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Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 7, 2007, 10:54pm

I thought I revive the old dino info posts from the 'Old OMB' =D


If there is a species ya desire here don't hesitate to PM it to me and I'll try to get it up. ;D

OK, here we go…

Complete Dinosaur Family Tree Cladogram

Ornithischia Cladogram

Theropoda Cladogram

Sauropodmorpha Cladogram

Info from answers.com and

Wikipedia

Cladograms from UK DINOSAURS


Pics by Dino-World, and The Dinosauricon

Allosaurus

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Pronunciation: al o saw' rus
Translation: Different Lizard or Other Lizard
Period: Late Jurassic 152-135 Million Years ago
Height: 16 1/2 -17 ft
Length: 40-45 ft
Weight: 2 tons

The Allosaurus had two powerful legs, and a massive tail. They walked on two legs and were relatively fast runners. It had two short arms with three fingered hands that had sharp claws. The Allosaurus had a very bulky body and a strong s-shaped neck. Its skull was three feet long with bony knobs and ridges above its eyes and on top of its head. Its vertebrae were different from other dinosaurs, hence the name - Different Lizard.

It had large powerful jaws awith serrated, sharp teeth. The Allosaurs was a carnivor, or meat-eater. The allosaurus was 40-45 feet long, and 16 1/2 - 17 feet tall, and weighed 2 tons.

The Allosaurus was from the Saurischian class, Theropod suborder, and the Allosaurid Family. The Allosaurus may have hunted in packs, and may have been scavengers. They were the most abundant Preditor in Late Jurassic.

The allosaurus' were a carnosaur whose intelligence was high among dinosaurs, in relation of body mass to brain mass.

The first allosaurus fossil was discoved by Rancher M. P. Felch in 1883 in Colorado, USA. The Allosaurus was named in 1877 by Othniel C. Marsh. It was mostly in North America and also some fossils have been found in Africa and Australia.

Allosaurus Class:

Saurischian Lizard hipped Dinosaur
Theropods Theropods were fast, two-legged carnivores with short arms.

Sharp, slicing teeth & well-developed jaw muscles
Carnivorous diet (animal eaters)
Bipedal walk - (walk on two legs)
Speed & Agility
Hollow bons (like birds)
Strong legs with bird-like, three-toed, clawed feet

Allosaurid Family Hugh carnaivores with bony head ridges that may have hunted in packs.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 7, 2007, 11:02pm

Deinonychus antirrhopus

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Pronunciation: dye- NON-ik-us
Translation: Terrible Claw
Period: Cretacious - 113-100 million years ago
Height: 5 ft
Length: 9-10 ft
Weight: 130-175 lbs

Deinonychus was a very fast moving, agil, bird-like dinosaur. It was an agressive killer. It walked on 2 slinder, bird-like legs or bipedal Dinosaur. It's muscular legs had four-toed feet. The second toe had a 5" scythelike claw that could be swiveled up. The other toes had smaller claws. The Deimonychus could raise the second toe and run on the third and fourth toes. Its two long, strong arms had three-fingered hands, with large, sharp, curved claws. It was able to grasp its hand.

Deinonychus had a curved, flexible neck. It had a big head with sharp, serrated teeth in very powerful jaws. It could open its jaws wide, to help it get a large grip on its prey. Its teeth were like large fangs. It's rigided tail had bony rods running along the spine. These were stiffening devices. The tail was used for balance and to help with fast turning. It probably had keen eye sight. The Deinonychus was no longer than a small car, and no heavier than a human.

Deinonychus were carvivores or meat-eaters. They ate anything that they could slash and tear apart. They hunted in packes. They would attach very large animals. Sometimes, several would assult and kill other larger animals as a pack.

Deinonychus was part of the Dromaeosarids family, which are the smartest of the dinosaurs. This is in relation to brain size to body weight. This intellegence and their speed, made them a deadly preditor.

Deinonychus are from the oder of Saurischian or order of Lizard-hipped dinosaurs. Suborder is Theropod, infraorder Tetanurae. They were from the Dromaeosauridae family, or smallest dinosaurs. It was a cousin to the Velociraptor.

Deinonychus was first found by Grant E. Meyer and John H. Ostrum, of the Peabody Museum, of Yale University. The fossil was found in 1964, in Southern Montana, US. Several other fossils have been found and a Tenontasaurus was found with them. Possibly it had been their prey. The Deinonychus was been found in Montana and Wyoming USA.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 7, 2007, 11:10pm

Velociraptor mongoliensis

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Genus of clawed theropod dinosaur (family Dromaeosauridae) that flourished in central and eastern Asia during the Late Cretaceous Epoch (99–65 million years ago). It was related to an Early Cretaceous (144–99 million years ago) North American genus, Deinonychus. Both genera had a sickle-shaped claw on each foot and ossified tendon reinforcements in the tail that enabled them to keep their balance while striking and slashing at prey. Swift, agile predators of small herbivores, they grew up to 6 ft (1.8 m) long and weighed up to 100 lb (45 kg).


Velociraptor (vəlŏs'ĭrăp'tər) [Gr.,=swift robber], swift bipedal carnivorous dinosaur of the late Cretaceous period. It was relatively small, being approximately 6 ft (1.8 m) long. It was similar to Deinonychus in appearance and, like that dinosaur, had a lethal sickle-shaped claw on the second toe of each three-toed foot, which was used for attacking prey. Fossil skeletons have been found in Mongolia. A find of particular interest, discovered in the Gobi desert in 1971, revealed a Velociraptor in the act of attacking another dinosaur, the herbivorous Protoceratops. Velociraptor belongs to the group of saurischian theropods [Gr.,=beast feet] that includes Tyrannosaurus, Deinonychus, and living birds.

Popularized by the movie Jurassic Park in 1993, the Velociraptor stood between six and 12 feet tall, allowing it to hunt man-sized prey very easily and was one of the most feared species of dinosaurs. Though hiding in a cave may seem like a good "escape plan" in evading most dinosaurs such as the T-Rex, the Raptors could easily follow into nearly any structure.

Vicious pack hunters, the Raptors' abnormally large brain capacity gave them problem-solving abilities and rudimentary thinking skills, enabling them to form a social order or even to execute attack plans for hunting prey. Michael Crichton's book Jurassic Park (on which the movie was based) shows them tempting prey with one visible Raptor while two others circle around to take it by surprise from both sides. Not only were they vicious and moderately intelligent, they were also extremely fast, capable of speeds approaching 40 miles per hour. And their powerful legs allowed them to jump roughly 30 feet off the ground. This skill was most effectively used to attack large prey like Stegosaurs and possibly even Brachiosaurs.

Accompanying their powerful bodies and intelligent brains, the Raptors came equipped with human-like arms rarely seen in other dinosaur species. The long arms were jointed at the elbow and had three long fingers with sharp claws on the ends. Despite these powerful appendages that could have grabbed and latched onto prey, their main attack came from the legs. Backed up by powerful muscles, the Raptors had a long, curved toe claw on the middle toe of each foot that was retractable and controlled by a set of tendons. The claws on the average Raptor were about seven inches long and very sharp. When attacking large prey, the Raptors would run and jump, using their toe claw to slice down the belly of the animal, spilling its internal organs within a few seconds' time. The average gash made in an animal was at least 10 feet long.

Needless to say, running into one of these creatures is probably not good for the health.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 7, 2007, 11:30pm

'Dinosaur News'

Link


Buitreraptor

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The discovery of a bird-like dinosaur in South America has paleontologists rethinking when, where and how one group of raptors evolved.

The rooster-sized dinosaur is called Buitreraptor (bwee-tree-rap-tor) gonzalezorum. It has a long head and long tail and wing-like forelimbs. Its serrated teeth, like steak knives, suggest it was a carnivore.

Buitreraptor is related to Velociraptor, the presumed cunning killer made famous by Hollywood. Both belong to a class of birdlike dinosaurs that ran swiftly on two legs and are called dromaeosaurs.

The new find suggests such raptors go back much further in time that previously thought.


New timeline

Until recently, dromaeosaurs had been found only in Asia and North America and only in the Cretaceous period, which ran from 145 million to 65 million years ago. Evidence that they existed in the Southern Hemisphere has been mounting.

Today's announcement of a well preserved fossil represents the first definitive evidence that dromaeosaurs roamed South America. Here's why that's important:

About 200 million years ago, Earth had just one giant land mass called Pangea. Toward the end of the Jurassic period, it split in two. Laurasia eventually became North America, Asia and Europe. The other chunk, Gondwana, developed into the continents of the Southern Hemisphere and India.

Since dromaeosaurs had only been found in places that used to be part of Laurasia, scientists figured the beasts evolved into being after Pangea split.

But the Buitreraptor fossil in South America, which dates back 90 million years and closely resembles fossils from the North, means one of two things:

Either dromaeosaurs existed when Pangea was intact;

or the newfound Buitreraptor and its northern look-alikes evolved separately yet with remarkably similar results.

Odds being against such striking parallel evolution, paleontologists speculate that dromaeosaurs likely originated more than 180 million years ago, before Pangaea broke apart. The newly discovered fossil also shows that the creatures developed slightly different characteristics after they split up.

"Buitreraptor is one of those special fossils that tells a bigger story about the Earth's history and the timing of evolutionary events," said Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at The Field Museum. "It not only provides definitive evidence for a more global distribution and a longer history for dromaeosaurs than was previously known, but also suggests that dromaeosaurs on northern and southern continents took different evolutionary routes after the landmasses they occupied drifted apart."



Odd duck

The Buitreraptor fossil was found in northwestern Patagonia about 700 miles southwest of Buenos Aires.

The field research was led by Argentine paleontologist Sebastián Apesteguía. The discovery is detailed in the Oct. 13 issue of the journal Nature.

Buitreraptor is an odd duck among dinosaurs. Its peculiarly long snout may have evolved to hunt snakes, mammals, and lizards that burrowed into the ground. Fossils of such critters found near Buitreraptor suggest that scenario.

