Bossy Anatomy

The key feature of Pachyrhinosaurus is its wonderful nasal boss. That boss gives the dinosaur its name ("Thick-nosed Lizard") and also serves as a major point of contention among paleontologists. Charles M. Sternberg initially described the first remains of Pachyrhinosaurus in 1950 under the specific name P. canadensis and recognized the boss as a distinctly hard patch of bone that appeared to be completely devoid of horn. It was thus inferred, by many and not necessarily Sternberg, that the boss was used for butting heads. Fantastical images, perhaps the result of illustration creation rather than any specific comment from researchers, have depicted the dinosaur with an enormous horn on the boss area. This may have also resulted from misinterpretation of the location of a small supraorbital horn in the midline or confusion with Einiosaurus, a ceratopsian dinosaur with rostrally curved nasal horn of some girth. The frill of Pachyrhinosaurus was elaborate an well decorated around the edges, as far as we can tell, with small osteoderm horns. The boss and the small supraorbital horns, perhaps most apparent in P. lakustai, were not sexually indicative traits, as it appears all adults possessed these two anatomical characteristics.

P. lakustai (C) Nobu Tamura

Bossy Papers

One of the few well known dinosaurs from Alaska, the remains of Pachyrhinosaurus from that state have been well studied. Purportedly belonging to one of the species I have not mentioned (P. perotorum specifically), the literature on the Alaskan population is quite thorough. This literature has been fairly enlightening about polar dinosaurs. Coupled with literature about other polar dinosaurs this sort of research has opened up the life of dinosaurs in those regions of the world to our present science, despite the vast ages of time that have passed. These papers include subjects like descriptions of the populations and longevity and growth rates of these polar dinosaurs. Longevity and growth rates are probably the more interesting of the two subjects (in my opinion). The original descriptions of Canadian populations are still online as well; Langston's description of remains from Drumheller and a more recent and complete Alberta find. The list of descriptions, finds, and other studies continues on for pages, but there is not enough time (for me) to list and write short descriptions for the wealth of information that is available.

Pachyrhinosaurus Moving Pictures

Pachyrhinosaurus has managed to make it into the film industry as not only an interesting documentary dinosaur but also as a main character. In the popular movie Walking with Dinosaurs, not related to the popular documentary, a herd of Pachyrhinosaurus is the major force. In that movie, as in many other dinosaur movies, escape from predators is the main driving feature of the story. For a short clip from that movie see above. The entire movie is not anywhere online and a lot of the good clips have since disappeared (it has been out for a while).

Facts About the Fat Nose

Mental Floss calls their fact page about Pachyrhinosaurus "resilient"; apparently they have a lot of faith in the facts that they are presenting. There are facts about this dinosaur all over the internet besides the Mental Floss page. There are typical pages like About, KidsDinos, and the BBC. We have not shared coloring pages in a very long time here. This ceratopsian is apparently famous enough that there are a variety of coloring sheets (or illustrations that could be used as coloring sheets, with permission) to choose from:

©Mirko Lanasicafashù Di Luzio

The Boss is Back

Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis has one of the most iconic, discussed, and debated nasal areas in all of paleontology. The nasal boss in these fossils is enormous, leading some to believe the rugose surface was a thickened butting surface and others to attest to its use as the base of an equally enormous horn. Whatever the case may be, the area of the horn is dense bone and makes the cranium of Pachyrhinosaurus look fearsome and ugly at the same time. How that face manages to fit into the helmet in August's calendar illustration is a bit of a wonder, but we can probably assume that the ovoid helmet would have to be gargantuan for a ceratopsian of this size. Either way, this is a dinosaur we have discussed once before but that does not mean there is not more information out there than we shared previously. Here is your August dino-naut illustration:

©Brynn Metheney

Icons of Extinction

©John James Audubon

When the subject of North American bird illustrations is approached there are a small number of extremely well known artists that automatically come to mind. Great Auks have been painted and sketched by a wide range of artists, but it is one of few, relatively speaking, North American birds that has been well portrayed by the two most prolific of artists in the history of ornithology. John James Audubon, despite a little controversy during and after his lifetime because of the models and species he painted that may have been dubious, and John Gould were both highly industrious and as accurate as possible. It is well known that Audubon used taxidermy specimens when he could and may have never seen the Great Auk when it was alive. Gould, on the other hand, hob-nobbed and gallivanted across the globe speaking with naturalists and watching and observing birds. Taking his wife on these journeys as an assistant artist, Gould sailed with Darwin to the Galapagos and FitzRoy and Gilbert in the south. Gould was alive during the time of the Great Auk (Audubon was as well) and may have seen them in their natural habitat (Audubon may have also, but he had a tendency to stay at home to paint). Perhaps at some point we can look at Gould's true passion, hummingbirds, but for now enjoy his version of the Great Auk.

