Digging Into Popular Culture

A contest was held quite some time ago in the Spore forums to recreate an Oryctodromeus, but it does not seem to have happened. Additionally, there is no Dinosaur King episode or card that sports an Oryctodromeus. I think Dinosaur King cards are divided, in much the same way other fantasy games/books/etc. are, into elements and Oryctodromeus would certainly make a good earth related dinosaur what with all the burrowing and such. I am actually quite amazed that this has not yet happened. No cartoons, aside from Dinosaur Train, exist or documentaries with crazy CG dinosaurs running around or anything like that. Toys exist. Dinosaur Train toys were shown earlier in the week. The fact that the first dinosaur to be seen in evidence of burrowing and thus conclusively known to be a burrower is not more popular is quite sad. Perhaps in the near future something will happen that will make Oryctodromeus even more popular. However, popularity is not the only important thing in the world and, in fact, Oryctodromeus is far more than cool enough without being popular, so, therefore, let us just continue to love our burrowing friend without it being popular.

The Basal Euornithopod

Using the extensive practice I have these days with scientific names, my history of translating the Anglicization of Greek in scientific names and my past in which I took Latin classes, I can tell everyone here with great levels of certainty that "Euornithopod" translates very roughly to "New Bird Foot." Cladistic analysis of Oryctodromeus placed the dinosaur in a position which makes it a basal (primitive, for new readers) Euornithopod. In addition to this placement at the bottom of the Euornithipod tree branch, it is also placed in a cozy middle position of the Hypsilophodont family tree. In point of fact, Boyd et al. (2009), placed Oryctodromeus in the cozy middle place and not at the base of a further subfamily at all (though this may be partly due to the range of their study), but rather as a sister taxon to Orodromeus and Zephyrosaurus, two animals which show a great many common adaptations for burrowing that have been noted within the characters diagnostic for Oryctodromeus.

Restoration by Lee Hall

The forelimbs of Oryctodromeus only show moderate modifications in adapting for burrowing behaviors; however, the rear limbs, specifically in the pelvic girdle of the animal. The hips of Oryctodromeus show adaptations for balance as well as for digging with the legs. The beak of Oryctodromeus supposedly shows some adaptation for digging, though I think that if we ever unearth a wonderfully fossilized manus we will be able to diagnose more burrowing adaptations from the lower forelimbs than have been previously described for the snout. Above is the recreation drawn by Lee Hall who drew some of the other illustrations for the describing paper of Varicchio et al.

References
Boyd, Clint A.; Brown, Caleb M.; Scheetz, Rodney D.; and Clarke, Julia A. (2009). "Taxonomic revision of the basal neornithischian taxa Thescelosaurus and Bugenasaura". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29 (3): 758–770.

Early Morning From My Burrow

It is a bit chilly in my house. Kansas wind blows out the pilot light on our heating unit (it has a gas shut off so that is not a worry) on such a regular basis that we do not even really use the heater; whomever built a house in Kansas with a pilot light under the house with an opening that does not shield the wind is no genius anyhow. Instead we have cheap but efficient space heaters and warm blankets. I am okay with this system and it allows me, this morning, to simulate typing in a burrow, or a blanket fortress, whichever you prefer (it's about 50F in the house, we are not freezing ourselves to death or anything). The burrows in question this week, not mine, have been studied fairly extensively, as we would expect with such a rare and amazing find. The initial discovery paper is  online free and everyone should at least skim it. It is available thanks to the Proceedings of the Royal Society and the authors. Additionally, David Varrichio, who was lead author on the original paper, has gone on to work with D. Cary Woodruff to model the creation of the fossilized burrow using PVC and sediment experiments with comparably sized rabbit skeletons to simulate the three Oryctodromeus discovered in the burrow. Their results are not available free via the Geological Society, but KU's Palaios has posted  the abstract online. You really have to love the image that came from this experiment that I found though:

Modeling a dinosaur den: a half-size PVC model of a Oryctodromeus burrow used to tests scenarios for how they became preserved. From Woodruff and Varricchio, 2011.

Now, granted I cannot say that the image is the best one from this modeling experiment, it certainly does a good job of showing how much work must have gone in to designing and conducting the modeling experiment. It also renews the sadness of the fate of the three skeletons trapped in the burrow and fossilized.

