Long Distance Hugs

We could probably all use some kind of interaction from outside our family these days. While we cannot really pat one another on the back and continue social distancing, there are animals that could have done so. One such animal was the ornithomimosaur Deinocheirus mirificus. Originally, a pair of arms and their shoulders were described in 1970 by Osmólska & Roniewicz, and Deinocheirus was originally thought to be some kind of carnosaur. The description was amended after some time to assign Deinocheirus to the ornithomimosaurs, but new material to even more thoroughly describe the dinosaur was unknown for nearly 50 years. In 2014 (49 years after the initial dig that found Deinocheirus remains) new remains were found in Mongolia (later they were stolen but then returned to the country) from two individuals of the species. At an estimated 11 m and 6.4 t, this was a large and heavy ornithomimosaur of the Late Cretaceous.

The enormous hands and long arms are thought to have been well adapted for digging, which, given the duckbill-like head that seems adapted for water and grass foraging, appears to be at odds with the hypothesized diet. A large number of gastroliths associated with Deinocheirus support a vegetation heavy diet, as the dinosaur would have used these to help break down the fibrous plant matter. It has been reported that fish vertebrae were also discovered along with the gastroliths, meaning that it is likely that Deinocheirus was eating fish as well. Could oversized hands be useful for catching fish? There is a possibility for this as a use, but digging and manipulation of vegetation remains a good hypothesis.

Digging, with large hands, could help efficiently find supplemental dietary items like insects and burrowing lizards; there is no known evidence for this behavior currently. Also unknown is the nesting behavior of these animals. Could hands good at digging make very good nesting mounds? This is also a potential hypothesis. Holding vegetation to crop (or chop) small amounts of food could also be plausible. Defense could also be a plausible explanation for the namesake "horrible hands". Injuries to the holotype digit joints and bitemarks in the coracoids near the shoulder indicate manipulation of the digits (important for dexterous activities noted above) and unsuccessful predation. These predation events are attributed to one of the largest predators on Earth during the Cretaceous, Tarbosaurus bataar.

©Abelov2014
Adapted by Wiki users from the original at (https://www.deviantart.com/abelov2014)

Talk to me on Twitter!

Hello all!

You're stuck at home. You're loved ones are stuck at home. I'm stuck at home. I'll be working on lectures and moving my class (and helping colleagues move online) all week. However, if you, your friends, or those lovely students you've suddenly been locked in with are looking for dinosaur or ornithology information over the coming weeks I'd like to offer what I can.

From 9am - 12pm EST during the weekdays I'll leave my Twitter feed (@ornithanatomist) open to questions. Maybe I'll get a lot of questions, maybe I won't! If you have questions, though, ask and I'll answer, find an answer (if I can), or point you to a good source to find the answer.

Stay tuned here and on Twitter. As I'm able I may be able to work out themed question days. I may (time permitting) be able to set up live Q & A sessions as well. Stay tuned everyone.

Fossil Squirrels?

Good morning! What a wonderful morning it is! Punxsutawney Phil came out and told us all that spring is right around the corner, which is a very big deal. This is a North American "tradition" that was adapted from a similar German tradition (Dachstag: "Badger day") involving the European badger. American badgers would be far less amicable to this sort of treatment I think. In Pennsylvania, Phil is kind of a big deal him(her?)self. Groundhogs (Marmota monax) make a somewhat lucrative life for themselves in the state, even being endorsed by the state lottery as a spokes... hog named Gus. It is also quite hard to walk near any wooded area of Pennsylvania without running into at least a few of these large animals scurrying about the edge of the forest. But what are they really?

Fear is an acceptable response.

The animal has a lot of common names: groundhog, woodchuck, Canada marmot, and, my personal favorite, whistlepig, are just a few. Groundhogs, by any name, are not actually pigs or hogs (they are in the same genus as marmots, so that name has some basis, though they are certainly found south of Canada), but instead, they are actually some of the larger members of the squirrel family. Specifically, as some of their common names somewhat allude to, they are ground squirrels. Groundhogs can climb, despite their name, and a groundhog in a tree is something worth seeing.

