Proceratosaurus at the Museum

Proceratosaurus consists of a single specimen of cranial remains. That cranium consists of mainly the mandible and ventral half of the skull plus an almost full rostral/premaxilla area. This area is what led Woodward to compare the Bathonian skull from the reservoir of the market town of Minchinhampton in western England with Ceratosarus. In terms of fossils, Proceratosaurus is a rather complete skull. The internal structure and the braincase are largely missing or unknown in Proceratosaurus, but given its typical theropod anatomy, these could be reassembled from other known remains to recreate the dorsal half of the skull. These sorts of recreations have been undertaken for years by paleo artists in portrayals of the dinosaur.

Figure from Rauhut et al. 2010

Paper and Phylogeny

As promised, there is discussion about Proceratosaurus and its phylogenetic position; there is actually a great deal of discussion pertaining to the position of Proceratosaurus within the theropod family tree. The most recent edition of this phylogenetic discussion was published in the Linnean Society's journal of zoology by Rauhut, Milner, and Moore-Fay in 2010. Other papers also discuss phylogeny in relation to Proceratosaurus from a variety of angles including overall theropod evolution, coelurosaur relationships, and discussions of tyrannosaurid skeletal design. These papers would all be important and informative, but the paper linked here is the most comprehensive and useful (currently) in regards to the current position of Proceratosaurus in the dinosaur tree.

Motionless Proceratosaurus

Proceratosaurus deserves more movies than it has. It deserves at least more documentary notes than it has garnered if not actual movie roles or even shorts. There are a pair of tribute videos, one with cut outs and the other with a montage of pictures, but other than that the pickings are very slim on this movie Monday. There are a couple of other videos that show up later on the search page that may be of more interest. One of these is a review for a toy and the other is a WizScience video, the kind with the computer reading facts over a stream of pictures.

Proceratosaurus Abridged

There are few Proceratosaurus fact pages online and even fewer videos that I would suggest viewing to get more facts. I would suggest reading two sites to gather facts and share them with the younger paleontology enthusiasts out there. The KidzSearch encyclopedia has a very short entry on Proceratosaurus that conveys very basic information on the dinosaur. CoolDinoFacts has slightly more information than the aforementioned encyclopedia entry. This information is still not extensive, but does have a little more to offer.

Small Jurassic Carnivores

Relegated to the area that now makes up the majority of England, small carnivores roamed the lands of the Middle Jurassic and did not need to be enormous because sauropods of the time had reached considerable, but not gigantic, sizes. Even if they had, smaller theropods have been hypothesized to have hunted in packs from time to time. Such may have been the case for Proceratosaurus bradleyi. Originally described by Arthur Smith Woodward in 1910 (as Megalosaurus bradleyi) and von Heune in 1926 as an early ancestor to Ceratosuarus with both dinosaurs belonging to the coelurosaurian group of theropods. Proceratosaurus was kept in this group whereas Ceratosaurus was removed and placed within its own, ceratosaurid, group of theropods. Proceratosaurus, known from fragmentary cranial remains, has an estimated size of between 2 and 3 meters in length, making it small and almost pet-sized (by enormous dog standards).

©Conty

Ankylosaurus- The Body

Postcranial remains of Ankylosaurus are known but the focus of many of the descriptions of the postcranial elements is the osteoderm armor and the massive clubs that constitutes the caudal end of the tail. Armors gave the dinosaur its name and the postcranial armor of the dinosaur is extensive. The armor started on the cervical vertebrae with half rings of armored bone. The ribs of Ankylosaurus were wide and strong to hold the soft tissues of the gut. Superficial to the ribs there are osteoderm plates that constitute the external armor scutes. These osteoderms are unique to individuals and have the potential scars to prove that they were effective; not all of the fossil remains recovered have pathological issues and that statement is more based on things that could be possible than things that are known for sure. The osteoderms continue caudally along the body and onto the tail where the final two osteoderms are expanded into a club. The club even has a handle; the seven caudal-most vertebrae are ossified and bound by ossified tendons to create an immobile base for the oversized osteoderms of the club.