© John Gould

Fame by Proxy

Photo of Great Auk sculpture at Zoo Chleby, near Prague

For similar reasons as the Dodo, the Great Auk was and is famous mostly because of its relative "newness" as an extinct species. European sailors interacted and saw more auks than dodos for a more extensive period of time. Due to that extended influence there are more specimens, descriptions, and art pieces that are based directly from the animals themselves; remember the dodo art we know today is based on a single painting for the most part. Additionally, a lot more information exists about the life history and general biology of Pinguinus impennis than does about Raphus cucullata. This is reflected in all of the venues mentioned previously and also in books about the extinction of the Great Auk, their eggs, and ecological discussions. Generally speaking, newly extinct animals, those with sub-fossil remains, are not often as exceedingly venerated in books and pleas for stewardship. The Great Auk is one of the species that is used as a cautionary tale however and its very penguin-like body plan makes it stand out, though not always readily identifiable to the general public. Certainly not as easily identified as a dodo at least.

Neanderthal Chicken

Paintings showing variation in egg markings (Eggs no. 35, 51, 49 and 48), as well as seasonal and ontogenic differences in plumage, based on museum specimens (Birds no. 22, 15, 9 and 50).

Approximately 100,000 years ago Neanderthal walked all over Europe and ran across birds large and small. The Great Auk is included in the number of species that were on the plates (rocks?) of Neanderthal hunters. Auk bones in the remains of firepits and illustrations on cave walls in Spain from 35,000 years ago attest to the importance of Great Auks in the diets of Neanderthal. A suit of auk pelts has even been recovered from a 4,000 year old grave. The suit consisted of not only the pelts but the attached heads and beaks of 200 auks, making the bird remains readily identifiable. Populations in the millions made the birds prime food sources for Eskimos, Greenlanders, and even navigational aids; their numbers on the Grand Banks of the north Atlantic signaled to Europeans that they had arrived at the prime fishing grounds off the coast of Canada. During that time, and preceding it as far back as the 8th century, Great Auk down was used in the pillows of the wealthy and the Norse. Jacques Cartier, in his explorations of North America, used the Great Auk for food and bait; he and other sailors also introduced rats to many of the islands and lands that he visited thereby reducing the breeding population of the birds. The last breeding population, as was noted earlier, was utterly destroyed by skin and specimen hunters with the last egg violently and, some would say hatefully, smashed by the hunters that took the last two adults from the island. What's more, these last two breeding adults were strangled and the entire happening was recorded in text. From millions to zero in less than 1000 years, the Great Auk, Pinguinus impennis, is extinct almost entirely (Polar Bears had a hand in their demise also) because of its interactions with human beings.

Naturalists Missed It

There are countless mentions of Great Auks in historical accounts of the peoples of the northern Atlantic, but there is also specific mention of the fact that there are no accounts recorded by known naturalists. This fact is made evident in Bengston's 1984 article on anecdotes and conjectures that had been passed down over the ages about the large seabird. The extinction of the bird has not stopped research into the animal, its life history, or its genetic makeup. In fact, mitochondrial DNA has been explored and sequenced for the entire Alcid family specifically including Pinguinus impennis. Archaeological comparisons of nesting sites of the Great Auk and Gannets have been compared to ascertain how one group survived and the other went extinct. Though not an exact science, the comparison is logical and well thought out.

Another Episode

Last week I shared an episode of an older show called Extinct that focused on the dodo. This week we have another episode of that show that focuses on the Great Auk. Like last week, the show features reenactments of the circumstances surrounding the extinction of the relatively large waterfowl.
The Great Auk by MistyIsland1

The movie is of high quality given the age of the film. Enjoy this movie for what it is worth and the story it tells, regardless of its age and production.

