Zegh's Dinosaur Thread

Biggest bird is named. It's yuge. Interestingly these things, or some really really huge flying things, could have still been around in the middle ages, in areas like Madagaskar. Zegh can you confirm?

Elephant-bird-mock-up-image-%28c%29-Jaime-Chirinos-2009.jpg

https://www.zsl.org/science/news/zsl-names-world’s-largest-ever-bird-–-vorombe-titan

http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/9/181295
 
Quick check on wiki dates extinction of Moa to around 1300-1400s and Elephant birds to only a couple of centuries earlier, 1000-1200 AD.

(Moa are New Zealandic, Elephant Birds restricted to Africa. They all are ratites or paleognathids, a group encompassing emus, rheas, cassowaries, ostriches, kiwis and tinamous. The extinct lithornithids are the sparrow-looking tweety-birdy ancestral forms of all these, in case it was ever tempting to imagine ratite birds as "more dinosaur" than other living birds :D)
 
New study about the Meg is being made. Pretty amazing just to think those things were swimming around in pretty large numbers. There had to have been a lot of them since they keep finding so many of those teeth.

https://graduatedivision.ucmerced.e...n-massive-ancient-shark-be-explored-nsf-grant

Forty million years after dinosaurs went extinct, one of the largest predators that ever prowled Earth’s oceans emerged, feeding the imaginations of modern scientists and the
nightmares of modern movie audiences.

Megalodon — the name means ‘giant tooth’ — appeared some 23 million years ago and reigned the seas for about 21 million years. In 400 million years of shark evolution, megalodon is the most massive shark species that ever lived, growing to 60 feet long, or three times the size of the largest of today’s great whites.

But megalodon went extinct about 2.5 million years ago, and UC Merced paleoecology Professor Sora Kim wants to know why.

Through a three-year project funded by a $204,000 grant from the National Science Foundation , Kim hopes to learn about the megalodon’s diet, habitat and physiology and whether they played a role in the shark’s disappearance. Kim’s team of co-investigators includes paleoclimatologist Michael Griffiths and environmental scientist Martin Becker, both from William Paterson University, paleobiologist Kenshu Shimada from DePaul University and marine scientist Robert Eagle from UCLA.

“There are many ideas about why the megalodon went extinct,” Kim said. “Scientists have argued that changes in the megalodon’s available prey base combined with climate change led to their demise. But these are just hypotheses. There have been no rigorous studies that demonstrate this conclusively.”

What makes the megalodon’s emergence, existence and ultimate extinction a mystery for the researchers is that the anatomy of these ancient sharks was much like that of modern sharks, with skeletons made of cartilage rather than bone. This feature — also common to rays and skates — distinguishes them from other vertebrates. But it means sharks don’t leave behind large fossilized remains like other animals with skeletons composed primarily of bone do. Bone is mineralized and fossilizes; cartilage doesn’t — at least not well.

Luckily for Kim and her colleagues, there’s an exception to the rule: Just like modern sharks, megalodon’s teeth were made of calcium phosphate, so the fossil record is replete with dental remains. Shark teeth are actually the most abundant vertebrate fossil, in part because a single shark sheds thousands of teeth in its lifetime, and the mineralized enameloid — similar to the enamel on mammals’ teeth – is extremely resistant to alteration.
 
New study about the Meg is being made. Pretty amazing just to think those things were swimming around in pretty large numbers. There had to have been a lot of them since they keep finding so many of those teeth.

https://graduatedivision.ucmerced.e...n-massive-ancient-shark-be-explored-nsf-grant

There wouldn't be any more than say orcas or such. Most likely, at any given time, there were probably less Megalodons swimming around than Great Whites today, simply because the larger any given animal, the fewer the individuals tend to be

The number of teeth is due to the overall collected number of individuals that existed in total, across time - and the fact that they all would lose teeth regularily, and grow new teeth, for then to drop them as well.