When we think of oversized anything in the animal kingdom we tend to think that the only place to look is in the fossil record. That is, after all, where we find giant sloths, oversized wolves, dinosaurs, and enormous terror birds. We know that they are fantastic digging animals and spend a lot of time, including hibernation in a burrow. Was there, then, an even more giant ground squirrel that burrowed extensively in the history of life? Fossilized burrows are known from much earlier than the current era. The first burrows belong to very early animals, but if we are looking for the recent ancestors of giant squirrels, we do not need to go that far back.

Photo of Clarkia, Idaho squirrel fossil by
Bill Richards, North Idaho College

The first squirrels in North America appear in the Late Eocene, around 41 to 33 million years ago. Any "squirrel-like" fossils from before this are not squirrels.
The first ground squirrels appear shortly after the Eocene, in the early Oligocene, at approximately 30 million years ago in Europe. As far as the marmots themselves, there is no clear consensus on when this large group of ground squirrels first appear in the fossil record. They are evident by the Late Oligocene in North America. It is acknowledged that by the time we have a good fossil record, in the Mid-Miocene, the ground squirrels, particularly prairie dogs, are already well-represented within their modern range. The fact that we recognize their fossils as highly similar to their extant morphology does not really bode well for finding the origins of Punxsutawney Phil and Gus' family though. Truly, the fact of the matter is that squirrels, as long as we have known them in the extinct and extant capacity, have looked pretty much like squirrels. One could almost say that rodents are kind of like the cockroach of the mammal family in that they have existed long enough to have "survived anything and everything" that life can throw at them. We may see if this remains true in our own lifetimes, but let us hope that we do not.

For more reading:

Helgen, Kristofer M.; Cole, F. Russell; Helgen, Lauren E.; Wilson, Don E. (April 2009). "Generic Revision in the Holarctic Ground Squirrel Genus Spermophilus" (PDF). Journal of Mammalogy. 90 (2): 270–305. doi:10.1644/07-MAMM-A-309.1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-10-22.

Kryštufek, B.; B. Vohralík (2013). "Taxonomic revision of the Palaearctic rodents (Rodentia). Part 2. Sciuridae: Urocitellus, Marmota and Sciurotamias". Lynx, n. s. (Praha). 44: 27–138.

Steppan, Scott J.; Storz, B.L. &; Hoffmann, R.S. (2004): "Nuclear DNA phylogeny of the squirrels (Mammalia: Rodentia) and the evolution of arboreality from c-myc and RAG1". Mol. Phyl. Evol. 30(3): 703–719. doi:10.1016/S1055-7903(03)00204-5 PDF fulltext

Non-crocodilian Face

Holotype as depicted in von Baczko and Desojo, 2016

The holotype skull of Riojasuchus is very non-crocodilian to the casual observer. Having previously been associated with a number of people interested in crocodiles this skull shapes is not very alien to me and others that have experiences like mine. This is far from the strangest of crocodilian ancestors of course and we have discussed others here before (such as Simosuchus). The ancestral variations and resulting evolutionary history of crocodilians is actually quite fascinating. Riojasuchus is somewhere in the middle of this history. It is, obviously I think, not quite a crocodile and not one of the "primitive" herbivorous crocodilian ancestors. Further separating Riojasuchus from its descendant cousins (possibly a more appropriate description than saying it is directly ancestral to crocodilians) is the tree of Butler et al. (2011) which describes Riojasuchus (and ornithsuchidae) as a lineage that ends without more descendant lineages. Regardless of whether Riojasuchus has extant descendants or not, the skull shape is decidedly non-crocodilian, which is what we wanted to look at specifically today. The teeth are more crcodilian than some other crocodile ancestors. The dorsoventrally tall skull is quite distinct from living crocodilians. The transition from skulls of this shape to the more familiar flattened skull of crocodilians is the subject of much ongoing inquiry and research. It is a long, complex story, and we are still learning quite a lot from this group of animals about how and why head shape changes, or does not, over the evolution of a group.