Auks and Science

For a day of facts here is a video that summarizes some of the extinction causes of the Great Auk.

Emma Caton does a fairly good amount of homework prior to posting videos. These make her videos informative and she is thorough, which make sharing this one completely worth not posting all kinds of links in its place. I have a lot of respect for highly thorough zoologist/biologist types that post educational videos and materials as there are many less helpful science articles and videos online that people tend to see first when searching the internet. Regardless, enjoy this video and also check out this article on some scientists from the U.K. and their attempts to reconstitute and reintroduce the Great Auk to he wild.

Staying Grounded

Kelvingrove, Glasgow display
Photo by Mike Pennington

There are many extinct birds that we do not know about. Covering the extinct birds that we do know about is important though because we can learn a lot about how people treated animals in the past, and how we continue to treat some of these extant animals. Last week's discussion of the dodo inspires this week's discussion of Pinguinus impennis, the Great Auk. Alcid birds (razorbills, auks, and guillemots) look like their extinct sister taxon, but the Great Auk was a large bird. Weighing in around 5 kg (11 lbs) and measuring up to 85 cm (33 in), Pinguinus filled similar roles in the northern hemisphere as penguins do in the southern hemisphere. The Great Auk was approximately three quarters the size of the extant Emperor Penguin but the penguin weighs almost 9 times more than the auk. This may have been part of the reason that these birds were most often noted in shallower waters than its closest relatives. The bird did venture into the deeper waters of the north Atlantic also, but was noted to traverse the northern seas between its known breeding grounds. In a travesty of human interactions, the last breeding ground of the Great Auk turned out to be the perfect place to kill off the species; all of the auks breeding on the sheer cliff of an island of Eldey were slowly killed and harvested by museums and private collectors eager to have their own skins or taxidermied auks. The last pair living on the island were killed to be stuffed, the last egg of the Great Auks was willfully smashed by the collectors.

The Museum's Art

©Roelant Savery

Known as "Edwards' Dodo", this painting was given to the British Museum in 1759 and now rests in the collections of the Natural History Museum in London. The painting was created by the Dutch artist Roelant Savery in the 1620's. The painting made it's way from the collections of Sir Hans Sloane to the eminent ornithologist and so-called "Father of British Ornithology" George Edwards. Edwards traveled Europe drawing and engraving birds while at the same time publishing a number of books and "natural" essays concerning the birds of Europe. Edwards not only enjoyed creating art, but collected works like this wonderfully life-like dodo. Important to note in this painting is that Savery ignored some of the contemporary accounts and painted what he saw as the best representation of the dodo. He painted at least nine other dodos, but the Edwards' Dodo became his best known work and set the standard for all subsequent dodo artwork. This answers a question about where that body shape originated that was posted yesterday. Unfortunately four of the birds in this painting are thought to represent now extinct taxa: Lesser Antillean Macaw (left) and Martinique Macaw (upper right) and the Red Rail (bottom right).

No Dodos

Ustad Mansur; Dodo and Indian birds

There are no complete specimens of Raphus cucullatus. Every interpretation, museum or otherwise, is based off of the specimens originally brought back to their locations or written descriptions. The partial dodo shared yesterday is one of the better remaining taxidermy specimens of Raphus cucullatus. The shape we typically see or give to dodos is implied from contemporary accounts and illustrations. Illustrations are more powerful than simple description often as they make a lasting impression. The fat content, we saw Tuesday, of the dodo body has been called into question. Is the pudgy body of the dodo in illustrations an artifact of dense feathering or postmortem bloating? Dutch accounts noted that the bird was easy to chew but dry and tough, with a pleasant flavor and ample meat. There is little mention of a great deal of fat, a single 1631 journal entry as far as I have found, being cut from the animal prior to cooking. This is explained by the idea that during the wet season when foods were abundant dodos may have gorged themselves in order to build a fat reserve to survive the dry season's lack of food. Sailing ships traveling ahead of the wet season may have been quickly pushed along, missing the island or not requiring the stop because of their quick travel. At the end of the wet season stopping at Mauritius may have been beneficial as a respite from storms and to stock up on provisions. Whether these scenarios are true or not, the abundant illustrations showing fattened dodos were probably the result of seeing these animals as they prepared to survive times with little to no food.