The large, hollow wishbone of the dinosaur, along with its wing-like forelimbs and bird-like pelvis, add more evidence to the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs, the scientists said.

An analysis of Buitreraptor also reveals it to be very similar to Rhonavis, which had been thought to be a primitive bird. The researchers now believe the two constitute a separate branch of the dromaeosaur family tree.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 1:05am

Baryonyx

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Image (c) Barry

Pronunciation: - BAR-ee-ON-iks

The Baryonyx was a unique dinosaur with a low-set body supported by two muscular hind legs and forearms that were nearly as long. Its forearms each carried a foot-long claw and were long enough to be used for running when necessary. Its skull was shaped more like that of an crocodile than a dinosaur, with two flat jaws and a thick crest down the center. The Baryonyx's mouth contained 96 separate teeth (64 on the bottom jaw, 32 on the top), one and a half times more than that of any other Therapod.

KINGDOM:Animalia

PHYLUM:Chordata

CLASS:Archosauria

ORDER:Saurischia

SUBORDER:Theropoda

INFRAORDER:Carnosauria

FAMILY:Allosauridae

SUPERFAMILY:Spinosauroidea

GENUS:Baryonyx

Baryonyx meaning "heavy claw", referring to its large claw (Greek barus meaning 'heavy' and onyx meaning 'claw' or 'nail') was a carnivorous dinosaur discovered in clay pits just south of Dorking, England, and northern Spain. The major part of the skeleton of a juvenile specimen was found in England, while the Spanish fossils consist mainly of a partial skull and some fossil tracks. This dinosaur apparently ate fish because remains of its last meal were discovered fossilised in its ribcage. It has been dated to the Barremian period of Early Cretaceous Period, around 125 million years ago.


Description

Baryonyx was about 8 to 10 m long (26 to 33 ft), and around 3.6 m (12 ft) tall. It probably weighed in the region of 2,000 kg, but analysis of the bones suggests that the most complete specimen was not yet fully grown.

Like the dromaeosaurids, the creature had a long curved claw on the thumb of each hand, which measured at about 31 cm (12 in).

The long neck was not as strongly S-curved as in many other theropods. The skull was set at an acute angle, not the 90° angle common in similar dinosaurs. The long jaw was distinctly crocodilian, and had 96 teeth, twice as many as its relatives. Sixty-four of the teeth were placed in the lower jaw (mandible), and 32 large ones in the upper (maxilla). The snout probably bore a small crest. The upper jaw had a sharp angle near the snout, a feature seen in crocodiles that helps to prevent prey from escaping, and a similar feature is also seen in shrikes.

Fish-eater

The crocodile-like jaws and large number of finely serrated teeth suggested to scientists that Baryonyx was a fish-eater. As confirmation, a number of scales and bones from the fish Lepidotes were also discovered in the body cavity of the English specimen.

It is speculated that Baryonyx would sit on a riverbank, resting on its powerful front legs, and then sweep fish from the river with its powerful striking claw. This is similar to the modern grizzly bear. The long but low stance and angled head support this theory.

Until the discovery of the closely-related Suchomimus, Baryonyx was the only known piscivorous (fish-eating) dinosaur. On the other hand, bones of an Iguanodon were also found in association with the Baryonyx skeleton. Although not definitive proof, it seems possible that Baryonyx scavenged any extra meat it could find.

Discovery

During the early Cretaceous, Wealden Lake covered the majority of what is now northern Europe. Alluvial plains and deltas spread from the uplands surrounding the area where London now stands and eventually ran into this great lake.

Baryonyx was discovered in these former deltas. In January 1983, an amateur fossil hunter named William Walker came across an enormous claw sticking out the side of a clay pit, Smokejacks Pit at Wallis Wood, Ockley near Dorking in Surrey. He received some help in retrieving the specimen, which was surprisingly intact.

The skeleton was passed to Alan J. Charig and Angela C. Milner of the Natural History Museum in London. They published their description of the type species, B. walkeri, in 1986, and named it after Walker.

About 70% of the skeleton was recovered, including the skull. Therefore palaeontologists can make many useful deductions about Baryonyx from just a single find. The skeleton can be seen at the Natural History Museum in London.

Some years after the discovery in England, a partial skull of Baryonyx was found in the Sala de los Infantes deposit of Burgos Province, Spain. Some of the famous and abundant dinosaur fossil tracks of La Rioja, near Burgos, have been identifying as tracks of Baryonyx or other theropod genus, very similar to it.

Classification

There is little debate about classification. There is a similarity to the tetanuran Becklespinax, but there is no evidence that Baryonyx had similar elongated spines on the back of its neck.

Another crocodile-like fish-eater, Suchomimus, was described in 1998, and placed in the same subfamily (Baryonyichae). It has recently been suggested (Hutt, 2004) that Suchomimus tenerensis should be redefined as Baryonyx tenerensis due to similarities in their vertebrae. The subfamily Baryonychidae is a subdivision of the family Spinosauridae, which contains other giant Cretaceous forms from Africa and South America like the genera Spinosaurus and Irritator. Probably, spinosaurids appeared in the ancient austral continent of Gondwana and had its major diversification in Africa, colonizing Western Europe through the Iberian Peninsula later.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 2:53am

Suchomimus ("crocodile mimic")

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Pic by Dinosauricon


Suchomimus was a large, spinosaurid dinosaur with a crocodile-like mouth that lived 110 to 120 million years ago, during the middle portion of the Cretaceous period in Africa.

Characteristics and environment


Unlike most giant theropods, Suchomimus had a very long, low snout and narrow jaws studded with some 100 teeth, not very sharp and curving slightly backward. The tip of the snout was enlarged and carried a "rosette" of longer teeth. The animal is reminiscent of crocodilians that eat mainly fish, such as the living gharial, a type of large crocodile with a very long, slim snout, from the region of India.

Suchomimus also had a tall extension of its vertebrae which may have held up some kind of low flap, ridge or sail of skin, as seen in much more exaggerated form in Spinosaurus. Detailed study shows that the specimen of Suchomimus was a subadult about 11 m (36 ft) in length, but scientists think that it may have grown to about the same size as Tyrannosaurus, about 12 m (40 ft) long. The overall impression is of a massive and powerful creature that ate fish and meat more than 100 million years ago, when the Sahara was a lush, swampy habitat.

Classification

Suchomimus has been placed among the spinosaurs, a group of predators. Apart from the back ridge, Suchomimus was very similar to Baryonyx which also had strong forelimbs and a huge sickle-curved claw on its "thumb". And, as with Baryonyx, the claw was the first fossil part to be noticed by palaeontologists. Suchomimus was considerably larger than Baryonyx, but the latter might almost have been a juvenile of the former.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order:Saurischia

Suborder:Theropoda

Family:Spinosauridae

Genus:Suchomimus

Species: S. tenerensis


Binomial name: Suchomimus tenerensis

Discovery

After discovering a new specimens of Carcharodontosaurus and the Sarcosuchus, Chicago-based palaeontologist Paul Sereno and his team added a discovery in 1997. In the Sahara, near the Tenere Desert in Niger, they found fossils that represented about two-thirds of the skeleton of a huge meat-eater. This was named Suchomimus ("crocodile mimic") after the shape of its head.




Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 3:17am

Dracorex hogwartsia

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Dracorex is a dinosaur genus of the family Pachycephalosauridae, from the Late Cretaceous of North America. The type (and only) species is Dracorex hogwartsia, meaning "dragon king of Hogwarts". It is known only from one nearly complete skull discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota by three amateur paleontologists from Sioux City, Iowa. The skull was subsequently donated to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis for study in 2004, and was formally described by Bob Bakker and Robert Sullivan in 2006.

Anatomy

Dracorex, an herbivore, had a skull with spiky horns, bumps, and a long muzzle. Unlike some other pachycephalosaurs, Dracorex did not have a domed forehead but was instead flat-headed. The subadult animal was approximately 10 feet (3 m) long.

In all other respects, Dracorex is identical to the pachycephalosaur Stygimoloch. It has therefore been proposed that Dracorex is, in fact, a subadult or juvenile form of Stygimoloch. [citation needed]

Name

The name Dracorex hogwartsia was inspired by young visitors to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis as a tribute to both dragons (Dracorex means "dragon king"), which the animal resembled, as well as the Harry Potter series of books by J.K. Rowling (hogwartsia for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a fictional school from the popular series).

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Marginocephalia

Family: Pachycephalosauridae

Genus: Dracorex


Binomial name

Dracorex hogwartsia

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 3:26am

Not much on this one. =)

Cryptosaurus


I couldn't find an image for this one

Cryptosaurus ('hidden lizard') is known from a few broken bone fragments. Its status as a true dinosaur is still not confirmed, but it may have been an iguanodont. It lived during the Late Jurassic of England.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: ?Dinosauria

Order: ?Ornithischia

Suborder: ?Ornithopoda

Infraorder: ?Iguanodontia

Family: ?Camptosauridae

Genus: Cryptosaurus
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 12:43pm

Abelisaurus

[image]

Pic by Dinosauricon

Abelisaurus - ah-BEL-i-SAWR-us ("Abel's lizard") is a genus of abelisaurid theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. It was a bipedal carnivore that probably reached 25 to 30 feet (7 to 9 meters) in length, although it is known from only one partial skull.

The generic name recognizes Roberto Abel as the discoverer of the specimen and former director of the provincial Museum of Cipolletti in Argentina, where the specimen is housed. It also incorporates the Greek σαυρος/sauros, meaning 'lizard'. There is one named species, A. comahuensis, which honors the Comahue region of Argentina, where the fossil was found. Both genus and species were named and described by Argentine paleontologists Jose Bonaparte and Fernando Novas in 1985, who placed it in the newly-created family Abelisauridae.

Many other abelisaurids have since been discovered, including extremely complete specimens of Aucasaurus, Carnotaurus and Majungatholus. Some scientists place Abelisaurus as a basal abelisaurid, outside the subfamily Carnotaurinae. Others are less certain of its position. Abelisaurids share some skull features with the unrelated carcharodontosaurids and, since Abelisaurus is known only from a skull, future discoveries may show that this genus was in fact a carcharodontosaurid. However, this is thought unlikely.