Moving Oryctodromeus

As far as illustrated Oryctodromeus we cannot really improve much on the fun illustrations of yesterday. Dinosaur Train really characterized the speed that Oryctodromeus is theorized to have possessed; though they did not show it in a running stance so much as they showed speed as a characteristic of their movement in general. Still, it was entertaining and interesting. Today's videos are much less movement oriented in comparison and are actually much more information driven. One of them, which I have not used as a video source in ages, comes from the emails and letters that George Blasing (Dinosaur George) answers on YouTube. Due to that fact it is important to note that in order to hear the information George has on Oryctodromeus you may have to listen through some other emails. Considering I rather enjoy hearing some of the emails he receives and his interpretations.

I also found a short video from Emory University and, specifically, Anthony Martin, showing bits of Martin's hike through Australia and one of the burrow sites that he and his colleagues discovered in Australia. There is not much to it, but it is something to look at and hear some thoughts from the discoverers. An adapted story from the Emory announcement can be seen on a site called Fossil Science.

Introducing New Words

The folks over at the Dinosaur Train camp put together a rather interesting episode called "The Burrowers" featuring Oryctodromeus. The episode introduces words to the audience, intended of course to be children, like crepuscular, which is pretty fantastic. The assumption that children can learn some interesting and difficult scientific words like that, as well as enjoy a "hole" bunch of puns (it happens so often in the episode I could not resist if you told me to), shows a lot of faith in the intelligence of children. As usual, Scott Sampson's interaction with and explanation to the kids is concise, intelligent, and well suited to the kids watching the show. As with most Dinosaur Train episodes there are toys related to the episode that have been released; in this instance the company creating the toys is Tomy. For some rather confusing reason the description of Oryctodromeus on Tomy's site states that it is a carnivore; disregard that. Other kid friendly info sites exist as well, including PBS itself as well as the NHM in London. I have to say, at this point, we have used the NHM so much in finding information that kids can digest about their favorite dinosaurs quickly and easily, that the folks over there putting those fact sheets together have done a fantastic job and should be rewarded somehow despite the fact sheets not being glamorous or showy in any way. Coloring pages, however, I am sad to report do not really exist as such for this dinosaur. It would be a neat little dinosaur to color, but alas, there are none at this point.

Dinosaur Moles

©James Hays

Oryctodromeus burrows were discovered in 2006 in Montana and since then other burrows have been described from Australia. While Anthony Martin, the man responsible for the descriptions of the burrows in America as well as Australia, attributes the Aussie burrows to both a dependence on the earth to hide as well as warm during the theorized long Aussie Cretaceous winter (see leaellynasaura), the Montana burrows would more than likely not have been dug for winter survival as much as simple survival from predators. What else, then, could they have been used for? Certainly running and hiding is enough reason to have a burrow when a slightly larger raptor or a tyrannosaur is trying to end your life; but was there other evidence in the burrow that made the Oryctodromeus burrow find even more important than simply being a burrow? There certainly is and we have the graphics to help understand it.

Adapted from L. Hall/Montana State University

The Montana burrow contained Oryctodromeus skeletal material in a large hollowed out burrow comprised, millions of years later, of sandstone that had, it is thought, originally lined the burrow for comfort, to make a home (a couple of pillows and a sandy carpet, maybe a skylight!) for the small animals. The entrance of the burrow, denoted in the figure above by the letter "U" was just large enough for an adult Oryctodromeus to squeeze in and then meander, probably crouching quite low for a short ways before reaching the larger inner chamber, down to its wider and more open home environment. Using speed to gain distance and then squeezing into a small hole is a somewhat common defensive measure for extant fauna (rabbits, mice, and  shrews; to name a few mammals that can use this strategy) and would have certainly worked in dinosaur times for a smaller herbivore which used speed as its initial defensive strategy. However, the home chamber, labeled "CH", also had a surprise for Martin and the team when it was examined; babies! Along with an adult Oryctodromeus two smaller skeletons, announced as juveniles, were also discovered in the hollowed out nest area of the burrow. This evidence points not only at a defensive strategy but also at a family unit living in the burrow. Whether that family unit is theorized to be a single parent unit or that of a collector and protector role for each parent I have not seen yet, however, given evidence from numerous stay at home parents in the existing animal kingdom, it would not amaze me, for one, if the parents either took turns collecting foliage and bringing it to the nest or if it was a mom at home dad out earning food situation. This could also explain a heart-breaking story of loss when a burrow collapsed and a family was lost with one parent outside unable to help its family...