Butler, R. J., Brusatte, S. L., Reich, M., Nesbitt, S. J., Schoch, R. R., & Hornung, J. J. (2011). The sail-backed reptile Ctenosauriscus from the latest Early Triassic of Germany and the timing and biogeography of the early archosaur radiation. PloS one, 6(10), e25693. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025693

Nesbitt, S. J., Desojo, J. B., & Irmis, R. B. (2013). Anatomy, phylogeny and palaeobiology of early archosaurs and their kin. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 379(1), 1-7.

More from 1969

More paleontological discoveries were made in 1969 than just Deinonychus, though that is certainly one of the most famous of dinosaurs. A supposed basal was also described during 1969 that turned out to be a little more unique than a basal dinosaur (of course these are unique themselves). Described by J. F. Bonaparte along with another "new reptile" (Andescynodon being the second description, but not the focus of today's discussion) of the Argentinian Triassic, Riojasuchus tenuisceps (Bonaparte 1969) is an ornithosuchid ("bird crocodile") archosaur whose line of descendants include extant alligators and crocodiles. The holotype includes a nearly complete cranium and partial postcranial elements; more than 50% of the postcranial skeleton is preserved. Four total skeletons are known. The skulls average 25 cm (9.8 in) in length. Riojasuchus actually has a similar head to total length ratio compared to its descendants despite the general appearance of having a much shorter skull than alligators and crocodiles. Ornithosuchids, including Riojasuchus' relatives are known to reach approximately 2 m (6.6 ft) in length. Two other genera (with single species) show that there was likely a fairly wide distribution, if not a global distribution, of the ornithosuchids: Venaticosuchus Bonaparte 1971 (known from Argentina also) and Ornithosuchus Newton 1894 (known from Scotland).

©Nobu Tamura

Modern Dinosaurs

Since the description of Deinonychus by John Ostrom in 1969 the "dinosaur renaissance" that was kicked off by this paper and the hypotheses it generated, in part, has radically changed how we imagine and study dinosaurs. Deinonychus, for example, was originally illustrated as a leather skinned dinosaur. Deinonychus illustrations ranged in color and from strong looking to the often emaciated appearance that many dinosaurs, especially in the 1980's, were illustrated like. These versions have the skin pulled taut over bones in a way that makes the animals appear to lack muscle and other soft tissue. However, we do not generally see these kinds of illustrations anymore. Now, Deinonychus illustrations are almost always covered in feathers and typically have some elaborate feathers on the forelimbs, tail, and/or head. Admittedly, some of my favorite illustrations are those of Emily Willoughby, who has made this ferocious nightmarish dinosaur into an almost innocent looking (though likely still murderous) ball of fluffy feathers (on Wikipedia and DeviantArt). The bird-like appearance of Deinonychus has been taken to extremes at times as well; consider Luis V. Rey's rather turkey-like version of the dromaeosaur here. Unfortunately, the feathering and bird-like appearance have not been adopted by the most mainstream representation of Deinonychus: the "Velociraptor" of Jurassic Park. Crichton's dromaeosaurs were based off of Deinonychus antirrhopus. Jurassic Park (1990) was published shortly after Gregory S. Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World (1988) which assigned Deinonychus to Velociraptor. This may explain why Crichton's Jurassic Park refers to these animals as Velociraptor antirrhopus; it's a nice story either way. However, the movies have increased the size of the animals and retained their old style of integument, possibly too inspire fear. The very minor exception is Jurassic Park 3, which did show some proto-feathering on the dromaeosaurs.

Some effort shown here, right?

July 1969

There are a number of events turning 50 this year. Paleontology is not left out of 50 year old events. One of the most important, in my opinion, is Bulletin 30 of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Bulletin 30 included one of the most iconic scientific illustrations of my childhood (see below), drawn by Robert Bakker, and accompanying the description by John Ostrom of an "unusual theropod" found in Montana known now as Deinonychus antirrhopus (discovered in 1964). The inspiration for Jurassic Park's Velociraptor antagonists, Deinonychus was a small to medium sized bipedal dinosaur approximately 3.4 m (11 ft) long that lived 115 - 108 million years ago. Hypotheses of Deinonychus behavior and the 172 page description of its osteology by Ostrom have fueled comparisons to birds and produced images of an intelligent, pack-hunting dinosaur. The 120 mm (4.7 in) toe claw reconstructed from YPM 5205 by Ostrom was enough to inspire nightmares even before that annoying kid spoke up in Jurassic Park. Estimated to weigh in at 100 kg (220 lbs) Deinonychus was beefy and adding strength and a giant claw to an animal that was likely rather fast for its size only adds to the nightmarish qualities of this Cretaceous predator.