The one known fossil skull of Abelisaurus is incomplete, especially on the right side. It is also missing most of the palate (roof of the mouth). Despite the missing pieces, it is over 33 inches (85 centimeters) long. Although there are no bony crests or horns, like those found in some other abelisaurids, such as Carnotaurus, rough ridges on the snout and above the eyes might have supported some kind of crest made out of keratin, which wouldn't have become fossilized. There are also very large fenestrae (window-like openings) in the skull, which are found in many dinosaurs and reduce skull weight.

Disputed Age

Abelisaurus is one of the many dinosaurs that have been discovered in Patagonia. It was originally described as coming from the Allen Formation but subsequent research proved the remains were actually found in the older Anacleto Formation (part of the Neuquén Group) of Rio Negro Province, Argentina. The Anacleto is a geologic formation in South America, dating from the early Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, between 83 and 80 million years ago.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Infraorder: Ceratosauria

Family: Abelisauridae

Genus: Abelisaurus

Species: A. comahuensis





Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by admin on Jan 8, 2007, 1:08pm

Psssssst.. . We need pictures! I think that is the only thing that could make your dino info posts more interesting=)
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 3:16pm

alrighty-o
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 4:00pm

Megaraptor namunhuaiquii

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Megaraptor ("giant thief") was once thought to be the largest
dromaeosaur ever found, but is now known to be a carnosaur related to Allosaurus. It lived in Late Cretaceous times in the Patagonian region of Argentina. It was a contemporary of Giganotosaurus, one of largest carnivorous dinosaurs of all time.

Identification

Megaraptor was initially described as a giant dromaeosaur (Novas, 1998). It was known primarily from a single claw, about 1ft long, that resembled the sickle-shaped foot claw of dromaeosaurids. The discovery of a complete front limb, however, showed that this giant claw actually came from the first finger of a carnosaur's hand (Calvo et al., 2004). The hand is still quite different from other carnosaurs, so it is not clear whether Megaraptor is an allosaurid, a carcharodontosaurid, a megalosauroid, or something else entirely.
It should be noted that, when first discovered and prior to publication, the spinosaurid Baryonyx was also reported to be a dromaeosaur, again based on a large hand claw.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Infraorder: Carnosauria

Superfamily: Allosauroidea

Genus: Megaraptor

Species: M. namunhaiquii


Binomial name

Megaraptor namunhuaiquii



Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 4:12pm

Nanotyrannus lancensis

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Nanotyrannus ("tiny tyrant") is a genus of
dinosaur. It was erected in 1988 for a small tyrannosaurid skull, previously described in 1946 (Gilmore) as Albertosaurus lancensis. Initial research indicated that the skull bones were fused, and that it therefore represented an adult specimen. Subsequent work has cast doubt on this and some paleontologists no longer consider it a valid genus. The fossil was a contemporary of Tyrannosaurus rex, and some believe it to be a juvenile T.rex. A find in 2001 was thought to represent the first Nanotyrannus skeleton, but was subsequently found to be a juvenile Tyrannosaurus.

Popular culture

The Quintaglios from Robert J. Sawyer's Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy are a race of highly evolved, sentient Tyrannosaurs descended from Nanotyrannus.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Family: Tyrannosauridae

Subfamily: Tyrannosaurinae

Tribe: Tyrannosaurini

Genus: Nanotyrannus

Species: N. lancensis

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 4:33pm

Megalosauroidea

[image]

Pic by Dinosauricon

Megalosauroidea was a superfamily of
tetanuran theropod dinosaurs that lived from the Middle Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous period. It is likely that spinosaurs are a family within this group.

Taxonomy


Paul Sereno (1998, 2005) used Spinosauroidea as a clade (keeping the traditional superfamily suffix) containing the megalosaurids and the spinosaurids. While Spinosauroidea has priority of definition (Olshevsky 1995), there is as yet no official body regulating clade names. According to the ICZN rules for naming family-level taxa, the name Megalosauroidea has official priority when used as a superfamily taxon rank, having been implicitly named by Thomas Huxley in 1869, and therefore the name Megalosauroidea automatically replaces the name Spinosauroidea. This rule has been largely ignored in the paleontological literature, including Sereno 2005, which rejects the name Megalosauroidea on the grounds that it was historically paraphyletic (though Sereno retains other historically paraphyletic groups, such as Coelurosauria). The classification of megalosauroids is as follows:


SUPERFAMILY MEGALOSAUROIDEA

Family: Megalosauridae

Piveteausaurus

Subfamily: Megalosaurinae

"Brontoraptor"

Edmarka

Torvosaurus

Megalosaurus

Poekilopleuron

Subfamily: Eustreptospondylinae

Streptospondylus

Piatnitzkysaurus

Eustreptospondylus

Magnosaurus

Dubreuillosaurus

Afrovenator

Family: Spinosauridae

Chilantaisaurus

Suchosaurus

Subfamily: Baryonychinae

Baryonyx

Cristatusaurus

Suchomimus

Subfamily: Spinosaurinae

Angaturama

Irritator

Siamosaurus

Spinosaurus


Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 4:59pm

Think Vorchia when ya see this one [image] [image]

Oviraptor philocerataps

[image]


Oviraptor was a small Mongolian theropod dinosaur, first discovered by legendary paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews and first described by Henry Fairfield Osborn, in 1924.
Its name is Latin for 'egg thief', referring to the fact that the first fossil specimen was discovered atop a pile of what were thought to be Protoceratops eggs. The specific name philoceratops means "lover of ceratopsians", also given as a result of this find. However,
it is now believed that the eggs belonged to this genus itself and that the specimen was actually brooding its eggs, based on discoveries of a related animal called Citipati. Oviraptor forms the basis of a family called Oviraptoridae, named by Barsbold in 1976. Barsbold then used the name to coin a group called Oviraptorosauria.

Diet

Oviraptor may have eaten eggs. However, in 1977, Barsbold argued that the strength of its beak would indicate that it was strong enough to break the shells of mollusks such as clams, which are found in the same formation as Oviraptor. The idea of a crushing jaw was first proposed by H. F. Osborn, who believed that the toothless beak in the original skull, together with an extension of several bones below the jaw from the palate, would have made an "egg-piercing" tool, though this interpretation has been disputed. These bones form part of the main upper jaw bone or maxilla, which converge in the middle to form a pair of prongs. The rest of the bony palate, unlike all other dinosaurs, is extended below the jaw line and would have pushed into the space between the toothless lower jaws. A rhamphotheca, or the keratin forming the beaks of birds, covered the edges of upper and lower beaks and probably the palate, as proposed by Barsbold and Osborn.

Age

Oviraptor lived in the late Cretaceous Period, during the Santonian stage, and may have lived in an earlier stage called the Campanian, between 80 to 70 million years ago; it comes almost exclusively from the Djadokhta Formation of Mongolia, as well as the northeast region of the Neimongol Autonomous Region of China, in an area called Bayan Mandahu. Relatives of Oviraptor include "Ingenia" and Chirostenotes.

Appearance

Oviraptor was one of the most bird-like of the non-avian dinosaurs. Its rib cage, in particular, displayed several features that are typical of birds, including a set of processes on each rib that would have kept the rib cage rigid. A relative of Oviraptor called Nomingia was found with a pygostyle, which is a set of fused vertebrae that would
later help support the tail feathers of birds. Skin impressions from more primitive oviraptorosaurs, like Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx, clearly show an extensive covering of feathers on the body, feathered wings and feathered tail fans. A feather tail fan is also indicated by the presence of a pygostyle in Nomingia, suggesting that this feature was widespread among oviraptorosaurs. Additionally, the nesting position of the brooding
Citipati specimens implies the use of feathered wings to cover the eggs. Given the close anatomical similarity between these species and Oviraptor, it is almost certain that Oviraptor had feathers as well. Oviraptor is traditionally depicted with a distinctive crest, similar to that of the cassowary. However, re-examination of several oviraptorids (Clark, Norell & Barsbold, 2001) show that this well-known dinosaur may actually be a species of Citipati, a relative of Oviraptor. It is likely that Oviraptor did have a crest, but its exact size and shape are unknown due to crushing in the skull specimens.

Now here comes the good part =D

In popular culture


Note: Almost every appearance of "Oviraptor" in popular culture and fiction have actually been based on the tall-crested oviraptorid Citipati, not on Oviraptor.

James Gurney, in his book Dinotopia, conceived of an animal based on Oviraptor. Because he no longer considered it a predator of eggs, he renamed the animal "Ovinutrix", which means "egg nurse". Like many Oviraptor illustrations of the time, it was based on a specimen now referred to Citipati.







Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 7:31pm

Info from answers.com and

Wikipedia


Pics by Dino-World, and The Dinosauricon


If there is a species ya desire here don't hesitate to PM it to me and I'll try to get it up. ;D

Atrociraptor marshalli

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Atrociraptor ("cruel thief") was a dromaeosaurid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Upper Maastrichtian) of Alberta, Canada. The type (and only) specimen was discovered in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, near Drumheller, Alberta; it consists of parts of the upper and lower jaws and teeth. The skull appears to have been unusually short and tall. The teeth are relatively straight, but they emerge from the tooth sockets at an angle, resulting in a strongly raked row of teeth. A number of isolated teeth (previously referred to Saurornitholestes) have also been recovered from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation (Ryan et al. 1998); they can be recognized by their unusually large serrations.
Atrociraptor was about the size of a Bambiraptor. Atrociraptor is different from Bambiraptor and other velociraptorians via its isodont dentition and short deep snout. Atrociraptor is most closely related to Deinonychus, based on the large number of derived characters in both genera.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Infraorder: Coelurosauria

Family: Dromaeosauridae

Subfamily: Dromaeosaurinae

Genus: Atrociraptor


Binomial name Atrociraptor marshalli



Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 7:43pm

Dromaeosaurus albertensis

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Dromaeosaurus (drom-ee-oh-SAWR-us) was a wolf-sized theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Upper Campanian) Period of what is now Alberta, Canada. The name means 'running lizard' and is derived from the Greek (dromeus ) meaning 'runner' and sauros ( meaning 'lizard'). It is known from a partial skull and other bones (foot fragments, ribs), collected in what is now Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. Dozens of isolated teeth have also been found.Characteristics

Dromaeosaurus differs from most other Dromaeosauridae in having a short, massive skull, a deep mandible, and large, robust teeth. In these respects Dromaeosaurus resembled the tyrannosaurs. A few bones are known from the hindlimb and they indicate that Dromaeosaurus was a powerfully built animal. Exactly how it lived and what it ate are still open to speculation. The teeth show moderate wear and chipping and seem to have been used for crushing and tearing, more than slicing through flesh; it is possible that Dromaeosaurus was more of a scavenger than other small theropods. It was probably better suited to tackling large prey than the more lightly built Saurornitholestes.
The relationships of Dromaeosaurus are unclear. Although its rugged build gives it a primitive appearance, it was actually a very specialized animal. It is usually given its own subfamily, the Dromaeosaurinae; this group is thought to include Utahraptor, Achillobator, Adasaurus and perhaps Deinonychus. However, the relationships of dromaeosaurs are still in a state of flux. "Dromaeosaurus Morphotype A" is the designation given to a series of unusual, ridged dromaeosaur teeth from Alberta. These teeth probably do not belong to Dromaeosaurus, although it is unclear from what animal they do come. The type species is D. albertensis. The other species, lacking in material, may well be synonymous with it.

In popular culture

Dromaeosaurus are featured in Walking With Dinosaurs, stalking Torosaurus and stealing eggs from Tyrannosaurus. Dromaeosaurus are also featured hunting for Zuniceratops in When Dinosaurs Roamed America


Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
Superorder: Dinosauria
Order: Saurischia
Suborder: Theropoda
Infraorder: Coelurosauria
Family: Dromaeosauridae
Subfamily: Dromaeosaurinae
Genus: Dromaeosaurus



Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by mathrim on Jan 8, 2007, 7:44pm

[image]

*snort* hmmph that picture does us Suchomimus no justice... i suggest a new one... i looked fer a cryptosaurs picture also but i couldnt find anyhting also... *grumble*

for suchomimus i suggest this...
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 9:03pm

Microraptor gui

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Microraptor ("small thief") was a genus of small, dromaeosaurid dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Period (Barremian stage), 130-125.5 million years ago. Like Archaeopteryx, it demonstrates the close evolutionary relationship between birds and dinosaurs, as it had long pennaceous feathers on its limbs and tail. Two species have been named, M. zhaoianus and M. gui. It has recently been suggested that all of the specimens belong to a single species, which is properly called M. zhaoianus. Cryptovolans, another four-winged dromaeosaur, may also be a species of Microraptor.

Description

Microraptor was about 77cm (2.5ft) long from its nose to the tip of its tail. Its body had a thick covering of feathers, with a diamond-shaped fan on the end of the tail (possibly for added stability during flight). Some specimens demonstrate a raised feather "crest" on the head, similar to some modern birds, like the Pileated Woodpecker. Bands of dark and light present on some specimens may indicate color patterns present in life.

Wings

Like its close relative Cryptovolans (possibly a junior synonym of Microraptor), Microraptor had two sets of wings, on both its fore- and hind legs. Close studies of the Berlin specimen of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx show that it too, had flight feathers on its hind legs, albeit shortened. Many scientists now think that all basal avians had feathers on their hind legs and that they were used like the tail feathers of present birds, for maintaining balance and changing direction in the air. Sankar Chatterjee determined in 2005 that, in order for the creature to fly, the wings must have been split-level (like a biplane) and not overlayed (like a dragonfly). It has been proposed by Chinese scientists that the animal glided, rather than flew properly, although the presence of asymmetrical feathers (a characteristic normally seen only in flying birds) on both fore and hind wings may indicate at least rudimentary powered flight (Xu et al, 2003).

Naming

The naming of Microraptor is controversial, because of the unusual circumstances of its first description. The first specimen to be described was part of a chimeric specimen — a fraud assembled from multiple specimens in China and smuggled to the USA for sale. After the fraud was revealed by Xu Xing of Beijing's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Storrs L. Olson, curator of birds in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, published a description of the tail in an obscure journal, giving it the name Archaeoraptor liaoningensis in an attempt to remove the name from the paleornithological record by assigning it to the part least likely to be a bird. However, Xu had discovered the remainder of the specimen from which the tail had been taken and published a description of it later that year, giving it the name Microraptor zhaoianus.

Since the two names designate the same individual as the type specimen, Microraptor zhaoianus is a junior objective synonym of Archaeoraptor liaoningensis and the latter, if valid, has priority. So, according to some interpretations of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the valid name for this dinosaur probably is Archaeoraptor liaoningensis Olson 2000. However, there is some doubt whether Olson in fact succeeded in meeting all the formal requirements for establishing a new taxon.
Most paleontologists are unwilling to use the name Archaeoraptor regardless of the precise legal status of the name. This is firstly because that name is strongly associated with the fraud and the National Geographic scandal and secondly because they view Olson's use of the name as attempted nomenclatural sabotage and do not want to support it. The name Microraptor zhaoianus Xu et al., 2000 has therefore almost attained universal currency.
So far, six virtually complete skeletons of Microraptor have been found in Liaoning, China in 2001 and 2002.

Microraptor in culture

The Microraptor featured prominently in the third episode of Prehistoric Park. They were shown as gliding dinosaurs that were closely related to birds. They flocked down to feast on worms and insects that were bought to the surface by Titanosaurus' footprints.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Infraorder: Coelurosauria

Family: Dromaeosauridae

Subfamily: Microraptorinae

Genus: Microraptor

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 9:39pm

Although not a dinosaur, since its a prehistoric creature. It belongs
here as well. ;D

Quetzalcoatlus Skybax

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Pic by Dinosauricon

Quetzalcoatlus (named for the Aztec feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl) was a pterodactyloid pterosaur known from the Late Cretaceous of North America (Campanian–Maastrichtian stages, 84–65 ma), and one of the largest known flying animals of all time. It was a member of the Azhdarchidae, a group of advanced toothless pterosaurs.

Discovery and species

The first Quetzalcoatlus fossil was found by Douglas A. Lawson. During the Cretaceous, Texas's climate was similar to modern tropical coastal wetlands and lagoons, extending
along the Cretaceous Seaway that filled the center of North America. Bones of related animals are also known from Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada. Skeletal remains of two species have been recovered from the Big Bend Region of Texas; the larger of the two (Q. northropi) had an estimated wingspan of up to 12 m (39 ft). There is still considerable debate as to the upper limit of Quetzalcoatlus wingspans. The largest remains, on display at the Science Museum of Minnesota, are somewhat scrappy, and may indicate an individual with a wingspan as large as 18 m (59 ft). Such a wingspan, however, may violate fundamental structural limits imposed on biological fliers; some scientists favor a wingspan closer to 12 m (40 ft) in light of these arguments. The largest Pteranodon individuals with 6 m (20 ft) wingspans were once thought to represent the size limit in biological fliers before the discovery of Quetzalcoatlus, so the matter is clearly still open.

Paleobiology

There are a number of different ideas about the lifestyle of Quetzalcoatlus. With its long neck vertebrae and long toothless jaws it might have fed on fish like a heron, or perhaps it scavenged like the Marabou Stork, others maintain that it fed like modern-day skimmers. Presumably Quetzalcoatlus could take off under its own power, but once aloft it may have spent much of its time soaring. On the ground, Quetzalcoatlus probably walked on all fours.
Along with the dinosaurs, Quetzalcoatlus became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period.


Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Order: Pterosauria

Suborder: Pterodactyloidea

Family: Azhdarchidae

Genus: Quetzalcoatlus



Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 10:01pm

Another prehistoric creature. ;D

Elasmosaurus

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Elasmosaurus meaning "thin-plated lizard" because it had platelike bones in its pelvic girdle (Greek elasmos = thin plate + sauros = lizard) is a plesiosaur with an extremely long neck that lived in the late Cretaceous. It was about 14 m (46 ft) in length and weighed over 2,000 kg (2.2 tons), making it the longest plesiosaur. It had a large body and four flippers for limbs. More than half of its length was neck, which had more than 70 vertebrae, more than any other animal. It had a small head with sharp teeth, and most likely ate small bony fish, belemnites (similar to squid), lepidotes and ammonites (molluscs). It swallowed small stones in order to aid its
digestion. Elasmosaurus was described in 1868 by Edward Drinker Cope from a fossil discovered in Kansas, USA. Other specimens have been found in various locations in North America. In the 19th century, Edward Drinker Cope accidentally placed the head of an Elasmosaurus on the wrong end (the tail). Othniel Charles Marsh pointed out the error, and this event is often cited as one of the causes of their long-lasting and acrimonious rivalry, known as the Bone Wars. Cope published his erroneous reconstruction of Elasmosaurus in August 1869. This was the first time anyone had ever seen an elasmosaur and it appeared to have a long sinuous tail like a mosasaur. Note that while O.C. Marsh claimed to have pointed out Cope's error "20 years after the fact" in an 1890 newspaper article, it was Joseph Leidy who actually pointed out the problem in print in 1870. See: Leidy, J. 1870. [Remarks on Elasmosaurus platyurus]. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 22: 9-10.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Reptilia

Order: Plesiosauria

Suborder: Plesiosauroidea

Family: Elasmosauridae

Genus: Elasmosaurus





Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2007, 10:17pm

Rhamphorhynchus

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Pic Copyright © by DGF DATENORGANISATION