Photo and arrows by Anthony Martin

Let us, for now, try to ignore the sadness either parenting scenario leaves us in with this burrow and skeletons and look at something that Anthony Martin personally points out on his blog entry from which this photo is borrowed. The arrows, according to Martin (which can be seen in the image above as well once one knows to look for them), indicate accessory, or extra burrows. These would not have been used by the Oryctodromeus, but rather by other animals smaller than Oryctodromeus which survived by living in communion with Oryctodromeus, or vice versa. Martin points out in his blog that the gopher tortoise exists in a similar symbiotic community where the tortoise, or another denizen of the community, begins and extends its tunnel and other smaller animals, insects, smaller mammals even, extend tunnels for their own living spaces in the comfort of knowing that their neighbors will not come through their walls and eat them. The arrows in Martin's photo (and t1 and t2 above) point to other burrows found extending from the main Oryctodromeus tunnel. Oryctodromeus was not, then, just a burrow digger, but a community planner and neighborhood builder. Nifty role for a fast little dinosaur.

Living Under Your Feet

Hypsilophodontids are small, quick moving herbivorous creatures known worldwide from the Middle Jurassic to the Cretaceous. One species in particular, however, is of interest to us this week and is actually of interest to a great many other scientists as well. There is no extravagantly unique bone structure or defensive adaptation that sets this dinosaur apart from all other dinosaurs and makes it so worthy of extra attention. In fact, what sets Oryctodromeus cubicularis apart from other Hypsilophodontids is the living conditions in which it has been discovered. Unearthed originally in Montana, Oryctodromeus (which translates to "digging runner") has also been unearthed with its home intact and, in three instances, with the dinosaurs still at home. These "homes" were underground burrows, making Oryctodromeus the first dinosaur to be unearthed with evidence of burrowing behaviors. Three individuals in the burrow, identifiable as skeletons in advanced imaging, were found in a burrow that was lined with sand; thus the burrows are preserved as sandstone cores embedded in, typically, mud or clay based stone.Oryctodromeus skeletons were identified in the burrow by comparing their characters with the known characters of the species which are based off of many different excavations and a lot of identified and associated material of many different individuals. Small animals, about 6.8 feet (2.1m) long and approximately 70lbs (32kg), Oryctodromeus adults had basic digging tools for hands. Adaptations in the Montana specimens (named Blackleaf specimens for their location of discovery) have shown jaw, forelimb, and pelvic adaptations that would have aided in soil removal from the burrows. All of these, and more, will be discussed further in the coming week.

©Mark Hallet (via National Geographic, May 2008)

As Seen On TV

Saurophaganax, we have discovered, is different from Allosaurus in the way in which the vertebral column is constructed, not, as thought in the 1940's, in the way in which the tibia was constructed. We have also seen that there is a lot of knowledge out there about this dinosaur but that there is a lot left to study as well. As much as there is, and as much as there is left to study, it is not amazing that Saurophaganax has certainly left an impression on the popular culture of the world. Sunday we saw how Saurophaganax has made its mark on cartoons, children's books, and card games. Monday brought us Saurophaganax on the BBC, where available, and showed us the size differences of Saurophaganax and Allosaurus. We also saw the different representative sizes at other times during the week and yesterday we summed up those differences, and explained them, as they are found in the vertebrae of Saurophaganax. Today, on the day I typically pile in all the remaining popular culture references, I am fortunate in still having a generous amount of information to share, which is not always the case even with the most popular of dinosaurs. Saurophaganax has been created in Spore, like so many other dinosaurs.

I think this is probably the best in the bunch. It has also shown up as toys in a number of places based both off of the dinosaur itself and the cartoon representation which we saw on Sunday in Dinosaur King.

The second picture does not feel like loading on this computer, I will try again later; however, the image above is the Dinosaur King based Saurophaganax. The fact that Saurophaganax is missing so many bones may one day, provided more of its bones are found, allow it to remain separated from Allosaurus as a larger cousin rather than being relegated once again to being considered a species of Allosaurus. Should the second ever happen, I feel, as popular as Saurophaganax has become, that the public, and perhaps paleontologists as well, would react in much the same way that they did when Triceratops and Torosaurus were theorized to be the same animal. That debate is probably far from over though, so a comparative argument around Saurophaganax and Allosaurus would probably be just as lengthy considering how popular both dinosaurs are as separate genera.

