the number of specimens has increased to over 3000 in the original quarry and a second quarry has been discovered to also contain specimens of this animal. The name was officially given to the dinosaur in May 2005's publication of Nature by Kirkland et al., which we will visit later in the week.
Picture by Paul Fisk. Mounted at the Utah Museum of Natural History. |
22 August 2013
Othnielosaurus Waited All Afternoon
Paleontology Museum of Zurich |
21 August 2013
Othnielosaurus Confused
Species recognized in each of the genera to the left are listed with authority. |
20 August 2013
Othnielosaurus in Writing
Many papers have been written about, or mention, Laosaurus, Othnielia and Othnielosaurus. The key papers that describe and assign the animals through time into ever smaller groups are the most important papers though. Marsh's original 1877 piece describing what he called Laosaurus is of the utmost importance as it provides original descriptions of the remains of Othnielosaurus. Likewise important is CW Gilmore's 1909 description of an addition to the family; Laosaurus minimus. Both articles are difficult to find copies of, and your best bet honestly seems to be inter-library loans, as the internet does not have scanned copies hidden in it anywhere it seems. In 1977 Galton reassigned both L. consors and L. gracilis to Othnielia rex and redescribed the remains of the two species. 30 years later, in 2007, Galton again re-examined the remains and reseated the genus as Othnielosaurus. Both of these writings are of importance. The 2007 writing is a part of a book called Horns and Beaks: Ceratopsian and Ornithopod Dinosaurs edited by Kenneth Carpenter while the 1977 article was published in Nature, and is therefore hard to come by as well online.
19 August 2013
Othnielosaurus Hunted
Once again Othnielosaurus has not shown up in searches due to the change in name. However, Othnielia still turns up results on this happy little Monday. Strangely enough, the results it turns up appear to have landed us in two time frames; Jurassic and Cretaceous references are both present for Othnielia in the one documentary in which it seems to appear. The documentary series in question is Walking with Dinosaurs, and we know from experience here that the experience of Walking with Dinosaurs is that it is sometimes inaccurate. Othnielia/Othnielosaurus is hunted in two episodes of the series at large. In one episode it is approached by a Cretaceous Utahraptor in what is now Europe while in another episode it is hunted by Jurassic Allosaurs in North America. Unfortunately, clips from episodes of shows like Walking with Dinosaurs are slowly getting weeded out from the internet due to copyright laws, so it is getting harder and harder to find quality clips. Stills from the shows exist though and I can easily share those, as I have done today. As a caveat with this image though, it has also been seen labeled as Dryosaurus, Hypsilophodon, and probably others.
18 August 2013
Finding Othnielosaurus
In 1977 Peter Galton changed Nanosaurus to Othnielia. In 2007 Othnielia was again changed by Galton to Othnielosaurus. This made finding kids websites a little more of a chore this morning as I had to search multiple names to find the correct dinosaur. When I did find what we are looking for though, I found a lot of good websites for kids, just under an older name that has not been changed to the current name quite yet; widespread acceptance of Galton's reassignment of all of the remains to Othnielosaurus is not yet apparent. Anyhow, Othnielia, which would have been almost indistinguishable from Othnielosaurus at any rate (a good discussing point with young paleontologists), has pages dedicated to it at KidsDinos, Animal Planet, and Enchanted Learning; a long and short version are both available. Coloring pages for today seem to be lacking, but the conversations generated from the fact pages and a discussion of why the name changed may just fill the entire day with paleo fun for the young enthusiast, and that is what Sundays are all about around here anyway honestly!
17 August 2013
Omnivorous Herbivourous Carnivore
Marsh's Laosaurus |
©Nobu Tamura |
16 August 2013
Othniel Honored
Running herd cast at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science; Tad Williams |
15 August 2013
Hard Being Popular
One of the worst things about ceratopsian skeletons is the general lack of post cranial material. Generally all ceratopsians are illustrated, sculpted, and modeled the same exact way post cranially due to this lack of information. Therefore, a lot of illustrations, etc. that are attributed to an animal like Pentaceratops are not always of that animal (images geared toward children are the absolute worst at misidentifying ceratopsians). Despite this and the sheer number of returns in a search for Pentaceratops, the popularity of Pentaceratops is not over exaggerated by misidentifications; it is in fact a rather popular dinosaur in popular culture. Pentaceratops has been depicted in Dinosaur King video games as well as cartoons (both episodes in which Pentaceratops appears are hosted by 4KidsTV on YouTube) and in other games, such as Spore, where it was created or added in by players of the game.
Pentaceratops has also been molded a number of different ways as toys and action figures; the ability to be posed being where I differentiate the two. Toys tend to be a little more often scientifically accurate models, whereas action figures are almost always gaudy representations of a passable version of the dinosaur in question.