Happy 50th naming month to one of my favorite, and one of the most frightening, dinosaurs that we know of, Deinonychus antirrhopus!

Deinonychus antirrhopus ©Robert Bakker

Week of Moving

When Keichousaurus came across my screen the first time I thought it was an impressive appearing nothosaur but that it had a funny little head. Then I realized everything about this aquatic reptile was small, and a little funny. Its rudimentary flippers still appear to be mostly pes and manus, rather than true flippers, and its elongate neck with a short faced head is almost somewhat comical. Most of these fossils are found as entirely complete animals. Their intriguing morphology and the completeness with which they are often found, as well as the fact that specimens are not much longer than 2.7m (and many smaller specimens are known), Keichousaurus fossils are highly sought after as attainable collector's pieces. Though their abundance makes this possible, it does not necessarily make it acceptable. The variation of known fossils is, as with any animal group, appreciable. The morphological variation that has been lost due to the sale, or simply retention by finders, of these fossils to collectors hurts population studies as well as our knowledge of the evolution of aquatic reptiles overall. However, we do know a lot about Keichousaurus, as this WizScience video shares:

Returns and New Beginnings

I am back to having the time to write a little bit here and there every day. There are many good animals to start with as we restart these (mostly) daily entries. I decided that, since this is the restart of this blog we should go back to the roots of the roots of the first project I worked on after the inception of this page. The only way that makes sense is to talk about an animal that is a member of the group that gave rise to the animals that I originally worked on. My first project was describing a set of plesiosaur vertebrae, and the animals that preceded the plesiosaurs were a group that we call the nothosaurs. One genus, Keichousaurus (consisting of K. hui Young 1958 and K. yuananensis Young 1965), was first discovered in China in 1958 by Hu Chengzhi and described by C. C. Young. This genus, like other nothosaurs, possess a long neck and tail, short head (relatively), and paddle-like hind and forelimbs; the forelimbs being more paddle-like were thought to be more important in locomotion than the hindlimbs. This locomotion was also thought to resemble that of plesiosaurs and has been described as "underwater flight", though this is still largely hypothetical at present. The holotype species (K. hui) is represented by numerous fossil animals, including pregnant individuals indicating live birth or ovoviviparity (hatching in the uterus and being "born" live) in Keichousaurus.

We might think these animals would be quite large, given that their plesiosaur descendants are quite large animals. However, many of these nothosaurus are extremely small, ranging from 15-30 cm (6-12 in) in length. There are individuals known to reach 2.7m. Despite the long neck and tail that we see in illustrations of Keichousaurus, that long neck is actually quite short, in respect to what we usually think of for long-necked animals (think of giraffes and long-necked dinosaurs, as examples). Of course, that neck is relatively long for these small animals!

©Nobu Tamura

Fancy Pets

The "Mexican Walking Fish" (Ambystoma mexicanum) is probably one of the first non-mammalian animals that I ever interacted with (aside from actual fish) in an extended capacity. My mother was tasked with feeding the Ambystoma in one of Indiana University Bloomington's biology research labs back in the late 1980's. This is also where I first hung out (I was maybe 8 so "was tolerated" may be a better description) with graduate students and learned how to play Tetris, but those are stories for another time. We generally do not call Ambystoma Mexican Walking Fish, which is good because in the traditional nomenclature sense they are actually salamanders and not fish at all. Most know them as those strangely adorable pink aquatic pets known as Axolotl.

The story of Axolotl is amazing, endearing, and almost somewhat ridiculous; but we are not going to learn much more about Axolotl today as they are a means to an end for us here. I will share that they love uncooked beef liver. Also, I was inspired to talk about them today because a friend that works at the Boston Museum of Science shared a post about an upcoming exhibit featuring these adorable little salamanders. Salamanders in general are fairly recognizable by most, though there is sometimes confusion over names (e.g. newt vs. salamander) and appearance (think Axolotl vs. any other generic "salamander" that comes to mind). We could discuss how newts are salamanders and why Axolotl look different from Tiger Salamanders (which they are closely related to), but we are going to talk, now that we all have a picture of salamanders in our heads, about fossil salamanders from the Permian known as Apateon.