Teeth are typically abundant in the fossil record. Many important hominids, human ancestors, are known from teeth. Dinosaur teeth are SO common, it is considered "bad form" to attach a names to them, rendering them "pointless" tooth-taxa (didn't stop Danish researchers from naming Dromaeosauroides bornholmensis -.-, based on two teeth... )
In the past, dinosaur teeth were often given names, and they are today considered "nomina nuda", as in - names that no longer have any scientific significance. For example, there's no way you can say that Trachodon (hadrosaurid teeth) are in reality just another Edmontosaurus, Anatotitan, Hadrosaurus, Parasaurolophus - or any other similar dinosaur with identical teeth.

A large ammount of Mesozoic mammals are known solely from teeth, and milk-teeth at that, since mammals tend to keep their teeth firmly attached for most of their lives
 

^I was discussing "borb" with someone recently, the "bird-orb" concept, as in, a bird (or theropod) SO fluffy, it becomes like a rounded little ball of yarn

I've been been pondering, and came to the conclusion that most of the roundest borb-effect we see in passerines (song birds + crows) or close relatives (such as psittacines, parrots)
"borb"-ing also occurs outside this group, but it requires the most compact of all bird skeletons, as well as a short (yet very flexible) neck, that can be curled right up into the chest

While that tyrannosaur-drawing is obviously a joke, many paleo-artists wants to draw at least small dino-birds as "borbs", but I personally think they're trying to force something that wasn't necesarily all that common. Borbing could have been a feature not present in birds untill the development of passerine forms, which happened after the (non-avian) dinosaurs were gone.

:'(
 
Last edited:
By the way, Maraapunisaurus is proposed new genus for "Amphicoelias" fragillimus. Quotations simply mean that most researchers agree that "A". fragillimus is not really a true Amphicoelias (which is known from the species A. altus)

A. altus is a Diplodocid dinosaur known from a fragmented skeleton. Like Apatosaurus or Diplodocus it would have been some 25-30 metres long, and had a long neck and long whip tail. "A." fragillimus, on the other hand, has always been a kind of legend. It was based on a single vertebra, very tall, 2 or 3 metres tall in total. The vertebra was eventually lost, and now exists only as detailed reconstructions. The validity of the animal still holds, except nobody could ever quite figure out WHAT it was. As a diplodocid, it would have reached over 50 metres in length, some estimates reach 60.

60 metres, or 50, or even 40+, makes it the absolutely very largest of all dinosaurs ever, anywhere.

WELL
Turns out "A". fragillimus first of all was not Amphicoelias, and has been given a new name, Maraapunisaurus fragillimus, and turns out further - that it was a Rebbachisaurid. These are close relatives of Diplodocids, but they are known to have shorter tails and necks, and very tall dorsal spines. As in - unusually tall vertebrae.
With this in mind, M. fragillimus seems to measure around 30 metres in total. This easily makes it a *giant* Rebbachisaurid, but nooot that much of a giant Diplodocid. Legend status has been revoked :(
 
I've boned up on dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and other paleofauna since I was a little kid. I didn't settle for the kiddie shit. Fuck no, I went for the good stuff (as good as our knowledge was in the '90s). I even schooled my classmates on this stuff in third grade, and even back then I had suspected that non-avian theropods and some ornithischians had feathers. And don't anyone try to feed me any lines that feathered things can't be scary. Cassowaries have feathers and they can kick your ass. Of course, they're Australian birds; what Down Under ISN'T trying to kill everyone in it?

Fast-forward to today and now I have a little pet dinosaur: A blue-fronted amazon parrot named Ricky. I took him in when my great-grandmother moved to a nursing home, a year before she died. She got too infirm to properly care for Ricky and nobody else would take him. So he's been my little green nugget ever since. I'll play games and watch TV with him on my shoulder. I'll even read science and history books to him. And yes, those include books about his non-avian ancestors, uncles, and cousins.
 
Last edited:
I've boned up on dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and other paleofauna since I was a little kid. I didn't settle for the kiddie shit. Fuck no, I went for the good stuff (as good as our knowledge was in the '90s). I even schooled my classmates on this stuff in third grade, and even back then I had suspected that non-avian theropods and some ornithischians had feathers. And don't anyone try to feed me any lines that feathered things can't be scary. Cassowaries have feathers and they can kick your ass. Of course, they're Australian birds; what Down Under ISN'T trying to kill everyone in it?