Famous Dodos

Dodos that were brought back to Europe and Asia this is less likely, but there are accounts of this having happened) often ended up being taxidermied when they died. Those animals then made their ways to museums and many of the exhibited dodos are still on display in the oldest museums. The dodo would be a famous animal even without these displays however. Part of the reason for that is that they are one of the first species that was accepted as being extinct after Georges Cuvier provided evidence that extinction was a possibility; until that time extinction was considered an impossible act of God. Today we know and accept that the dodo is extinct. We have used the dodo as a stupid character in many cartoons and literary references. The dodo has also come to be a symbol of awareness for extinction and animal rights stories. The Dodo (proper name) is an internet repository of animal interest stories, videos, and blogs about animals in the news and stories that raise awareness about the plight of animals; there are good stories stored there also. Here Raphus cucullatus is treated as a reminder that we need to be cognizant of how animals are influenced and influencing our lives. The name dodo has also appeared in music services, free giveaways, jewelry, electronics, and magazines. Raphus cucullatus is a very famous bird. We could write and compile the links everywhere for dodos, but I think we have done enough for today!

Raphus History

The history of human knowledge about Raphus cucullatus is stunningly light considering that it was an animal which lived with humans for an appreciable amount of time. There are a considerable number studies from the present day regarding different aspects of the dodo from many different viewpoints. Ecomorphology of the dodos and the ecosystem that the birds lived in are aspects of the life histories of these animals that are highly studied. The ecomorphology paper also addresses other birds like the Mascarene Solitaire. Papers on the dodo often discuss pairs of extinct animals. One such paper talks about the life history of the dodo and the penguins of Mauritius. Among all of the papers, some of the most interesting, in my opinion, discuss the shape and size of the dodo. The general impression of the dodo is one of a fat and lazy bird. However, recent studies question not only the mass of the dodo, but also the general characteristics of body shape and size. The question of intelligence or stupidity is not yet answered, though studies of endocasts, often used in discussing fossil hominoid taxa intelligence, have been made and studied. The resulting descriptions of the shape and sizes of dodo brains have not been able to conclusively say much, but they have resulted in a net gain of knowledge about the birds.

Dodos in Action

There are videos online that purport to have captured a live dodo in a Costa Rican rainforest. This is clearly not real and therefore has no place at all in this conversation. What is as real as a Raphus cucullatus can be in modern ages is the massive amount of documentary, movie, and short films that have been produced featuring dodos or very dodo-like creatures. The most popular dodo incarnation lately came from the first Ice Age movie in 2002. Most often the dodos are referred to as stupid animals incapable of saving themselves. However, stupidity was not the problem of the dodo so much as inexperience. Separated from predators and the inquisitive ape that then brought all of those troubles and began eating scores of dodos for as long as the large bird was, it did not know to fear or flee from sailors and the introduced predators that came with them. There are documentaries that exist, one such documentary is available online. I do not know the origin of the documentary or the year it was made, but it appears to be fairly old (late 1970's or early 1980's probably) and part of a series on extinct animals. The re-enactments are fairly entertaining and it is worth checking out.
The Dodo by MistyIsland1

Dodos for Little

Raphus cucullata has captured the imagination of the world in part because it is so recently extinct. This plays well into having hundreds of links, images, and even coloring pages at our disposal. Rather than sending out hundreds of links and singular images, it may be more beneficial to view a small sampling of the videos that are available. These present the same facts as the websites, but in more interesting formats than simply reading the facts as lists.

There are narrated fact videos such as this one:

There are also videos that are basically website facts left to be read over instrumental music:

Raphus the Pigeon

Exploring directions for this week over the last twenty-four hours (I was out all day yesterday and will post twice today to make up for it) I found a glaring hole in our discussions. Recently extinct species are not often discussed her, though we have made a number of exceptions and will continue to do so as we continue to explore fossil taxa. One recently extinct species that I noticed we have not discussed here is known less by its scientific name, Raphus cucullatus, than by its common English name, the Dodo. Essentially a large flightless pigeon, Raphus was endemic to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. As a flightless bird unaware of the dangers posed to it by newly arrived humans, Raphus was easily hunted by European explorers especially the Dutch who owned the island, restocking their ships during the age of sail. Raphus is the most recently extinct animal we have discussed and first hand accounts dating between 1662 and 1688 narrow down the actual dates of extinction fairly well. Because birds are dinosaurs, we are not technically straying from the name of the site; however, folks only wanting to read about dinosaurs should stick with us despite our avian slant this week!