Neural Arch-Nemesis

The tibia originally used to distinguish what was then Saurophagus from Allosaurus was not distinguishable from those found in Allosaurus. We have mentioned that a few times so far this week. The distinguishing characteristics of the vertebrae used by Chure (1995) to separate Saurophaganax and Allosaurus, however, were obviously different enough to warrant the widely accepted separation of the two genera though they reside in the same family. The question then becomes what is different between thevertebrae of Allosaurus and Saurophaganax and what exactly is a neural arch? A neural arch, for those wondering, is the posterior (rear) part of a vertebra. It is the arch that spans the hole through which the spinal cord is strung down the entire series of the vertebral column from brain to tail, to put it simply. As we can see from the diagram at right, the neural arch is composed of, and has coming from it, a number of processes of bone, not all of which are labeled here. Some of these labels sometimes change depending on both the animal and the source. For example, the dorsal spine is referred to as the spinous process in some diagrams. The number of these bones differs based on the animal and the number within each region of the body also differs depending on the animal. Humans have 24 vertebrae arranged in three sections; cervical, thoracic, lumbar with an additional 9 fused vertebrae in the sacral region (the last 9 are typically left out of the count of the vertebral column in human anatomy meaning we have 33 but only 24 are considered vertebrae) whereas cattle have between 49 and 51 vertebrae arranged over five regions; cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacral, and caudal. Typically dinosaur vertebrae are looked at as being either cervical, dorsal, sacral (typically a fused set of vertebrae), or caudal. The guys at SVPOW, specifically Matt Wedel for this post, do a good job of going over dinosaur vertebral anatomy themselves.

Anyway, the neural arches of Saurophaganax show the following characteristics, as restated by Mickey Mortimer that distinguish them from that of Allosaurus:

- atlas lacks prezygapophysis for proatlas, does not roof over neural canal
- dorsal vertebrae with horizontal lamina along base of each side of neural
spine arising from spine base cranially, free caudally
- chevrons craniocaudally expanded distally

The atlas is the first vertebra in the vertebral column, meaning it is right behind the skull of the animal (below in our case). The pro-atlas is a dorsal (back of the animal) aspect of the atlas and the prezygapophysis is an aspect of the vertebra which projects forward (upward in humans) to help fit with the preceding vertebra in the column snugly (in this case it would extend to the base of the cranium had it existed). The second aspect, the lamina arising cranially and being free caudally means that the caudal (tail-ward) end of the vertebrae were not covered by that aspect of the bone as the cranial (skull-ward) end was. Chevrons being extended craniocaudally distally means that the chevrons of the spine, typically found on tail elements to protect nerves and blood vessels ventrally (from the underside, meaning these aspects of the bone are underneath the vertebrae) were expanded as they moved away from the center of the body, toward the tail.

Papers and Problems

©Chris Porter (Commissioned by OMNH)

Daniel Chure's original 1995 redscription and redesignation of Saurophaganax was published in a collection of papers and presented at a symposium on Mesozoic ecosystems. This paper was printed in the collection 5 years prior to Chure's dissertation thesis on another new species, this time and Allosaurus species. The significance of the paper redescribing and redesignating the holotype is that it came very early in Chure's career, which is somewhat rare, these days, for paleontology discoveries. Many discoveries are made by graduate students in cooperation with their advisors, but rarely do we see late undergraduates or early graduate students (not presenting a thesis yet) as making discoveries valid and important to paleontological research. Paul, in his newest book, presents the animal as "Allosaurus (or Saurophaganax) maximus" and notes that enough material and distinction within the material exists to create a new genus and species, but does not present it as a unique species, which is a little strange. Not many studies have been published that we can share online since the Chure paper of 1995;  however, there is a great deal of potential research that remains to be done on this animal, so hopefully we will see some quality research done in the next few years as new materials have been unearthed in New Mexico recently which may belong to Saurophaganax and certainly belongs to the Allosauridae.

Movie Apocalypse!