Rhamphorhynchus was a long-tailed pterosaur of the Jurassic period. Its name means 'beak jaw'. Only 17.5 cm (7 in) long but with a wingspan of 100 cm (3 ft), it was less specialized than the later pterodactyloids. It had a long tail stiffened with ligaments which ended in a diamond-shaped vane. Rhamphorhynchus probably ate fish and it is believed that one of the ways it hunted was by dragging its beak in the water, catching fish and tossing them into its throat pouch, a structure similar to that of pelicans, which has been preserved in some fossils. This method of catching fish is found today in skimmers. Although fossils have been found in England, the best preserved come from the Solnhofen quarry in Bavaria; many of these fossils preserve not only the bones but impressions of soft tissues such as the wings and tail.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Order: Pterosauria

Suborder: Rhamphorhynchoidea

Family: Rhamphorhynchidae

Genus: Rhamphorhynchus





Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 9, 2007, 1:56pm

Anhanguera

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Anhanguera is a genus of pterodactyloid pterosaur known from the Lower-Cretaceous (Aptian) Santana Formation of Brazil. The discovery of this pterosaur helped to end some of the debates about whether pterosaurs walked on two legs or four. This pterosaur is closely related to Ornithocheirus, and belongs in the family Ornithocheiridae within its own subfamily, Anhanguerinae, which also includes Ludodactylus. Anhanguera was a fish-eating creature with a wingspan of 4-5 m (13-17 ft). It had a small, round crest on the front of its upper jaw. The creature is named after the Brazilian town of Anhanguera. There are several recognized species of Anhanguera. A. santanae and A. blittersdorfi are known from several fragmentary remains including skulls from the Santana Formation of Brazil. A. cuvieri and A. fittoni, initially described as belonging to the genus Pterodactylus and then Ornithocheirus, are from a sligthly later period (Albian) from England, while fragments of a Anhanguera species have also been found in Queensland, Australia. The well-known species A. piscator has been redescribed as belonging to the genus Coloborhynchus (Veldmeijer, 2003).Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Order: Pterosauria

Suborder: Pterodactyloidea

Family: Ornithocheiridae

Subfamily: Anhanguerinae

Genus: Anhanguera


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Pic © Copyright wissenschaft-online

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 10, 2007, 1:32pm

Unenlagia comahuensis

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Unenlagia (meaning "half-bird") was a genus of theropod dinosaur of the family Dromaeosauridae. Unenlagia, which lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous, was a member of the strange and extremely bird-like Gondwanan sub-family of dromaeosaurs called unenlagiines, and was closely related to dinosaurs such as Buitreraptor and Neuquenraptor (which might be the same species as Unenlagia). Makovicky (2005) suggested that the 'flying raptor' Rahonavis is also a member of this group, which could mean that Unenlagia is secondarily flightless, having evolved from flying, Rahonavis-like ancestors. Unenlagia was very birdlike itself. Novas and Puerta (1997) found its pelvic region to be very similar to that of the early bird Archaeopteryx. The shoulder girdle of Unenlagia also shows adaptations for flapping and, since at 2 meters (6 feet) long Unenlagia was probably too big to fly, this provides further evidence that it evolved from flying ancestors.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Infraorder: Coelurosauria

Family: Dromaeosauridae

Subfamily: Unenlagiinae

Genus: Unenlagia



Unenlagia comahuensis

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 10, 2007, 2:40pm

Albertosaurus sarcophagus

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Albertosaurus meaning "Alberta lizard") is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, more than 70 million years ago. The type species, A. sarcophagus, was restricted in range to the modern-day Canadian province of Alberta, after which the genus is named. Scientists disagree on the number of species represented in the genus, recognizing either one or two species. As a tyrannosaurid, Albertosaurus was a bipedal predator with a massive head, jaws lined with dozens of large teeth and tiny, two-fingered 'hands'. It may have been at the top of the food chain in its local ecosystem. Although relatively large for a theropod, Albertosaurus was much smaller than its more famous relative Tyrannosaurus, probably weighing only as much as a modern black rhinoceros. Fossils of more than twenty individuals have been recovered, providing scientists with a more detailed knowledge of Albertosaurus anatomy than is available for other tyrannosaurids. The discovery of ten individuals at one site provides evidence of pack behavior and allows studies of developmental biology which are impossible with lesser-known animals.


Description


Albertosaurus was smaller than the truly gigantic tyrannosaurids like Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. Adults measured approximately 9 m (30 ft) long. Several independent mass estimates, obtained by different methods, suggest that a full-grown Albertosaurus weighed between 1.282 tonnes (1.4 short tons) and 1.685 tonnes (1.85 short tons). The massive skull of Albertosaurus, perched on a short, S-shaped neck, was approximately 1
m (3.3 ft) long in the largest adults. Wide openings in the skull (fenestrae) reduced the potential weight of the head, and provided areas for muscle attachment and sensory organs. Its long jaws contained more than 60 banana-shaped teeth; larger tyrannosaurids possessed fewer teeth. Unlike most other theropods, tyrannosaurids were heterodont; the teeth took different forms depending on their position in the mouth. The premaxillary teeth at the tip of the upper jaw were much smaller than the rest, more closely packed, and D-shaped in cross section.
All tyrannosaurids, including Albertosaurus, shared a similar body appearance. Typically for a theropod, Albertosaurus was bipedal and balanced the heavy head and torso with a long tail. However, tyrannosaurid forelimbs were extremely small for their body size and
retained only two digits. The hindlimbs were long and ended in a four-toed foot. The first of these digits, called the hallux, was very short and only the other three contacted the ground, with the middle digit longer than the rest.

Classification


Albertosaurus is a member of the theropod family Tyrannosauridae. Within this family, Albertosaurus sarcophagus is usually classified with Gorgosaurus libratus (sometimes called Albertosaurus libratus; see below) in the subfamily Albertosaurinae. Albertosaurines were more slender than the robust tyrannosaurines, the other major subfamily of tyrannosaurids. Appalachiosaurus has been called an albertosaurine in at least one study, although this is disputed.

Albertosaurus sarcophagus

The type species of Albertosaurus is A. sarcophagus, also named by Osborn in 1905. The name means "flesh-eater" and has the same etymology as the funeral container with which it shares its name: a combination of the Ancient Greek words (sarx, meaning "flesh") and (phagein, meaning "to eat"). More than twenty specimens of all ages are known to science.


Taxonomy


Albertosaurus was named in 1905 by Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History in a very brief note at the end of his description of Tyrannosaurus rex. The name honors Alberta, the Canadian province in which the first remains were found. The generic name also incorporates the Greek term (sauros, meaning "lizard"), the most common suffix in dinosaur names.

Gorgosaurus libratus

In 1913, paleontologist Charles Hazelius Sternberg recovered another tyrannosaurid skeleton from slightly older sediments in Alberta. This dinosaur was named Gorgosaurus libratus in 1914 by Lawrence Lambe. Finding few differences to separate the two genera, Dale Russell declared Gorgosaurus a junior synonym of Albertosaurus in 1970, creating the new combination Albertosaurus libratus. This extended the temporal range of the genus backwards by several million years and its geographic range southwards by hundreds of kilometers. More recent examination of Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus has cast doubt on Russell's proposed synonymy. In 2003, Phil Currie and colleagues examined skulls of the two species and came to the conclusion that the two distinct genera should be retained, although they acknowledged that the two genera are sister taxa and that the distinction is therefore rather arbitrary. However, according to Currie, Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus are no more similar than Daspletosaurus and Tyrannosaurus, which are almost always retained as separate genera. In addition, several undescribed albertosaurine specimens have been recovered from other parts of North America, including Alaska and New Mexico, so Currie has recommended leaving the two genera separate until more of this diversity is clarified. Most authors have since followed Currie's recommendation, but some have not.


Invalid species


Other species of Albertosaurus have been named but later invalidated. William Parks described a partial skeleton from Alberta as Albertosaurus arctunguis in 1928, but this is universally considered a junior synonym of A. sarcophagus.Albertosaurus megagracilis (later renamed Dinotyrannus) was based on a small tyrannosaurid skeleton from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana in the United States. However, it is now thought to be a juvenile Tyrannosaurus.

History of discovery


The type specimen is a partial skull, collected in 1884 from an outcrop alongside the Red Deer River in Alberta. This specimen, along with an additional smaller skull and some skeletal material, was recovered by an expedition of the Geological Survey of Canada, led by the famous Canadian geologist Joseph B. Tyrrell. The specimen is now stored in the Canadian Museum of Nature. The two skulls were assigned to the existing species Laelaps incrassatus by Edward Drinker Cope in 1892. However, as early as 1877 the name Laelaps had been found to be preoccupied by a genus of mite, and it was changed to Dryptosaurus by Cope's rival, Othniel Charles Marsh. (Cope refused to recognize the new name.) Lawrence Lambe moved Laelaps incrassatus to the genus Dryptosaurus in 1904. Finally, because D. incrassatus was only based on generic tyrannosaurid teeth that could not be said to belong to any particular species, and because the Alberta skull material differed markedly from that of Dryptosaurus, Osborn named it Albertosaurus sarcophagus in 1905.