Photo by bazzadaramblerimage, Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Terrorized by Mammals

Illustration by Brian Engh, courtesy of Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology

When an animal is only a few mice in size (see Thursday's post on Aquilops size in terms of mice) then even the smallest carnivores can pose a threat to the adults and more than likely the even smaller offspring. These small Aquilops may not have lived in herds (or they may have, we do not know for certain) but in this illustration there is a small family unit that appears to consist of three adults. Arguments could be made for the idea that one of these smaller adult Aquilops might be a subadult. The offspring are certainly offspring though. They are in danger of being eaten by a rather ferocious, but equally small, mammal of the forest undergrowth. The trees in this forest are not necessarily enormous, this aspect of the illustration simply reinforces the small stature of Aquilops and the mammal actively pursuing the younger animals. The posture of the animals as facultatively bipedal appears to align with at least a few hypotheses of early ceratopsians and many other basal members of clades of dinosaurs.

Small Either Way

Aquilops was small regardless of the moniker or adjective used to describe it. Various news outlets reported it as being the size of a cat or the size of a rabbit; these are similarly sized for the most part at least. The point is that Aquilops was a very small ceratopsian dinosaur. This sort of animal captured the imagination of the public no matter the descriptive word. The video from Science is OK earlier in the week illustrates how popular an animal like Aquilops is in the general media. Aquilops has even been the subject of a podcast. It is a little new to science to be a regular in scientific books, but an entire podcast about the dinosaur is a modern equivalent on some levels and means that the dinosaur is truly popular in our modern society.

Tiny Heads

At 84.2 mm the head of Aquilops is a very small head. That is smaller than a lot of photography lenses. That is just about the size of the body of your average field mouse. Obviously a head can be much smaller than 84.2 mm so it is not the smallest head that has ever been attached to an animal. However, a head the size of a mouse makes for a very tiny dinosaur.The entire dinosaur, as estimated in the Farke description paper, may have been no larger than 60 cm; that is approximately three whole mice, tail and all. That size was not the same as multiple mice though. Supporting an estimated weight of 1.5 kg, Aquilops was the same weight as approximately 33 mice. The common field mouse had little to fear from Aquilops, though, as they mostly shared a dietary ecology as herbivorous, potentially accidental omnivores; mice are known to eat insects so they are not as "accidental" as Aquilops might have been.

©Danny Cicchetti

Many Mentions

The recent literature about and surrounding ceratopsians and their contemporaries mentions and discusses Aquilops americanus over and over again. The most important paper that we could possibly read today, however, is the description paper. The description is very detailed with high detail line drawings and high resolution photos. Rather than describing the entire paper, though, feel free to enjoy the illustrations and read the description for yourselves by following this link.

The Dinosaur of Today

Aquilops has been a dinosaur of the day on the YouTube channel I Know Dino within the past year. However, probably more interesting and amazing to look at than this video is the actual fossil. That actual fossil is shown in an Oklahoma-based science channel's video showing the back rooms of the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Oklahoma. The preparation room in the museum housed the specimen at the time that the video was produced. Dr. Richard Cifelli tells the story of the find and summarizes the knowledge of the dinosaur such as it was a year and a half ago (not too much has changed in that time).

All We Know

Aquilops was a media darling at the time that it was described. That helped, with its small ceratopsian shaped head, the dinosaur to become somewhat endearing to the populous at large. A large number of news stories still exist pertaining to that reveal, but more importantly, succinct fact pages have begun to pop up on web pages like About. There are not as many pages as more long-known dinosaurs, but the About page and this WizScience video cover just about all we know about this dinosaur at the moment. Unfortunately there are not any coloring pages or other related kid related fun for this dinosaur; though we have not had a regular supply of these types of pages in recent memory.