Dorsal view of AMNH Ankylosaurus

Famed Dinosaur

Ankylosaurus is a well known dinosaur. Appearing in many documentaries, movies, and in popular literature has allowed this dinosaur to become a common dinosaur name and introduced it to other aspects of the world. This includes video games and television shows as well as children's books and as the centerpiece, or an integral part, of many museum's dinosaur collections around the world. This last part seems a little odd since there are only three known skulls, but it is nonetheless true. In the most recent string of famous Ankylosaurus depictions, the Jurassic Park series, including Jurassic World, are probably some of the biggest portrayals of the dinosaur. However, long before this Ankylosaurus was featured in the 1980's cartoon Dinosaucers as a bad guy Ankylosaurus from space who was rather pig-like. One of my favorite adaptations of Ankylosaurus for popular media was in the Dinotopia series. James Gurney's world where dinosaurs and humans lived together portrayed ankylosaurs as benevolent dinosaurs that can carry large loads. In the miniseries that aired in 2002 a wild Ankylosaurus rampaged across the screen but was soothed by a young girl who discovered the dinosaur was suffering from a toothache. The story is a little Disney-like, but it is worth watching and it is one of the better depictions of Ankylosaurus.

Ankylosaurus- The Skull

Photo by William Diller Matthew

There are three known Ankylosaurus skulls. Those three skulls are similar but have noticeable differences; the reigning idea is that the differences are taphonomic in nature rather than ontogenetic or species related. We know that Ankylosaurus has a large beak and small eyes and that the skull is covered in dense dermal bone and small crests and horns. Of particular note are the jugal horns that face ventrocaudally and give the skull a triangular appearance in lateral view. The teeth of Ankylosaurus comprised a large dental battery of up to 36 teeth per side of the mandible and 35 teeth per side in the maxilla. This may be slightly misleading as the only mandible known is from the smallest of the known specimens. There are many more aspects of the skulls that are interesting and strange, but the teeth of Ankylosaurus deserve some specific attention here. The teeth are leaf or spade shaped and mediolaterally compressed. The rostral and caudal margins are covered in serrated lobed denticles. The most caudal teeth appear to have curved caudally meaning that plant matter was processed by the teeth even up to the moment of swallowing.

Illustration by Barnum Brown

Looking Back at Ankylosaurus

Sometimes one of the best things about writing this blog is that I notice that I somehow missed a famous dinosaur. Ankylosaurus has never appeared on this blog and I can therefore share any article without prefacing it with "we already read this but it is worth reading again" because I have yet to share any of them! Williston and Brown originally described the ankylosauridae with Brown receiving credit for the Ankylosaurus himself even though Williston actually published the description for Barnum Brown. Nearly 100 years later, 95 to be exact, Kenneth Carpenter re-examined and redescribed the Ankylosaurus remains of Brown and the subsequent finds since. Descriptions of the dinosaur are not the only interesting papers that have been posted online. There are also papers on Ankylosaurus forelimbs and the paleoenvironment in which they lived. In a very interesting but not unexpected progression, Carpenter and Coombs combined to discuss systematics of Ankylosaurus and it nearest relatives.

Movies A-plenty

Ankylosaurus has shown up in so many movies and documentaries that listing them would take far longer than makes sense when I can simply share a small lump of them. The only problem is that a lot of Ankylosaurus videos is that they do not portray Ankylosaurus. Likewise, there are ankylosaurid videos that concern other taxa but rely heavily, or only actually depict, Ankylosaurus. Here are some videos that show and reference the correct dinosaur though:

Ankylosaurus Facts

There are some random videos with Ankylosaurus facts. There is one that includes a song and some drooling theropods that can be watched at this link here. Fact pages are a little more heterogeneous. LiveScience has a higher level reading passage instead of a list of facts. As usual, Enchanted Learning has a list of facts and a link to a coloring sheet of Ankylosaurus. Other fact lists are hosted on ScienceKids and Mental Floss. Maybe the most entertaining video or list is the I'm A Dinosaur video:

Ankylosaurus Astronaut

The dinosaur of the month on the calendar is Ankylosaurus. This dinosaur is one of the members of the Thyreophora, a group containing Stegosaurus and other armored dinosaurs. The genus Ankylosaurus contains a single species, Ankylosaurus magniventris, meaning "Fused lizard, great belly". Measuring approximately 6.25 m (20.5 ft) and weighing an estimated 6 tonnes (13,000 lbs) one would imagine that Ankylosaurus was a giant dinosaur. The length and weight are rather enormous; however, at approximately 1.7 m (5 ft 6 in) Ankylosaurus was shorter than the average man and only about 2 inches taller than the average woman.The astronaut illustration of this dinosaur is quite impressive despite its short stature, not that one has anything to do with the other!