In 1910, American paleontologist Barnum Brown uncovered the remains of a large group of Albertosaurus at another quarry alongside the Red Deer River. Because of the large number of bones and the limited time available, Brown's party did not collect every specimen, but made sure to collect bones from all of the individuals present. Among many other bones deposited in the American Museum of Natural History collections in New York City, seven sets of right metatarsals were collected, along with two isolated toe bones that did not match any of the metatarsals in size. This indicates the presence of at least nine individuals in the quarry. The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology rediscovered the site in 1997 and resumed fieldwork there. This further excavation turned up a tenth, very young individual in 2002. The specimen originally named A. arctunguis was also excavated near the Red Deer River and is housed in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. Six more skulls and skeletons have since been discovered in Alberta and are housed in other Canadian museums. All identifiable fossils of Albertosaurus sarcophagus are known from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation in Alberta. This formation dates to the early Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous period, 70 to 73 million years ago. Many other dinosaurs have been found there, including smaller theropods like Ornithomimus, Chirostenotes and several dromaeosaurids, and a wide variety of herbivores like ankylosaurians, ceratopsians, pachycephalosaurs and hadrosaurids. Fossils of Albertosaurus have also been reported from the American states of Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming, but these probably do not represent A. sarcophagus and may not even belong to the Albertosaurus genus.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: [i]Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Family: Tyrannosauridae

Subfamily: Albertosaurinae

Genus: Albertosaurus

Species: A. sarcophagus








Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 10, 2007, 3:19pm

Oh, lookie here, another dinosaur that is a dragon. ;D ;D ;D

Dilong paradoxus

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Dilong paradoxus ('paradoxical emperor dragon') is a small, feathered tyrannosaurid dinosaur species from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation in the Liaoning province of China. It lived about 130 million years ago. The name is derived from the Mandarin Chinese ? dì meaning 'emperor' and ? lóng meaning 'dragon', used to name dinosaurs in the same way as -saur(us) in the West, plus paradoxus or paradoxum, a Latinisation of the Ancient Greek meaning 'against received wisdom'.
It is one of the earliest and most primitive known tyrannosaurids and had a covering of feathers. Its name refers to the association of Tyrannosaurus rex with feathers: a mythological Chinese Dragon (Dilong) but with a paradoxical edge: its small size and its feathers. The feathers were seen in a fossilized skin impression of the jaw and tail. They are not developed as modern feathers, lacking a central shaft and used for warmth rather than flight. Adult tyrannosaurs, found in Alberta and Mongolia have skin impressions which appear to show the pebbly scales typical of other dinosaurs. Possibly the juveniles were feathered but shed them as the animal became larger.
Dilong was about 1.6 m in length and is known from four moderately complete skeletons.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Superfamily: Tyrannosauroidea

Genus: Dilong

Species: D. paradoxus


Binomial name: Dilong paradoxus




Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 10, 2007, 3:54pm

Therizinosaurus cheloniformis

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Therizinosaurus ('scythe lizard', from the Greek therizo meaning 'to reap' or 'to cut off' and sauros meaning 'lizard') was a very large therizinosaur (previously known as segnosaur). It could grow up to 10-12 meters (33-40 feet) long and reach 3-6 tons in weight. Therizinosaurus lived in the late Cretaceous Period around 70-75 million years ago, and was one of the later and largest representatives of its unique group. Its fossils were first discovered in Mongolia and when it was discovered it was originally thought to be a turtle (hence the name cheloniformis - turtle-formed) but it is now accepted as a maniraptoran theropod dinosaur.

Discovery and SpeciesThe first fossils now attributed to Therizinosaurus were discovered in the late 1940s by a joint Soviet-Mongolian fossil expedition. The expedition unearthed several giant claws which measured up to a meter in length - but to what creature these belonged was unknown until the early 1950s, when further fossil expeditions unearthed more bones - several more sets of claws and parts of a forelimb and hindlimb. Subsequent finds in northern China allowed paleontologists to assemble the general skeletal structure of the animal, which was determined to be a dinosaur and not a turtle. In 1954, the animal was named Therizinosaurus ('scythe lizard'), referring to the enormous claws. At present, there is one accepted species - T. cheloniformis. The recent discovery of several related dinosaurs - Alxasaurus in 1993 and Beipiaosaurus in 1996 - helped clarify the position of the therizinosaurs as a whole. Various theories had been proposed to explain the ancestry of these dinosaurs, with some scientists even suggesting they were descendents of the sauropodomorphs - but these new, well-preserved finds, giving details about the bird-like pelvis, feet and skulls, helped confirm that the therizinosaurs were all maniraptoran, theropod dinosaurs.


Characteristics


Therizinosaurus had a small head with a beaked mouth, atop a long neck. It was bipedal and had a large, heavy, deep body, as evidenced by the wide pelvis, 2.5 meter (8 foot) long 'arms' and hind legs that ended in four toes (three of which supported the animal's weight), which were tipped by short, curved claws. The most distinctive feature of the animal was the presence of three gigantic claws on its front limbs. Each of the three digits of its 'hand' bore these claws, which reached nearly a meter (approximately 2-3 feet) in length. The largest claw was on the first digit. The feeding habits of Therizinosaurus are still debated, but it was most probably an herbivore, using its big claws to push leaves into its mouth. Other hypotheses suggest that it was a termite eater, using its claws to open large termite nests - but it seems highly unlikely that an animal the size of Therizinosaurus could survive on a diet based on insects and features of the skull (including a beaked mouth and flattened teeth) suggest a herbivorous diet. It is thought that Therizinosaurus lived a similar lifestyle to modern gorillas or prehistoric ground sloths, using its long arms and sharp claws to grab food and foliage from trees. There are other possible functions that could have been served by the claws of Therizinosaurus, such as defense against predators (e.g. the contemporary Tarbosaurus) and in intraspecific fighting, such as fighting for territory or for mating. The claws may even have served all these functions.
It is highly likely that Therizinosaurus was feathered, given that its close relative Beipiaosaurus certainly was.



Scientific classification


Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Infraorder: Coelurosauria

Family: Therizinosauridae

Genus: Therizinosaurus

Species: T. cheloniformis





Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2007, 6:52pm

Tarbosaurus bataar

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Tarbosaurus, meaning 'Terror Lizard' (from the Greek tarbos/ meaning 'fright', 'alarm', 'terror' (interestingly it can also mean 'awe' or 'reverence') and saurus/ meaning 'lizard'), was a member of the dinosaur family of tyrannosaurids, which flourished during the early Maastrichtian of the Late Cretaceous Period. It is closely related to the genus (and perhaps is indistinct from) Tyrannosaurus.

Discovery and species

Remains have been found in Mongolia, first being described by Evgeny Maleev (pronounced Ma-LAY-ev), in 1955, from fossils recovered in a Soviet Mongolian expedition in 1948. More recently, some teeth and parts of a large pelvis, from a possible tarbosaur, have been recovered from the late Cretaceous Subashi Formation in the Turpan Basin in China. Several tarbosaur teeth have also been recovered, from the Late Cretaceous Nanxiong Formation in Guandong Province in southern China.


Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Family: Tyrannosauridae

Subfamily: Tyrannosaurinae

Tribe: Tyrannosaurini

Genus: Tarbosaurus

Species: T. bataar


Binomial name: Tarbosaurus bataar

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2007, 7:19pm

Alectrosaurus olseni

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Alectrosaurus

Name Means: "unmarried lizard"
Length: 5 meters
Weight: 1,000 to 2,000 pounds
Pronounced: al-Eck-trow-Saw-rus
When it lived: Late Cretaceous - around 96 million years ago
Where found: Gobi Desert, Mongolia

Introduction

Alectrosaurus seems to have been quite rare. It was much smaller than Tyrannosaurus rex; it was slender and does not preserve well. Like other members of the tyrannosaur family, it was bipedal. There have been a few findings of Alectrosaurus, and little has been published about them. printed about them. One important find is that it had a furcula (wishbone). For many years it was believed that only birds had this bone. It is now known to be common for a theropod. Since then other theropods have been found to have had them. History Alectrosaurus was discovered in 1923 during one of the American Museum of Natural History expeditions to China led by Roy Chapman Andrews. There was confusion when it was found originally, due to the fact that it was found with a segnosaur. The two animals were thought to be one. Chapman found a partial femur, tibia, fibula and pubic foot, It was described in 1933 by palaeontologist Charles W.Gilmore.. Since then a partial skull, shoulder girdle, ribs, fircula, should blade and two vertebrate have been discovered. There are no complete specimens, but there is enough skeleton material to reconstruct how it looked. It was re-described in 1989.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Superfamily: Tyrannosauroidea

Genus: Alectrosaurus

Species: A. olseni


Binomial name

Alectrosaurus olseni

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2007, 7:52pm

Info from answers.com and

Wikipedia


Pics by Dino-World, and The Dinosauricon


If there is a species ya desire here don't hesitate to PM it to me and I'll try to get it up. ;D

Daspletosaurus torosus

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Daspletosaurus ( dahs-PLEE-toh-sawr-us) meaning 'frightful lizard', from the Greek daspleto-/ meaning 'horrid, frightful' and saurus/ meaning 'lizard', was a theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now North America.


Discovery and species


Daspletosaurus was founded on a skeleton originally believed to be an undescribed species of Gorgosaurus. Currently, one species of Daspletosaurus, D. torosus, (torosus meaning 'brawny') has been officially recognized. However, a recent tyrannosaur find in Montana is thought to be that of a new (still un-named) daspletosaur species. The skull of this find seems to indicate a more Tyrannosaurus-like animal than D. torosus, possibly indicating an intermediate form between D. torosus and T. rex. Most of the specimens found were in Alberta and others were found in New Mexico.


Classification


It has been suggested that Daspletosaurus is a direct ancestor of Tyrannosaurus. The massive, stocky build of the two tyrannosaurids and certain similarities in skull structures seem to be indicators of a close phylogenetic relationship between the two genera. Some have even gone further, to suggest that Daspletosaurus is actually a species of Tyrannosaurus (Tyrannosaurus torosus), but this has not been universally accepted.

Paleobiology


Describer Dale Russell hypothesized that while the more lightly built and more common Gorgosaurus may have specialised in preying on the more common species of hadrosaurids, the heavier, more robust Daspletosaurus may have specialised in the less prevalent armoured species of the time, such as the ceratopsids.


Scientific classification


Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Family: Tyrannosauridae

Subfamily: Tyrannosaurinae

Tribe: Tyrannosaurini

Genus: Daspletosaurus

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2007, 8:18pm

Eotyrannus lengi

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Eotyrannus ("dawn tyrant") was a tyrannosauroid theropod dinosaur hailing from the Early Cretaceous Wessex Formation beds, included in Wealden Group, located in the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom. The remains, consisting of assorted skull, axial skeleton and apendicular skeleton elements, from a juvenile or subadult, found in a plant debris clay bed, was described by Hutt et al. in early 2001. The etymology of the generic name refers to the animal’s character as an "early tyrant", while the specific epithet is a mention to the discoverer of the fossil. Eotyrannus is a 6 meter-long theropod whose tyrannosauroid character is given by serrated premaxillary teeth with a D cross section, proportionally elongate tibiae and metatarsals. Primitive characters for Tyrannosauroidea are the elongate neck vertebrae and the long well developed arms forelimbs along with the undecorated dorsal surface of the skull, unlike the more advanced tyrannosaurids. However this animal, proportionally, has one of the longest hands in Theropoda known to date.This theropod would be a probable predator of such herbivorous dinosaur species as Hypsilophodon and Iguanodon. E. lengi’s find corroborates the notion that early tyrannosaurs were gracile with long forelimbs and three-fingered grasping hands though the big size of the animal either means that early evolution for this clade was carried out at a big size or Eotyrannus developed big size independently. The find of this animal in Europe puts interesting questions to the purported Asian origin for these animals along with North American Stokesosaurus and European Aviatyrannis arguing for a more complex biogeography for tyrannosaurs.