The Smallest Frills

The smallest dinosaur with frills on its head was found in 1997 in Montana and was dated from 108 to 104 million years ago. The remains were not described until 2014 but by that time a new set of remains had been unearthed. This set of remains constitutes the holotype and is housed at the Sam Noble Museum in Norman, Oklahoma. This holotype material consists of the mandible and skull of a juvenile dinosaur. Weighing in at approximately 1.5 kg Aquilops americanus  is the lightest and smallest of the ceratopsian family. It will make a great topic of conversation for the week to be sure.

By Brian Engh [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Megaraptor is Known

Tom Parker

Megaraptor is a known dinosaur but it is not well known. Paleontologists know that the dinosaur exists and, for some, much more than that. However, as we have mentioned many times over, there are not many popular outlets for the dinosaur and much of the public does not know about or have never heard the name Megaraptor. The reasons that the public would embrace this dinosaur are actually far more compelling than the reasons that Megaraptos has yet to become famous. Poor circulation of the news of the discovery and subsequent discoveries of Megaraptor remains are the main reasons that the dinosaur has not caught on in the eyes of the public. Reasons that the dinosaur should but have not yet become popular include the immense size of the dinosaur and the sizable claw that is on the hand of Megaraptor. Additionally, the dromaeosaur-like features of the head, seen here, make Megaraptor strangely familiar to those that know North American and Asian dromaeosaurs.

Long Claws

Dromaeosaurs have long claws on their feet that were used to pin down, slash at, and otherwise disable their prey. Megaraptor is thought to have had that type of claw on its hand rather than its foot. Placing the claw on the hand rather than the foot was not a judgement call. Rather, the claw was placed with the hand because the fossil was oriented in such a way that the claw appears to belong to the hand rather than the foot. Assuming that the placement is correct (multiple specimens appear to validate this) possessing an enormous claw on the hand is not novel in dinosaurs. Iguanodon, Baryonyx, and the therizinosaurs all possessed large claws on their hands prior to Megaraptor. The large hand claw is unique in that it is relatively enormous compared to its neighbors and appears to be poised for strikes like those of the foot claws of dromaeosaurs. The idea that Megaraptors used their hands like dromaeosaurs used their feet makes them much more frightening, as the hands were probably much more dexterous than the feet of the other raptors. A dexterous, murderous, giant claw on a large powerful predator may have led to one of the most frightening, but lesser known, dinosaurs ever on the planet.

Placement and Description

Megaraptor is an interesting dinosaur in that it is a rather large theropod with dromaeosaur-like properties. These interesting affinities led to a complex description that is based on quite fragmentary evidence. Though fragmentary, the holotype fossil possesses as much if not more material than quite a few other fossil remains. This description is available online in the main describing paper written by Fernando E. Novas. The read is very short because there is little fossil evidence to describe but the descriptions of each piece of fossil is as detailed as it possibly can be. New descriptions do exist and these new descriptions allow for what is currently considered the most likely phylogenetic affiliation of Megaraptor. The copy is a little difficult to read, but the new specimen description is intriguing and important for dinosaur phylogeny. New specimens, in fact, continue to be unearthed and described. This includes a juvenile specimen that was not attributed to another genus or its own genus and furthers the knowledge we have about its placement and morphology.

Mega Movie Lack

For as interesting, not popular, as Megaraptor is, it is entirely absent from the typical outlets of media and popular culture that have the most likelihood of presenting us with movies and documentaries. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that this animal is relatively new (1998) to science. "Newness" does not always imply lack o interest or knowledge, but some groups of dinosaurs are awed and forgotten rather quickly when they are announced. A giant dromaeosaur-like dinosaur is not what one would consider a throw-away dinosaur but the idea that it is 18 years old to paleontology and has not been often recreated says something about how little people remember that it exists. A second reason this dinosaur may not have become amazingly popular is because it is from South America. Many animals from the continent have become popular over time, but the majority of fossil taxa of South America are still somewhat of an enigma to general audiences. The only videos that are available of the animal are the cartoon shared on Sunday and the WizScience narrated pieces, which I have posted below. Unfortunately, the lack of professional, and probably public, interest in the dinosaur has not led to many large scale recreations of Megaraptor. At the moment, therefore, most of our visuals are static images and any interpretations of locomotion and movement of the fossil are relegated to text descriptions.