Toy/model
Action figure
Toy/model
Action figure
14 August 2013
The Big Frill
Holotype designated by HF Osborn, 1923 |
13 August 2013
Printa-ceratops
Wired Science compilation using Nicholas Longrich's skull reconstruction on right |
12 August 2013
Pentaceratops Movies
Movies about Pentaceratops, in a professionally done manner of speaking, are few and far between, but movies do exist. There are numerous Pentaceratops tribute videos; it is always kind of fun to see what images people grabbed and how they used them in that context despite my dislike for the music that is typically used in those sorts of videos. There are also a lot of Dinosaur King and other video game related movies floating around out there. Norman's Sam Noble Museum has a nice skeleton on display of Pentaceratops which is shared in a few videos that have been posted. The least personal of these is found below; the others are mainly home videos and, as such are a little more private even though they are posted online.
11 August 2013
Pentaceratops the Gentle
Krispy Kreme hosted a coloring contest featuring Pentaceratops once in New Mexico; that is how popular the dinosaur is with kids in its "home state". Pentaceratops is a well known dinosaur the world over though it seems. Science Kids (the New Zealand website that shows up here from time to time), Enchanted Learning, NHM London, Dinosaur Jungle, and KidsDinos all turn up as fact pages that are geared toward children when we look up Pentaceratops in relation to youth. That makes it one of the most popular dinosaurs in terms of children related fact pages found online; a fairly spectacular occurrence to be completely honest. Enchanted Learning has links to one of their kid-drawn dinosaur coloring pages on their fact sheet, but there is also coloring available from a site called kidscanhavefun.com (equally inaccurate but "cute" dinosaur). There is little shortage of dinosaurs labeled Pentaceratops on coloring pages to be honest. All of them are slightly inaccurate, but inaccuracies, carefully approached, can lead to an enlightening conversation with any age child and developing critical thinking and the ability to compare images may be a good exercise today!
10 August 2013
Hanging Pictures on a Frill
Adopted from Sampson SD, Loewen MA, Farke AA, Roberts EM, Forster CA, et al. 2010 |
References
Sampson, S. D., Loewen,
M. A., Farke, A. A., Roberts, E. M., Forster, C. A., Smith, J. A., &
Titus, A. L. (2010). New horned dinosaurs from Utah provide evidence
for intracontinental dinosaur endemism. PLoS One, 5(9), e12292.
©Nobu Tamura |
When the skull is turned even slightly away from a direct lateral view we can see that the frill forms a rather large U bend in the center of the dorsal end of the frill. The small hornlets, or epiparietal horns, are turned down and forward (decurved/rostral and anterior facing). Also we can see that skin stretched tightly over the entire frill would accent the fenestrations by being "sucked" into the bony windows slightly but enough that we would be able to notice them. This theme occurs constantly in the recreation of ceratopsians and, given the idea that the fenestrations existed to lighten the bone rather than house important organs, it makes a great deal of sense that skin and other tissues above those holes would not disguise their existence by puffing outward or anything of the like.
09 August 2013
Star Heads
©Mariana Ruiz Villareal |
08 August 2013
Story of Coelurus
Zander and Kevin Cannon have a knack for making dinosaurs more popular. Their cartoon studio has done an awful of lot work in multiple disciplines and over a wide variety of nerdy/geeky subjects. The book, Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth, features their combined artwork and the writing of Jay Hosler and is set in a very accessible graphic novel format. Their inclusion of a rather baffled looking Coelurus in the artwork of the book can be attributed to the knowledge of the skeleton and the fact that Coelurus has been well known for such a long time before it was accepted that the entire skeleton was indeed the remains of a single individual spread out around the quarry. Coelurus has also showed up in a few video games such as Jurassic Park III: Park Builder, or at the very least, has been modded into a few games such as Zoo Tycoon. There is not a wealth of popular culture references beyond the inclusion in those games or the book, but it is enough really. There are so many dinosaurs out there we cannot really and truly expect them all to be extremely popular.
07 August 2013
Things I Like About Coelurus
Via the Daily Mail (Artist not credited) |
06 August 2013
Coelurus the Writer
Admittedly Coelurus did not write papers about itself (or have a written language itself) but there are papers out there that have been written about Coelurus. Some of these that can be found are about Coelurus bauri Cope, 1887; this dinosaur is now known, as was previously discussed, as Coelophysis bauri Cope 1889. Coelurus fragilis, however, is less well documented, but is still fairly well documented in and of itself. In fact, new finds of Coelurus have been well documented throughout time, including in 1997 in Wyoming and Coelurus has even been debated as a theropod and discussed in relation to ornithomimids. It has been included in some important works including The Dinosuria (both editions), numerous field guides (including Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World), and even a few smaller books.
05 August 2013
Little Skulls
Coelurus has only made it into a short video that I have seen discussing the discovery of a small skull that belongs to it.
The fact that a skull was found is not that amazing, but that it was fairly intact is always good for science because it houses so many more clues than a skull that is missing any important elements. As with many other videos, I really wish there was more to this and there may have been when the clip aired in an episode, but copyright materials are not shared freely by corporations, so you may have to dig on your own a bit for this one.
04 August 2013
Little Dinosaur, Little Kids
via Arthur's clipart |
03 August 2013
Look at the Detail
©Kazunari Araki |
Looking for artist |
02 August 2013
Coelurus in the Afternoon
©Nobu Tamura |
01 August 2013
Almost Complete
Photos by Adam Stuart Smith and Stefan Schröeder, top to bottom as seen on the Dinosaur Toy Blog |
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