Fast-forward to today and now I have a little pet dinosaur: A blue-fronted amazon parrot named Ricky. I took him in when my great-grandmother moved to a nursing home, a year before she died. She got too infirm to properly care for Ricky and nobody else would take him. So he's been my little green nugget ever since. I'll play games and watch TV with him on my shoulder. I'll even read science and history books to him. And yes, those include books about his non-avian ancestors, uncles, and cousins.

^
This is how a real dino nerd talks!

As a kid, my family would be aware that I was long past the kid-books, but they had no idea where to turn for "higher tier" material. My grandmother managed to buy me, for my 10th birthday I think, David Norman's "Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia", which for a long time was my heavyest duty book. To this day I hold it very dear

Later I'd amuse the people at the university book store, because I'd come in there about once a month to buy dino books. (I couldn't keep this up. Those books are really expensive)
I would have longing dreams about owning Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, which had allready fallen out of print by the time I heard of it.

And indeed, I had a little budgerigar called Dino, and my whole family knew why I named the bird "Dino" and they all knew by then, how perfectly reasonable it obviously was, that birds and chickens and ducks, were the same as dinosaurs: Because of don't argue with the little nerd, he will babble your head off.

///

By the way, Thanos was recently named Abelisaurid, based on a single incomplete neck vertebra, and this little blog-piece has something to say about it:
https://waxing-paleontological.blogspot.com/2018/11/thanos-deserves-better.html?spref=tw
While I personally don't really care about comic-book characters, it does bother me when over-eager paleontologists find it fitting to name fragments that are almost certainly going to be dismissed as a *"nomen dubium" immediately after. To me it also shows impatience. Yes, having the privilege to analyze a vertebra must be great, but have the insight and self control to predict that maybejustmaybe in the future, he will have the oportunity to analyze something much more substantial and complete, that will surely warrant a name...

* a name given to a specimen so incomplete, there is little-to-no chance of positively comparing the material to other similar species in any productive manner. Typical examples are names given to teeth or single bones with most unique traits worn or broken away. A dinosaur declared "nomen dubium" will usually no longer occur in the litterature.
 
Last edited:
Another huge dino found, this time from a mine in northern Italy.

The newly-identified dinosaur belongs to Ceratosauria (ceratosaurs), a group of large-bodied theropod dinosaurs.

Named Saltriovenator zanellai, it lived approximately 198 million years ago (Early Jurassic epoch).

With an estimated body length of 25 feet (7.5 m), it is the largest and most robust theropod from the Early Jurassic, pre-dating the occurrence in theropods of a body mass approaching 1,000 kg by over 25 million years.

The ancient creature is also the oldest known ceratosaur and is the first Jurassic dinosaur known from Italy.
The partial skeleton of Saltriovenator zanellai was accidentally discovered in 1996 by Angelo Zanella, fossil amateur and collaborator of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano, in a huge quarry located in the Alpine foothills, at the Swiss-Italian border near Saltrio, less than 50 miles (80 km) north of Milan, Varese Province, Lombardy.

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/saltriovenator-zanellai-06739.html

Study.

Money shot.
https://twitter.com/scinewscom/status/1076963860509278210/photo/1
DvIk5j4WwAAJi7m.jpg
 
Scientifically speaking, it's not really a very important find. It shows the presence of Ceratosaurs (a type of basal Theropod) in Europe, which we allready knew from scattered finds. This is first time in Italy though, but then again, it's 3rd(?) named dino from Italy, so in Italy it's important enough just by those merits.
Ceratosaurs aren't that particularily spectacular, this one is known from only fragments (that have been displayed to the public in Italy for years), mostly shoulder, arm and some jaw stuff.

What happens here is something that often happens, and I find very unfortunate, they're deliberately blowing the importance of a paleo/science-find out of proportion in order to secure future funding.
An American paleo-guy Paul Sereno is very well known for mastering this, he will get Nat Geo finding, go to Morocco, find... okay finds, a partial skeleton here, a fragmented skull there, some dino, interesting enough, but nothing of Global Importance, but - he needs to give that impression, in order to secure future funding. So, when he found some Abelisaur (a sub-type of Ceratosaurs), it *came on the news* here, and always frased like "This AMAZING new find shows that SOME dinosaurs ate MEAT and had CLAWS!" and it's all just terribly mundane, nothing new, nothing revolutionary - but on the news. Sereno has yet to fail to get his next funding, and is probaby digging up and describing dinos as we speak. When they're done, they'll publish their finds on the Evening News!
"AMAZING! THEY HAD MOUTHS!"