Saurophaganax, for a somewhat disputed dinosaur, has made a few waves in the world and certainly enough to be portrayed on film. Yesterday we saw a cartoon version of a meaty and robust theropod that could obviously hold its own in a fight (I know it was a made up cartoon fight, but who does not enjoy even a cartoon clash of dinosaurs?). Today we see how Saurophaganax is depicted by Dinosaur-Quest:

and then how BBC's Planet Dinosaur, if we are lucky enough to find a working clip (BBC shows do not always play in North America from their website; copyright laws or some such), depicts the differences in Allosaurus and Saurophaganax. The closest I come to finding a decent clip is a filmed off of a television clip with the sound edited (no idea why). Put it on mute and we can watch the differences without the sound edits. The BBC is very stingy about putting up clips that I want to use when I need them. If anyone has had the ability to watch Planet Dinosaur (I have not had cable, by choice, for nearly 6 years now) than it may have already come to your attention. If not, watch the link above and see how the BBC portrays the differences at least. Hopefully more visuals of the differences in Allosaurus and Saurophaganax will come into the limelight in the years to come.

The Children's Lizard Eater

Saurophaganax, for kids, is not really a foreign animal. It has appeared in a number of places, including in Dinosaur King in an episode called Dueling Dinos. I like that we can step away from the hard science one day a week to enjoy cartoons and being a kid in a way like this. Sunday is one of my favorite days in each dinosaur's week. I'm happy that I have found a lot of dinosaurs in cartoons lately as well. Saurophaganax does not stop with Dinosaur King though. It also has its own book, which I found through Target's website. It also has an information page through the Natural History Museum in London. There are not many coloring opportunities, but if you look online you can find a few black and white images.

Speaking of which. I am putting together some of my illustrations (I know they are not highly professional) as coloring books for some of my nieces. It ought to be fun.

To Allosaur or Not To Allosaur?

©Michelle (AKA Mitternacht90)

Saurophaganax, as we briefly discussed yesterday, poses a small problem. Looking at the skeleton, both from yesterday and today, it can be seen to possess many Allosaurid elements, especially in the claws and a vague resemblance in the top of the skull from the nasal back to the parietal; I think this may be an effect produced by the ridges and rugosities seen above the orbital fenestra as Allosaurus species were known to have such formations on their skulls as well. However, many theropods had a set of small nubs of horns or rugosities on the tops of their heads that bear resemblance to these, so we cannot use that as a piece of evidence that undeniably unites the two genera. Chure mentioned tibia characters that had been mentioned prior to his renaming of the genus, and subsequent separation from Allosaurus completely, but noted that these characters did not differentiate the two genera. Instead, he named characters of the neural arches of vertebrae in a sample labeled OMNH 01123 (Oklahoma Museum of Natural History) as a new holotype for Saurophaganax.

©Mineo Shiraishi

When it is fleshed out, however, Saurophaganax certainly resembles an Allosaurus in many ways. Part of the reason that we cannot easily tell the animals apart is due to the fact that the neural arches, which are used by Chure as a holotype and possess the characters used to separate the genera, cannot be seen in a fleshed out animal. What we are left with is a very Allosaurine dinosaur, which makes sense considering that Chure's classification of Saurophaganax still places the genus within the Allosauridae. Saurophaganax, then, would look somewhat like an Allosaurus in the same way that many hadrosaurs have similar characteristics within the same clade. The most notable, when fleshed out using the material available, is the similarity in the claws and those cranial rugosities and ridges. Considering Allosaurus' ability to use its own claws to take down prey it makes sense that a more "technologically advanced" member of the family would retain, and perhaps even fine tune, those weapons. The cranial protuberances were probably for species and individual identification as well as just plain looking beautiful along with that athletic Allosaur-like body.

©Nobu Tamura

This incarnation of Saurophaganax is a little more stylistic and gives us some more differences from Allosaurus. More than anything Tamura has highlighted increases in body size around the base of the skull, the base of the tail, and even given our typically agile looking Allosaurid frame a bit of girth. The size increase between Allosaurus and Saurophaganax, supposedly, was quite significant, and as such the agility of Allosaurus may have been lost to the later Saurophaganax which may have hunted using its sheer size to aid in taking down larger prey that were either slower moving, such as older sauropods, or it may have been more of an ambush predator whereas earlier Allosaurs were thought to have been able to run down some prey items and use their agility. Gigantism to wrestle prey items would not be a new idea in carnivore circles as many other theropod family possess, usually, either earlier or later members that seem to have been designed for that exact purpose (think of Utahraptor, Acrocanthosaurus, and Carnotaurus as examples of bulky wrestler-like theropods). Perhaps this is something that should be considered when thinking of the larger Saurophaganax.