Scientific classification


Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Superfamily: Tyrannosauroidea

Genus: Eotyrannus

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2007, 8:33pm

Gorgosaurus libratus

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Gorgosaurus, meaning "fierce lizard" (from the Greek: gorgos/ meaning 'terrible' or 'fierce' and saurus/ meaning 'lizard') is a genus of carnivorous dinosaur that reached 7 to 8 metres (27 to 30 feet) in length, with an estimated weight of 2.5 tonnes (2.75 short tons). It was first described by paleontologist Lawrence Morris Lambe, in 1914 and has been found in western Canada and the United States. It lived about 70 million years ago in the late Cretaceous Period.
Over 20 Gorgosaurus skeletons have been recovered, making it the most well-represented tyrannosaurid in the fossil record. Generally similar to Tyrannosaurus and most other large tyrannosaurids (such as Daspletosaurus and Albertosaurus), Gorgosaurus can be described as having a massive head, large curved teeth, tiny two-fingered front limbs, and powerful legs. Compared to the other tyrannosaurids, Gorgosaurus is most similar to its very close relative Albertosaurus. Although it has been suggested that Gorgosaurus was a scavenger, its co-existence with the similarly sized but more robust tyrannosaurid, Daspletosaurus, casts doubt on this theory. Another hypothesis proposes that Gorgosaurus, which was rather lean for a tyrannosaurid, actively hunted fleet-footed animals such as duckbills and ornithomimids ('ostrich-mimic' dinosaurs). According to this proposition, the more troublesome ceratopsians and ankylosaurians (horned and heavily armoured dinosaurs) would have been left to Daspletosaurus.


Classification


For years, the species Gorgosaurus libratus (the only species of Gorgosaurus currently recognized) was assigned to the Albertosaurus genus. However, recent work done by paleontologists suggest that enough differences exist between G. libratus and the other Albertosaurus species, to justify the original genus name of Gorgosaurus.


Scientific classification


Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Family: Tyrannosauridae

Subfamily: Albertosaurinae

Genus: Gorgosaurus

Species: G. libratus
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 12, 2007, 5:05pm

Tyrannosaurus rex

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Tyrannosaurus meaning 'tyrant lizard') is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex, commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is one of the dinosaurs most often featured in popular culture around the world. It hails from what is now western North America. Some scientists consider the slightly older Tarbosaurus bataar from Asia to represent a second species of Tyrannosaurus, while others maintain Tarbosaurus as a separate genus.

Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to the large and powerful hindlimbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were small and retained only two digits. Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded T. rex in size, it was the largest known tyrannosaurid and one of the largest known land predators, measuring over 12 metres (40 feet) in length and weighing as much as an elephant.

Fossils of some T. rex have been found in North American rock formations dating to the very end of the Cretaceous Period (late Maastrichtian stage, 65 million years ago); it was among the last dinosaurs to exist prior to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. More than 30 specimens of T. rex have now been identified, some nearly complete, which has allowed significant research into many aspects of its biology, including its life history and biomechanics. The feeding habits and potential speed of T. rex remain controversial.

Description


Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time, about 12 to 13 meters (40 to 43.3 feet) long, and 4.5-5 m (14-16 ft) tall, when fully-grown.[1] Mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from more than 7,200 kilograms (8 short tons), to less than 4,500 kg (5 tons), with most modern estimates ranging between 5,400 and 6,800 kg (between 6 and 7.5 tons).

The largest known T. rex skulls measure up to 1.5 m (5 ft) in length. Compared to other theropods, the skull was heavily modified. The skull was extremely wide posteriorly, with a narrow snout, allowing some degree of binocular vision. Some of the bones, such as the nasals, were fused, preventing movement between them. Large fenestrae (openings) in the skull reduced weight and provided areas for muscle attachment. The bones themselves were massive, as were the serrated teeth which, rather than being bladelike, were oval in cross-section. Like other tyrannosaurids, T. rex displayed marked heterodonty, with the premaxillary teeth at the front of the upper jaw closely-packed and D-shaped in cross-section. Large bite marks found on bones of other dinosaurs indicate that these teeth could penetrate solid bone. T. rex had the greatest bite force of any animal. Worn or broken teeth are often found, but unlike those of mammals, tyrannosaurid teeth were continually replaced throughout the life of the animal.

The neck of T. rex formed a natural S-shaped curve like that of other theropods, but was short and muscular to support the massive head. The two-fingered forelimbs were very small relative to the size of the body, but heavily built. In contrast, the hindlimbs were among the longest in proportion to body size of any theropod. The tail was heavy and long, sometimes containing over forty vertebrae, in order to balance the massive head and torso. To compensate for the immense bulk of the animal, many bones throughout the skeleton were hollow. This reduced the weight of the skeleton while maintaining much of the strength of the bones.

Classification


Tyrannosaurus is the type genus of the superfamily Tyrannosauroidea, the family Tyrannosauridae, and the subfamily Tyrannosaurinae. Other members of the tyrannosaurine subfamily include the North American Daspletosaurus and the Asian Tarbosaurus, both of which have occasionally been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus. Tyrannosaurids were once commonly thought to be descendants of earlier large theropods such as megalosaurs and carnosaurs, although more recently they were reclassified with the generally smaller coelurosaurs.

In 1955, Soviet paleontologist Evgeny Maleev named a new species, Tyrannosaurus bataar, from Mongolia. By 1965, this species had been renamed Tarbosaurus bataar. Despite the renaming, many phylogenetic analyses have found Tarbosaurus bataar to be the sister taxon of Tyrannosaurus rex, and it has often been considered an Asian species of Tyrannosaurus. However, a recent redescription of the skull of Tarbosaurus bataar has shown that it was much narrower than that of Tyrannosaurus rex and that during a bite, the distribution of stress in the skull would have been very different, closer to that of Alioramus, another Asian tyrannosaur. A related cladistic analysis found that Alioramus, not Tyrannosaurus, was the sister taxon of Tarbosaurus, which, if true, would suggest that Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus should remain separate.

Other tyrannosaurid fossils found in the same formations as T. rex were originally classified as separate taxa, including Aublysodon and "Albertosaurus" megagracilis. However, these fossils are now universally considered to belong to juvenile T. rex. A small but nearly complete skull from Montana, 60 cm (2 ft) long, may be an exception. This skull was originally classified as a species of Gorgosaurus ("G." lancensis) by Charles W. Gilmore in 1946, but was later referred to a new genus, Nanotyrannus. Opinions remain divided on the validity of N. lancensis. Many paleontologists consider the skull to belong to a juvenile T. rex. There are minor differences between the two species, including the higher number of teeth in N. lancensis, which lead some scientists to recommend keeping the two genera separate until further research or discoveries clarify the situation.


Manospondylus controversy



The first fossil specimen which can be attributed to Tyrannosaurus rex consists of two partial vertebrae (one of which has been lost) found by Edward Drinker Cope in 1892 and described as Manospondylus gigas. Osborn recognized the similarity between M. gigas and T. rex as early as 1917 but, due to the fragmentary nature of the Manospondylus vertebrae, he could not synonymize them conclusively.

Controversy erupted in June 2000 after more tyrannosaur bones unearthed in South Dakota by the Black Hills Institute were found at the type locality of M. gigas and judged to represent further remains of the same individual. These more recently-discovered remains clearly belong to T. rex. According to the rules of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the system that governs the scientific naming of animals, Manospondylus gigas should therefore have priority over Tyrannosaurus rex, because it was named first. However, in the Fourth Edition of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, which took effect on January 1 2000, Chapter 6, Article 23.9 states that "the prevailing usage must be maintained" when "the senior synonym or homonym has not been used as a valid name after 1899" and "the junior synonym or homonym has been used for a particular taxon, as its presumed valid name, in at least 25 works, published by at least 10 authors in the immediately preceding 50 years..." Tyrannosaurus rex more than qualifies as the valid name under these conditions and is considered a nomen protectum ("protected name") under the ICZN, making Manospondylus gigas a nomen oblitum ("forgotten name").


Paleobiology


As with all dinosaurs known only from the fossil record, much of Tyrannosaurus biology, including behavior, coloration, ecology, and physiology, remains unknown. However, many new specimens have been discovered in the last twenty years, which has allowed some informed speculation on growth patterns, sexual dimorphism, biomechanics, and metabolism.


Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia


Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Family: Tyrannosauridae

Subfamily: Tyrannosaurinae

Genus: Tyrannosaurus

Species: T. rex


Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 12, 2007, 5:49pm

Zephyrosaurus

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Pic from © Natural History Museum, London

Zephyrosaurus - ZEF-fer-uh-SAWR-us (meaning "westward wind lizard") was an ornithopod dinosaur. Its fossils were found in strata dating to the early Cretaceous. The type species, Zephyrosaurus schaffi was described by Sues in 1980. The fossils include one partial skeleton, found in Montana, United States.

Scientific classification


Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Ornithopoda

Family: Hypsilophodontidae

Genus: Zephyrosaurus
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by kaak on Jan 12, 2007, 6:00pm


Quote:
Zephyrosaurus - ZEF-fer-uh-SAWR-us (meaning "westward wind lizard") was an ornithopod dinosaur. Its fossils were found in strata dating to the early Cretaceous. The type species, Zephyrosaurus schaffi was described by Sues in 1980. The fossils include one partial skeleton, found in Montana, United States.