Senckenberg Museum of Frankfurt
Photo  by Ghedoghedo

Often preserved as flat impressions on slabs, these Permian temnospondyls are primitive amphibians that, like the Axolotl, are neotenic; meaning that they retain juvenile traits, such as the external gills seen in Axolotls, in their mature adult forms. This is often referred to as pedomorphosis also. Researchers have shown that these traits are retained in large numbers of these animals and they were so populous that we have a wide swath of ontogenetic or life cycle examples of animals in this genus to show that we are not just looking at odd young from many different groups. We have, of course, living examples to draw from as well. Many interesting things are known from these fossils, but probably one of the most intriguing things, to me, is the number of large group fossils and the detail in both the large group fossil assemblages and single animal fossil slabs that exist for Apateon. The genus Apateon actually consists of 7 species with Apateon pedestris von Meyer 1840 containing the holotype for the genus. As with many exquisitely preserved slab fossils, Apateon was originally discovered in Germany, a country with a rich history of excellent freshwater fossil diversity and preservation, and specimens have been dated from 295.0 to 290.1 million years ago.

Apateon pedestris Natural History Museum, Bonn University
Photo by Ghedoghedo

The skeleton of these Permian amphibians can be seen in this image from the Natural History Museum of Bonn University, which is actually quite a feat. The skeletons of Apateon are very weakly ossified, so the identifiable vertebrae, ribs, and limbs are truly exceptional and speak directly to the preservation of the fossil. Additionally, the orbits are fairly identifiable and, because we can see where the eyes would have been, we can see that the snout and the area of the skull directly caudal, or behind the eyes, are very short. We can say that Apateon had a very small head rostrocaudally (front to back) but also a very wide skull and very large eyes. If we turn our attention to those limbs we can just make out the digits. We know from more splayed out fossils of the limbs that there were four digits on the forelimb (on the "hand") and the hindlimb as well.

Groundhog Day

In 2014 a fossil skull from Madagascar introduced us to a "groundhog-like" mammal of the Late Cretaceous. The animal was named Vintana sertichi in Krause et. al, 2014. This mammal was estimated to weigh approximately 9.1 kg (20 lbs) and was relatively short, as we can see in Nobu Tamura's reconstruction below. Flanges found in the skull are not well understood and appear to have no homologous structure in modern relatives, but their purpose could still be discovered with more discoveries of the fossils or further investigation into the family as a whole. Regardless, the endocast of the brain did reveal very large olfactory bulbs. We know from this that Vintana had a good sense of smell and likely used this trait actively and frequently in its normal day to day life. It may seem that a single skull of a small mammal is not that important, however, mammologists and mammal paleontologists think this skull is pretty amazing. The reason that they feel this way is because this fossil skull represents possibly the best preserved skull of any gondwanatheres; a group of southern hemisphere cynodonts that lived from the Cretaceous to the Miocene. Actually, another interesting facet of Vintana is that, though it was discovered in Madagascar off the east coast of the African continent, it belongs to the mammalian sudamericidae family which translates literally to the South American family of mammals. In fairness, a largenumber of gondwanatheres belong to this family and have been discovered in Africa, making Vintana not the first and probably not the last

©Nobu Tamura

.

Animals Not Often Known

This week I decided that we really ought to get a little bit of knowledge into an odd group of animals that we have never looked at before. We have explored a lot of marine animals including fish, mammals, and reptiles. There is a set of aquatic mammals that we have not yet explored. This group of marine mammals is known, largely, today as the "sea cows." One of the genera that best represents the group is a globally known genus called Metaxytherium. The genus Metaxytherium consists of 8 species (M. albifontanum Vélez-Juarbe and Domning, 2014; M. arctodites Aranda-Manteca et al., 1994; M. crataegense Simpson, 1932; M. floridanum Hay, 1922; M. krahuletzi Depéret, 1895; M. medium Demarest, 1822 (type species); M. serresii Gervais, 1847 and M. subapenninum Bruno, 1839) represented from the Miocene into the Pleistocene. Dugongs, the family (Dugongidae) of organisms to which Metaxytherium belongs, is a capable of living in both marine (salt) and freshwater systems and Metaxytherium was not an exception with taxa being discovered in both coastal and inland fossil deposits. Metaxytherium looks, skeletally, very similar to extant manatees and dugongs; you can see the skeleton of M. floridanum below.