Lizard Eating Master

©Chris Dodds (uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by FunkMonk)

The Lizard Eating Master, or Saurophaganax, is a Morrison Formation denizen of the late Kimmeridgian Age, Late Jurassic, of Oklahoma, USA. Saurophaganax lives in a somewhat precarious position. Some consider it a valid genus and species, Saurophaganax maximus, while other consider it to be a another representative skeleton of Allosaurus; namely Allosaurus maximus of course. That is not even the first name that has been debated about for Saurophaganax; the original name for the animal was Saurophagus, but this belongs to an already named fly-catcher (which is a bird). Regardless, the material on which Saurophaganax is based comes from four individuals in Oklahoma which are distinguishable from Allosaurus according to Daniel Chure. I think throughout this week we will try to get to the bottom of some of this mystery and perhaps even help in sorting out the mystery properly.

Achelousaurus' Spotlight

First and foremost, Achelousaurus appears in Spore as a created character. I think the job was done well, until the frill moves because it looks as though it was constructed of "hair":

Secondly, Dinosaur King, as mentioned before, is the only other popular culture reference we have to share today. There is one card, that I have found, are a small number of cards designed to be used in the game. These can be found on the dinosaur's page in the Dinosaur King Wiki. There really is not much else to say in popular culture news about Achelousaurus. That being the case, my American fans enjoy these Thanksgiving dinosaur images (everyone else, check out this neat dinosaur art!):

©Bob Diven

And this:

Following Trends

©Nobu Tamura

Kirkland and DeBlieux, as mentioned a couple of weeks ago now, described Diabloceratops. In doing so they made some generalizations about the evolutionary trends of the Centrosaurines based on their skulls. The Centrosaurine family tree was already organized in the way in which they described the evolutionary trends and as such they were not truly reinventing the family tree anywhere near as much as they were describing some observable traits in the skulls of the animals that they knew at the time to be members of the Centrosaurine clade. The general trend, it appears, starting at Diabloceratops (and now with Xenoceratops' discovery with that Centrosaurine dinosaur) the trend described is a continuous trend of parietal frill adornment while we see a reduction in supraorbital (think eyebrows!) horn reduction, the replacement of those horns with a solid nasal horncore, and the subsequent reduction of that horn structure. As each horncore site is reduced into nonexistence the bone at the site of origin becomes denser and rougher, eventually replacing the horn with a rough dense structure of bone, which would be highly suited to dispersal of forces consistent with headbutting another animal "safely". Achelousaurus is a long way down the Centrosaurine family tree, situated snugly between Einiosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus, and as such exhibits traits in the skull reminiscent of both the previous and following animals (whether the three are a direct ancestry line or not is still open to debate, but the evidence is very strong for a direct lineage based on the skull evolution).

Einiosaurus has a dense boss where the supraorbital horns were in previous Centrosaurines and the nasal horn is exceedingly large but very forward curving and shows a large reduction in physical height from base to tip. Einiosaurus was preceded by Styracosaurus in the family, which had the largest nasal horns of the group, and the reduction of the horn in the way that it occurs seems quite random until we look at the skulls of Achelousaurus. Achelousaurus possesses a very stunted horncore that, in many interpretations, is argued to be simply the edge of the boss on the nasal region, but in the youngest skull discovered (age-wise, not geologically) appears to be a forward, straight off of the nasal and above the beak of the skull, jutting miniscule nasal; following the reduction trend and followed by the extremely dense nasal boss of the Pachyrhinosaurs. Seeing the trends in sequence (perhaps I will play with this sometime when I have more time) would be fantastic. The morphology of the Centrosaurine line is quite interesting and demands more study than has so far been afforded to it.

Achelousaurus: Paper Edition

Achelousaurus is not a really heavily written about Centrosaurine, though it cannot be said that nothing has been written about it in relation to other Centrosaurines or even in papers by itself. Finding such material is a little more difficult, but it is not entirely absent from the world. Some of the most interesting things anyone can read are about skull shape, when it comes to Ceratopsids in general, and Achelousaurus is no different in that respect. The Royal Tyrell's Ceratopsid symposium, from which the book that houses many of the papers cited in the last couple of Ceratopsians mentioned here, did an absolutely fantastic job of pulling together a lot of Ceratopsian research and publishing it is a single hardcover book was a very good idea on someone's part. I just need to get a copy of it some time.