©Brynn Metheney

Announcements

If you are at or near the University of Missouri on September 30th check this talk out:

Famous Destruction

The size of Spinosaurus made it a much more famous dinosaur than Bahariasaurus back in the days that the two dinosaurs were uncovered and moved to Germany. After the Allied bombing that led to the desctruction of these two specimens the more well known, illustrated, and published Spinosaurus was mourned by science more widely than Bahariasaurus. The lone photo of Stromer with the femur of Bahariasaurus is the only original evidence of the dinosaur. Despite being compared to Deltadromeus, also known from the Kem Kem regions of Morocco and Algeria, we know that Bahariasaurus was of similar size to Tyrannosaurus and not necessarily Deltadromaeus. The connected legacy of Bahraisaurus and Spinosaurus continues on in illustrations such as this, which would appear to be in Todd Marshall's style, if it is not his own work (credit lacking online).

Understanding Size

I mentioned the other day that there are little to no known pieces of evidence of the original Bahariasaurus remains that Ernst Stromer brought back from Northern Africa to Germany. There is, however, a single image of Stromer standing next to a portion of the remains of Bahariasaurus. The femur is appreciably large, considering the typical language and representations of Bahariasaurus in illustrations. We can see, looking at the size comparison of the entire dinosaur, that the femur is actually a little larger than previous discussions may have implied.

©Karkemish (Eduardo)

Photo described as Stromer with the "hip" of Bahariasaurus

Paperless Dinosaurs

Bahariasaurus has all but been destroyed in the modern age. Allied bombing took the original material and time, war, and a lack of preservation has made the illustrations and writings of Ernst Stromer rare and potentially irrevocably lost over time. Some of the only materials that mention, let alone describe, Bahariasaurus are the collected descriptions of Saharan dinosaurs that were put together by Paul Sereno, et al. back in 1996. This material is extensive but unfortunately still lacking in original evidence from Stromer.

Bahariasaurus Movies

There are no actual movies for Bahariasaurus. Rather than wasting time complaining or offering strange alternatives, here are two tribute videos with a series of photos of the animal. The two videos overlap significantly, but they also have differences. Enjoy these:

Bahariasaurus Tributes

Bahariasaurus is not as famous as the other North African dinosaurs like Spinosaurus that are often portrayed in documentaries and movies. Because of this Bahriasaurus has slipped through the popular cracks. There are therefore very few videos; however, there are  number of websites that have some facts about the dinosaur. These facts are generally similar and none of the websites have radically new information about the dinosaur. Dinopedia has a short amount of information written up very quickly and the Dinosaur Database has a map of supposed fossil locations of Bahariasaurus. Prehistoric Wildlife also hosts facts and goes a little more in depth, but it is par for the course today in terms of lack of extended knowledge.

African Predators

Bahariasaurus ingens was unearthed and recovered by the team of Ernst Stromer during the early 1930's. Like many of Stromer's African discoveries, this North African dinosaur was described during 1934 and dates from the oldest Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) approximately 95 million years ago. Also like most of Stromer's African dinosaurs, Bahariasaurus was destroyed by Allied bombing during Wold War II. Currently questioned as a synonym of the dinosaur Deltadromeus, Bahariasaurus is also currently described as a megaraptoran tyrannosaurid. This tyrannosaur sized dinosaur was a contemporary of the equally sized Carcharodontosaurus but possessed characters that, so far, keep the dinosaur separated from cracharodontosaurids as much as it is separated from tyrannosaurids and megarptorans proper. Without new remains we may never know the exact affiliation of this dinosaur; however, we do not now how long this will take or if it will happen for sure. Discovery of fossils is always a bit of luck and fortune though.

©Nobu Tamura

Jobaria Drawn

A lot of illustrations of Jobaria are typical for sauropods; a giant lumbering dinosaur holding its head high at the end of its long neck with its tail held out behind it. This illustrated posture is not lazy or pointless, in fact, seeing dinosaurs in what would be their most typical daily posture paints a more vivid look of what the daily life a dinosaur would be like. The images we see of fierce battles and dinosaurs in action also belong as parts of the complex lives that the animals lived, but Jobaria, for example, was not constantly hunted and probably did not have to rear up onto its hindlimbs every second of every day in order to grab food items. These action shots of life, like that portrayed by James Kuether, are exciting and integral to understanding how that rearing up action would be carried out by an adult Jobaria. That action is clearly something powerful and intimidating as it would allow this 220 plus tonne dinosaur to make itself taller than its predators and enable it to use its weight as a weapon. This was probably important given that its tail was somewhat short an unable to whip around as effectively as a dinosaur like Diplodocus. Mass can be an effective weapon though, and worth fearing for the small Afrovenator portrayed in Kuetcher's illustration.