Saltrillosaurus IS interesting, really, but only to hardcore nerd paleontologists who can get something useful out of a couple of broken arm-bones.
The rest is catering to politics in a climate unfriendly to non profit humanitarian endevours

/rant
 
Dunno if it counts as a dinosaur more’n a fish, but Dunkleosteus is my favorite prehistoric animal. Not only was it terrifying to look at, and HUGE, but it had tactical face armor made of BONE. Instead of teeth, it had a bone-made beak of sorts that according to some sources could generate 7400 N of pressure.

I fucking love this thing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkleosteus
 
Heh nice, I dunno much about Dunkleosteus, except seeing it in those dino-books I had when I was a kid :D
You should check out some newer research on it, I haven't myself, but I'm getting the impression the "skull armor" is basically just skull-bones, no armor in particular other than being very tough, but it could mean it's face was covered by fleshy skin, making it look kind of like a wolffish or something
 
Dunno if it counts as a dinosaur more’n a fish, but Dunkleosteus is my favorite prehistoric animal. Not only was it terrifying to look at, and HUGE, but it had tactical face armor made of BONE. Instead of teeth, it had a bone-made beak of sorts that according to some sources could generate 7400 N of pressure.

I fucking love this thing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkleosteus


I love that one too, one of the most badass looking creatures evah
 
Scientifically speaking, it's not really a very important find. It shows the presence of Ceratosaurs (a type of basal Theropod) in Europe, which we allready knew from scattered finds. This is first time in Italy though, but then again, it's 3rd(?) named dino from Italy, so in Italy it's important enough just by those merits.
Ceratosaurs aren't that particularily spectacular, this one is known from only fragments (that have been displayed to the public in Italy for years), mostly shoulder, arm and some jaw stuff.

What happens here is something that often happens, and I find very unfortunate, they're deliberately blowing the importance of a paleo/science-find out of proportion in order to secure future funding.
An American paleo-guy Paul Sereno is very well known for mastering this, he will get Nat Geo finding, go to Morocco, find... okay finds, a partial skeleton here, a fragmented skull there, some dino, interesting enough, but nothing of Global Importance, but - he needs to give that impression, in order to secure future funding. So, when he found some Abelisaur (a sub-type of Ceratosaurs), it *came on the news* here, and always frased like "This AMAZING new find shows that SOME dinosaurs ate MEAT and had CLAWS!" and it's all just terribly mundane, nothing new, nothing revolutionary - but on the news. Sereno has yet to fail to get his next funding, and is probaby digging up and describing dinos as we speak. When they're done, they'll publish their finds on the Evening News!
"AMAZING! THEY HAD MOUTHS!"

Saltrillosaurus IS interesting, really, but only to hardcore nerd paleontologists who can get something useful out of a couple of broken arm-bones.
The rest is catering to politics in a climate unfriendly to non profit humanitarian endevours

/rant

You may have already answered but is there anything you're hoping/expecting to be found, a 'missing link' or something, something that would make you go "wow"? Or would it be like a full(er) fossil skeletons of the ones we already know about? Dino DNA?

Dunkleosteus is a freaky looking thing for sure. It has a very 'ancient fishy' quality, reminds me of the largest sea bass, except much much bigger and freakier.
 
You may have already answered but is there anything you're hoping/expecting to be found, a 'missing link' or something, something that would make you go "wow"? Or would it be like a full(er) fossil skeletons of the ones we already know about? Dino DNA?

There's a lot of dinosaur species that could benefit from a 2nd discovery, like we saw with Deinocheirus (only known from arms for decades - then found 3 good skeletons, proving it looked very unusual and peculiar, nothing like anybody expected)
I'd love for someone to find a more complete Therizinosaurus and a skull associated
A complete Oviraptor would be awesome, with a full crest preserved

Otherwise, I tend to enjoy seeing new species be described and named, the more complete the better
 
Back
Top