Photo by Ryan Somma

Fossils and Parrots

When one searches fossil parrot two things appear. One is a report of a partial tarsometatarsus (a bone in the foot) from Siberia that was dated to 16-18 MYA. This is interesting, but it is a very small part of a parrot. A proto-parrot from Wyoming also appears regularly in the search list. This animal, shown below, does not have the familiar head shape of parrots, but does possess other features of parrots and is a whole bird; though it is in the typical bird state of a fossil which is to say that it is nearly pressed entirely flat. This fossil comes from the Fossil Butte Member of Green River Formation and has exceptional preservation, despite the crushed nature of the fossil. If you were to look closely at the neck you can see tracheal rings, the cartilage circles that keep the trachea ("windpipe") open so animals can breathe. Other fossil parrots are known to science, but many of them are associated with much older discoveries, so the papers describing these finds are not high on the search returns. These include parrots found in the Miocene of Nebraska (Wetmore 1926), New Zealand and Australia (latest paper: Worthy et al. 2011), and the Czech Republic (Mlíkovský 1998). There are other papers describing fossil parrots as well, but some describe the same finds mentioned above or are reviews of what we know about the parrot fossil record.

Cyrilavis colburnorum photo by Ian N. Cost

Enjoy some Images

Today, enjoy some imagery of Temnodontosaurus. Also, enjoy some toy reviews. The second video is a model from CollectA and is particularly interesting as it includes a pup in the process of being born; it is admittedly a little odd.

Also enjoy this short clip that is said to portray Temnodontosaurus. Because there are not a lot of Temnodontosaurus videos, definitely spend some time checking out this cartoon about Mary Anning as well.

Short on Facts

I always find it to be a little odd when there are few places to find facts on what should otherwise be a fairly well-known animal. Considering Temnodontosaurus' place in fossil finding history and its giant eyes, it ought to be a little bit more well-known online. However, aside from a few tribute videos and some animation tests, there are almost no videos online. There are also fewer fact pages than we would normally expect for such an important fossil animal. There is a short encyclopedia entry on KidzSearch (a site we have not used lately) and a very slightly longer entry on the Ancient Animals Wiki. A more informative source of information that includes a slightly more in depth article and a list of facts can be found on Prehistoric Wildlife, a site we have found useful to learn from for a long time around here.

Celebrating Lyme Regis

©Dmitry Bogdanov

The holotype of Temnodontosaurus platyodon (originally Ichthyosaurus platyodon) is approximately 6.1 m (20 ft) long and was discovered in 1821. Although the name means "cutting tooth lizard" the fossil is best known for two radically different reasons. The first is that the orbits and the 25 cm diameter sclerotic rings indicate that the eyes were approximately 20 cm (8 in) in diameter, making these the second largest known eyes in any animal. Prior to a 2008 dissection of a rare Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) which has eyes approximately 27 cm (11 in) in diameter Temnodontosaurus had the largest known eyes. The second most important reason that Temnodontosaurus is well remembered is because this large ichthyosaur was one of the first fossils found by Joseph and Mary Anning in 1811; it was initially described as a crocodile. Joseph outlived Mary by a few years, but Mary was the true force in the family fossil collecting business despite being largely deleted from the literature of the time by the geologists to whom she sold her fossils. Anning also led geologists (including Buckland, Agassiz, Owen, and Conybeare among others) on expeditions, taught them how to collect fossils from Lyme Regis, and trained their field assistants and wives how to collect fossils. Temnodontosaurus may be well known for being discovered by the Annings, having large eyes, and being one of the first known ichthyosaurs, but it is not the best known of Anning's discoveries; that distinction belongs to (depending on who one asks) either her 1823 discovery of Plesiosaurus, or her 1828 discovery of what later became known as Dimorphodon. During this week we will talk a little about Temnodontosaurus and Mary Anning both every day. The reason for that, for those interested, is that many of Anning's discoveries were made or published during December and her life was actually strangely influenced by the month. Additionally, it was recently announced (14 December) that a movie based on part of her life, titled "Ammonite" will begin production in March 2019. Anning and December seem intertwined and Temnodontosaurus was her first big find. It all goes together for a fitting end to the year.