©Nobu Tamura

Rearing Up

The mythology on the monster Jobar is rather thin online. However, we know a great deal about the anatomy and general morphology of Jobaria even without knowing if it really looks anything like its namesake. Jobaria has interesting forelimbs that appear to be slightly less robust than their hindlimbs. Possessing humeri that were less supportive than their femora explains the depictions of the dinosaur that we often see with its body sloped such that the weight of the animal is much more posteriorly directed and the center of the weight looks to be just in front of the pelvic area. The ratios of humerus and femur compared to their companions in elephants were the basis of the caudal center of gravity justification based on the idea that thicker femora enabled Jobaria to rear up on its hindlegs to reach into the upper canopies of the trees.

Sketch ©Paul Sereno, photo © Dan Liebman

Jobarian Literature

There are a number of papers on Jobaria that are worth mentioning today. The first is the description of Jobaria. There are other papers as well, though not as many as one might think considering that Jobaria is a very unique and interesting sauropod. There are abstracts from The European Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists conference in 2012 that discuss where and when sauropods fit into the phylogenetic tree together. These abstracts do not specifically discuss Jobaria by itself, but the context of their phylogeny is important in discussing them. Most importantly, for the most current description of Jobaria and its position within its ecosystem, there is a paper on African sauropod diversity that is well worth reading. I would encourage people to read at least this paper out of the three because its got the most current and relevant science on the dinosaur.

Jobaria in Cartoons

There is only a single video that shows Jobaria other than the video shared yesterday. There are a few tribute videos that are nothing more than a stream of photographs and illustrations. That other single video is a fight scene from the Dinosaur King cartoon between Jobaria and Spinosaurus. Dinosaur King, if it was accurate, would not have a Cretaceous and Jurassic dinosaur fighting. However, it is a fairly entertaining cartoon and the clip is pretty fun to watch on its own.

Short Readings

Jobaria tiguidensis is a dinosaur with few lists and many paragraphs. The links for the dinosaur, therefore, are all reading selections rather than lists of facts. This includes sites like Enchanted Learning and Kids Dinos. It also includes a version of these facts, mixed from Wikipedia and other sources, in a WizScience video:

Looking the Same

One of the things that sauropods are generally criticized for looking extremely similar to one another and being composed of highly fragmentary remains. These kinds of generalizations can be applied to a number of extinct animals known only from fossil; that does not make the generalizations any less true in some instances. However, one sauropod that looks somewhat distinctive is the African (Nigerian) dinosaur Jobaria tiguidensis. The dinosaur was recovered from the Sahara desert in 1997 and the simple fact that over 95% of the skeleton was pulled from the site makes this sauropod both one of the most complete sauropods ever recovered and one of the more distinctive and therefore different from other sauropods. Jobaria was an middle Jurassic (~164 million years ago) sauropod that embodied the Taureg legend of a beast with the same name. Jobaria may have been a little larger though starting at 60 feet (18.2 meters) long and 24.7 short tons (22.4 tonnes). Jobaria also had a very unique body posture, if all recreations are accurate:

(C) Steveoc

A Different Version

(C) Gabriel (Kana-hebi)

To end the week of Alvarezsaurus, looking at an alternative view of the dinosaur lends us to some more insight as to how different people have interpreted the skeleton and inferred structures based on where the animal fits into the tree. This illustration makes Alvarezsaurus look a great deal more like a chicken or duck than when looking at the head. The forelimbs have all but disappeared, with those forelimbs being fully enveloped by feathering. Despite looking as though they have been taken into the body, the forelimbs are probably more covered in extended body feathering than they are shortened abnormally, though this could only be answered by the illustrator himself. The remainder of the body is very typical and does not appear to have any different interpretations. However, unique interpretations such as this are always welcome and intriguing because paleontology is a very inference-heavy science and thrives on these kinds of soft tissue inferences, but must be based on solid knowledge of the available anatomy.