Achelousaurs' Other Movies

Yesterday I shared Dinosaur King and how to draw videos of Achelousaurus. I almost wiped out all of the video resources for Movie Monday by doing so yesterday. There are no new documentaries or kiddy movies that show Achelousaurus, probably because it is hard enough to pronounce it anyhow and because there have not been many feature length films about dinosaurs in a few years. Documentaries have barely, as we know, hit the tip of the iceberg on dinosaur species, so we typically do not expect the dinosaur of the week to have featured heavily in any documentaries unless it is a big name dino that has been popular for quite some time. One Youtube poster has designed a very short animation that we can view and another, named Rob Mutch, has filmed the skull cast on display in the Museum of the Rockies. There is also a SPORE contribution, but I will save featuring that until Thursday.

Juvenile Achelousaurus for Juvenile Humans

There are a few good resources today. Science for Kids has a small fact page that is child friendly; we always like to see those on a Sunday morning. Additionally, though there is no Dinosaur Train episode which features Achelousaurus, there is a good deal of information and resources associated with Dinosaur King, which has not been true for the past few dinosaurs. Therefore, any young card player that is intrigued by the Dinosaur King slant on the dinosaurs we look at should be happy today. 4KidsTV hosts the episode of Dinosaur King in which Achelousaurus makes its debut as well. I rarely get to find the actual episodes that feature the dinosaurs we are speaking about during any given week when it comes to Dinosaur King (Dinosaur Train is a different story of course) so I am quite happy to be able to share the link to the episode with Achelousaurus. In terms of coloring pages, there are two ways to get pages to color this weekend. One is to draw it yourself, if you are any good at following drawing tutorials; I am terrible at trying to follow those drawing tutorial things. Either that or you can print and color this adaptation of Mariana Ruiz's image shared on Friday:

Images of Later Centrosaurines

©Rescast International

The skull of Achelousaurus possesses three dense bone groupings along the nasal, some of the frontal, and the supraorbital ridge. The nasal ridge is always depicted as a shield like protuberance or a straight up jutting protuberance of horn, but given the evolutionary trends of the Centrosaurine family, specifically the reduction of brow horns while a tall nasal horn was becoming prominent and then reduction of the height and an exaggeration of the forward sloping of the nasal horn, most prominent in Einiosaurus, this nasal boss could be then, in part, a horn core for a nasal horn that is in the last vestiges of the forward facing prominence found in Einiosaurus, especially because of the perceived close relationship of Einiosaurus and Achelousaurus. It is rarely shown as such, but I think that the end of the nasal bone structures may have supported at least a tiny horn which jutted straight forward off of the nasal bone, almost like a digging horn or the adornments found on male narwhals rather than just a dense patch of bone.

©Nobu Tamura

Most depictions of Achelousaurus show that nasal ridge as a boss of dense bone, which may indeed be correct and is obviously the most popular interpretation. The eye-brow ridge, or suprorbital ridge, bone is certainly dense and unless the alternate theory of Pachyrhinosaurus horns jutting from dense bone material is applied, then the dense ridges of bone are merely a shield like covering over the eyes much like we would find in the extremely thick domes of Pachycephalosaurs which leads to one solid theory for these ridges: Centrosaurines, once the evolutionary trend of horn reduction had been taken this far in later Centrosaurines that they possessed only thick areas of bone where horns once were, had changed from piercing defensive weapons/rival intimidators to headbutters like modern goats, though obviously much larger. We would then probably expect to see more of an ability in the hips to rear, like goats, or more power at the very least to sprint into a rival or predator, meaning that the cow-like structure of the body may need to be altered a bit.

©Mineo Shiraishi

One thing that certainly did not change, in terms of evolutionary trends (I put together a presentation for a posters and presentation class I am taking for my MS on Centrosaurine evolutionary trends, so I apologize for the heavy use of that phrase this week!) is that the parietosquamosal frill is still quite well adorned. The peak of Centrosaurine frill design, arguably, is the ostentatious frill which is exemplified by Styracosaurus with its lightweight protection and multiple spikes all along the ridge of the frill. Achelousaurus has a much simpler frill design, but it is still considered an adorned frill. The two spikes at the apex of the frill are standard for all Centrosaurines save a few (Centrosaurus, Coronosaurus, which used to be a Centrosaurus species until recently). Frills of the Centrosaurines are truly works of art. This is a little more minimalist in its approach than other Centrosaurines, but it is still a wonderful looking animal.