Also, I just realized this is blog post #2500. Hooray!

Videos of Giant Sauropods

Invest a little time in learning a little bit about Sauroposeidon today with WizScience and Dinosaurs Unearthed:

The Tallest Sauropod

Sauropods were enormous animals, for the most part. They certainly have a wide range of sizes, but the absolute largest sauropod ever known was discovered in southeast Oklahoma and described in 2000 by Wedel, Cifelli, and Sanders. Trace fossils, in this case footprints, from Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Texas have long been associated with the animal as well and, despite the holotype consisting of only a few cervical vertebrae, many more bonebeds and isolated fossils have been discovered in these states since 2000. Named the "lizard earthquake god" that was "perfect before the end" Sauroposeidon proteles was estimated to have possessed a neck approximately 11.25–12 m (37–39 ft) long based on the largest cervical vertebra of a sauropod known, which measured in at 1.4 m (4.6 ft) long. That is a fairly large singular bone; almost as tall as my mother actually! It also makes the neck about 2 m (7 ft) longer than the next longest sauropod neck (belonging to Giraffatitan).

CC BY-SA 3.0 Stephen O'Connor

It's in the Name

It was mentioned earlier this week that Protarchaeopteryx, as a name, translates literally to "Before Archaeopteryx". This poses a small problem because Protarchaeopteryx is a Cretaceous archaeopterygian and Archaeopteryx itself is a Jurassic animal. Geologically speaking, Archaeopteryx predates Protarchaeopteryx by approximately 25MY; though it is important to note that the accepted span of existence for Archaeopteryx is 150MYA - 125.45MYA and Protarchaeopteryx shows up in the fossil record at 124.6MYA. This means that they are not, temporally, that distant from one another. This does not necessarily reflect their phylogenetic relationship to one another. Now, the reason that we brought up the names is that the implication of the name is not actually what the name means. What I mean, and what Ji and Ji meant by that in 1997, is that Protarchaeopteryx did not come before Archaeopteryx, but rather it possess characters which appear to place it in a phylogenetically primitive position in relation to Archaeopteryx. The justification for the name as assigned by Ji and Ji was that "...it [Protarchaeopteryx] is regarded as more primitive because it has a more elongated tail, more robust pelvic girdle, longer and larger hind limb, and unfused proximal metatarsals [than Archaeopteryx]." These characters, it may not require stipulating, are more derived in Archaeopteryx. To better understand the description and read the translated version of that 1997 paper, please see the reference presented below.

Reference:
Ji, Qiang, Shu’an Ji, and Translated By Will Downs. "A Chinese archaeopterygian, Protarchaeopteryx gen. nov." Geol Sci Tech 238 (1997): 38-41.

Caveats of the Internet

Any time that one searches for anything discussing birds, dinosaurs, and/or evolution, one must be aware of the confusing and argumentative cyclone of websites that are out there. Looking up an animal like Protarchaeopteryx is a part of that rule and certainly not an exception. A safe place to start is something like the WizScience video below that just presents facts that we know about this dinosaur without adding conjecture or argument to what is presented.

Of course, we cannot assume that all of the videos and websites are as neutral as those put forth by a group like the team behind WizScience. That being said, there are websites that do avoid the arguments on the internet by presenting information (and being fairly regularly updated to maintain that information) without allowing comments; it really can be as scary as I am making this sound when a website discusses the dinosaur-bird transition and key fossils and allows for commenting. Pages that are safe include:
Encyclopedia Britannica
The Natural History Museum of London
Age of Dinosaurs
Dinosaur Jungle
Enchanted Learning