The Famed Alvarezsaurus

Perhaps the most famous thing about Alvarezsaurus is the fact that we know it exists. Beyond its improper placement in a documentary there is no other film or television placement of the dinosaur. The lack of popular sentiment for the dinosaur in common mediums is interesting given that it is a fairly well known dinosaur that is famous for being famous. Despite this it is not well represented, as stated before. The dinosaur is mentioned in a few books, though these are mostly passing mentions.

Interesting Anatomy of Small Dinosaurs

The number of specimens and the preservation of those specimens is enough to make a few concrete observations about the anatomy of Alvarezsaurus that we can discuss today. The vertebrae, especially the caudal vertebrae, are well known and the descriptions of the vertebrae are highly detailed, if anyone is interested in the vertebrae; my interest in vertebrae is waning these days. More interesting and unique is the known anatomy of the shoulders and ankles of Alvarezsaurus. The scapula, for example, is smaller, relatively, than other members of the family. It is also curved caudally as one traces it dorsally behind the shoulder itself. The ankle is also special within the family as it does not consist of a fused calcaneus and astragalus. An unfused ankle and a small, curved scapula are apparently basal within the alvarezsauridae, as Alvarezsaurus is often described as a primitive form within the family that bears its name. These features are hard to see in this mounted skeleton, but they are there.

Not Online

The original Bonaparte 1991 description of Alvarezsaurus calvoi is not online in any easily accessible place. There are a number of early 1990's taxa that are missing their initial descriptions online, so this is not an important distinction. That description makes the video from yesterday impossible as it describes a dinosaur from up to 83 million years ago whereas Saltasaurus comes from rocks dating to approximately 78 million years ago. Despite that trouble, the description has been used over and again in describing other members of the alvarezauridae such as Albertonykus and Achillesaurus.

A Minor Role

Alvarezsaurus has had only a small role in a documentary so far. The documentary is Dinosaur Planet and the small dinosaur appears in the fourth episode. Its role is as a small predator, obviously, of young sauropods; in this instance the sauropod in question is Saltasaurus. The attack is shown at night and the almost ostrich-like dinosaur manages to snag a few little sauropod snacks on its hunt. The attack occurs around minute 18 of the video shown below. The embedded version should start at 17:30.

Dinosaur Planet - Alpha's Egg by arkoleon

Drawing Your Coloring Sheet

Alvarezsaurus can be drawn, like any other dinosaur, and there are instructions on how to do so online in the 123Peppy drawing series. The website is actually geared toward entertainment, games, and social activities for young ladies, but they host a lot of drawing tutorials and other interesting videos on YouTube. This dinosaur is a little cartoon-like, but it is also still quite interesting. All of the facts related to Alvarezsaurus are also captured in the I Know Dino podcast; we have mentioned this podcast once before. The podcast takes the place of reading multiple sites.

Alvarez and Argentina

The small insectivore Alvarezsaurus calvoi was a bipedal theropod with a long tail that was built like a running machine. The little speedsters ran around Argentina from approximately 86 - 83 million years ago. Having been described as an avian-line theropod and as a non-avian theropod, Alvarezsaurus has had a strange past, taxonomically. Despite these difficulties Alvarezsaurus is an interesting dinosaur in an interesting position of the tree of life. As a relatively complete fossil, the skeletal anatomy of Alvarezsaurus is highly informative, regardless of the direction of the resulting tree branches that follow Alvarezsaurus.

©Karkemish

Classical Art

As one of the more well known ceratopsians, in recent years at least, Pachyrhinosaurus has influenced a lot of modern dinosaur art. Possibly one of the most dynamic of these images is this illustration of P. perotorum recovered from Alaska. The immense size of the animals is conveyed not only in the way they and their massively ornate frills fill the frame, but also in the two small shorebirds almost entirely hiding in the plain sight of the foreground. These birds are labeled Gruipeda vegrandiunis, representing a taxon represented by ichnofossils, in this case footprints.Regardless of the size of the birds, the dinosaurs are appreciably immense. Their heads are large bulky ends to a 26 foot (8 meter) long body that, with the power and muscle that was most likely behind it, would have been capable of delivering powerful and devastating attacks. We can assume, however, that attacking another animal with their head was probably, as it is even in goats and other animals we see with dedicated striking apparatuses for heads, a last resort during confrontation. Displays, territorial, and mating disputes may have been another question all together (see goats at play; I do not have to link anything specific, people love goat videos).

©James Havens, This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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.