Dwaggie, can you answer something for me? I am so totally clueless about most dinosaurs, but if the zephyrosaurus was a hypsilophodont, in the ornithopod order, doesn't that mean it was a vegetarian? Do you know what it would eat? It looks like a meat-eater, I guess, because I think it looks like a small raptor.

I think this is my favorite saurian name so far, I think, and an awesome picture - looks like racing stripes!
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 12, 2007, 6:48pm

Triceratops

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Pic © University of California Museum of Paleontology

Triceratops - tri ser' a tops - meaning 'three-horned face' (derived from the Greek tri -/ meaning 'three', ceras/ meaning 'horn' and meaning 'face') was a ceratopsid herbivorous dinosaur genus, from the Late Cretaceous Period (from around 70-65 million years ago) of what is now North America. It lived at around the same time and place as Tyrannosaurus, Ankylosaurus and another well-known ceratopsid, Torosaurus. Although no complete skeleton has been found, it has been estimated that Triceratops was about 9 m (30 ft) long, 3 m (10 ft) tall, and weighed around 5,400 kg (12,000 lb).


Discoveries and species

Triceratops was discovered by John Bell Hatcher, in 1888. Its declaration as a legitimate dinosaur came when an intact skull was found. It was named by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1889 (some time earlier, however, in 1887 near Denver, Colorado, USA, he had misidentified the Triceratops as a type of bison, giving it the name Bison alticornis). The sturdy nature of the animal's skull has ensured that many examples have been preserved as fossils, allowing variations between species and individuals to be studied. Triceratops remains have subsequently been found in Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming, in the USA and in Saskatchewan and Alberta, in Canada.

How many species?


In the first decades after Triceratops was described, various skulls were collected, which varied to a lesser or greater degree from the original Triceratops, named T. horridus by Marsh (from Latin horridus; "rough, rugose", suggesting the roughened texture of the bones, which Marsh later admitted belonged to an aged individual). Discoverers would write these up as separate species (listed below). Eventually, however, the idea that the differing skulls might be representative of individual variation within one (or two) species gained popularity. In 1986, Ostrom and Wellnhofer published a paper where they proposed there was only one species - Triceratops horridus. Part of the rationale is that generally there are only one or two species of any large animal in a region (e.g. elephant or giraffe in modern Africa). A few years later, Cathy Forster reanalysed Triceratops material more comprehensively and concluded that the remains fell into two species, T. horridus and T. prorsus, although the distinctive skull of T. (now tentatively Diceratops) hatcheri differed enough to warrant a separate genus.

Paleobiology


Although Triceratops is commonly portrayed as a herding animal, there is currently no solid evidence that it lived in herds. Unlike other horned dinosaurs, some of which are known from sites preserving dozens or hundreds of individuals, all Triceratops finds known at present preserve only solitary individuals.



Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Marginocephalia

Infraorder: Ceratopsia

Family: Ceratopsidae

Subfamily: Ceratopsinae

Genus: Triceratops
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 12, 2007, 7:07pm

Maiasaura

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Pic © www.dinosaures-web.com

Maiasaura ("good mother lizard") is a large duck-billed dinosaur species that lived in Montana in the Upper Cretaceous Period (Campanian), about 74 million years ago.

Discovery

Maiasaura was discovered by dinosaur paleontologist Jack Horner (paleontologic advisor for the Jurassic Park movies). He named the dinosaur after finding a series of nests with remains of eggshells and hatchlings. This was the first proof of giant dinosaurs raising and feeding their young. Over 200 specimens, in all age ranges, have been found.

Characteristics

Maiasaura had a strange appearance. It was large (about 7 meters long) and it had the typical hadrosaurid flat beak and a thick nose. It had a small, spiky crest in front of its eyes. The form of the head resembled that of a horse. This dinosaur was herbivorous. It walked both on two (bipedal) or four (quadrupedal) legs and appeared to have no defense against predators, except, perhaps, its heavy muscular tail and its herd behaviour.
It lived in herds and it raised its young in nesting colonies. The nests, containing 30 to 40 eggs, were made of earth and were guarded by the parents (parental care). The eggs were about the size of ostrich eggs, so the hatchlings had to grow fast.
Maiasaura lived alongside the ceratopsid Centrosaurus, the tank-like Euoplocephalus and an earlier relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, Daspletosaurus torosus. It was among the latest dinosaur species to evolve, prior to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction of 65 million years ago.

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Ornithopoda

Family: Hadrosauridae

Subfamily: Hadrosaurinae

Tribe: Maiasaurini

Genus: Maiasaura


Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 12, 2007, 8:07pm

Muttaburrasaurus langdoni

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Info © from Dann's Dinosaur Info Pic © The Natural History Museum, London

Muttaburrasaurus - Mutt-tah-bu-rah-saw-rus - (Reptile from Muttaburra) was first found on Rosebury Downs station beside the Thompson river near the town of Muttaburra in Queensland, Australia, in 1963. It was discovered by a local grazier, Mr D.Langdon of Muttaburra. The fossil remains had been scattered about by the feet of cattle for years and some of the locals had taken pieces home with them. Once the importance of the find was known the locals were asked to return the material they had souvenired, and most was recovered. At its time it was the most complete dinosaur skeleton found in Australia (now surpassed by Minmi paravertebra, an ankylosaur from the same region). It was a herbivore similar to Iguanodon (if not closely related) that spent most of its time on all fours, but could raise up onto its hind legs to feed or to run fast from predators. It had an unusual wide, low skull with a hollow chamber on top of its snout. The exact relationships of Muttaburrasaurus are unclear, although it appears to be a basal ornithopod more derived than Tenontosaurus. It may be related to the dryosaurs, including the basal ornithopod Gasparinisaura cincosaltensis from the Late Cretaceous of South America. There seem to be many basal dryomorph dinosaurs known from Gondwanan countries, such as Dryosaurus lettowvorbecki and Kangnasaurus coetzei from Africa, and an Antarctic "dryosaur" specimen. In 1987 a second skull was collected from Dunluce station, between Hughenden and Richmond in north-central Queensland, by Mary Wade. The skull was quite badly crushed, but appears more complete than the original. Given the slight age difference of a million years or so, and its generally more primitive features, this skull may not belong to the same species as Muttaburrasaurus langdoni, so has been designated as a Muttaburrasaurus sp, meaning that it probably belonged to the same genus but may be a different species. Most iguanodontids had daggar-like spikes for thumbs and serrated beaks with strong jaw muscles, both of which would have been useful in fending off predatory theropods. It is not known whether Muttaburrasaurus had thumb spurs, indeed its original classification as an iguanodont is in doubt. An incomplete flattened, tapering element was initially thought to have been a fragment of thumb spur, but given its broken and abraded appearance and the fact that most of the skeleton shows little similarities with iguanodontids, there is little evidence for the presence of a thumb spur. The jaw muscles of Muttaburrasaurus would have been unusually strong. The rear section of the skull, where the jaw muscles would have attached, is much deeper than in most other ornithopods. Unusually for a dinosaur, Muttaburrasaurus seems to have replaced it's teeth all at once, rather than one at a time as needed, so that the tooth row formed a continuous shearing surface rather than a grinding one. It has been suggested that Muttaburrasaurus may have been partially carnivorous. Perhaps these adaptations were for eating tough vegetation that other dinosaurs found difficult to chew, such as cycads which were common in this part of Australia at the time. If so it may have meant less competition for food from other herbivores. On the other hand, if Muttaburrasaurus lacked a thumb spur then it may have relied on its large size and strong bite as its main defenses if cornered by a predator or a rival muttaburrasaur. Muttaburrasaurus seems to be one of the most wide spread dinosaurs known from Australia. As well as the two specimens discussed above, fragments of a third have been found at Iona, also near Hughenden. Two teeth from Lightning Ridge in New South Wales may also have belonged to Muttaburrasaurus. Iguanodontids in general have the distinction of probably being the first dinosaurs that could chew efficiently. Their descendants, the hadrosaurs and lambeosaurs, took this adaptation to the extreme, having several hundred self-sharpening teeth active in the jaw at any one time, with several rows of inactive teeth waiting below the gum line to replace them as they wore out. The only other dinosaurian herbivores that could match this feat of chewing efficiency were perhaps the horned ceratopsians. Most other dinosaur plant eaters had surprisingly primitive tooth structures. Although Muttaburrasaurus seems to be neither iguanodontid nor a hadrosaur, it may represent a line of ornithopods that diverged from the iguanodont-hadrosaur line sometime before the divergence of Tenontosaurus.

Kingdom: Animalia (animals)
Phylum: Chordata (having a hollow nerve chord ending in a brain)
Class: Archosauria (diapsids with socket-set teeth, etc.)
Order: Ornithischia - beaked, bird-hipped dinosaurs that were plant-eaters
Suborder: Ornithopoda
Infraorder: Iguanodontia - having spiked thumbs
Genus: Muttaburrasaurus
Species: M. langdoni (type species named by Ralph E. Molinar and Alan Bartholomai, 1981)



Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by quickstride on Jan 13, 2007, 4:09pm

While I like this idea, I'd like to make a suggestion- you should post your sources for the information and pictures. It's probably not a big deal, but some people, especially paleoartists, get cranky when their work is used without at least credit. Also, it's just a good habit to get into (my college was very strict about plagiarism- even accidently forgetting to cite a source could cause you to fail!)

Also, two pages of theropods and no ornithomimids? What's up with that? ;) (Just kidding. Keep up the non-theropods- herbivores don't get enough respect.)
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by quickstride on Jan 13, 2007, 4:11pm


Quote:

Quote:
Zephyrosaurus - ZEF-fer-uh-SAWR-us (meaning "westward wind lizard") was an ornithopod dinosaur. Its fossils were found in strata dating to the early Cretaceous. The type species, Zephyrosaurus schaffi was described by Sues in 1980. The fossils include one partial skeleton, found in Montana, United States.


Dwaggie, can you answer something for me? I am so totally clueless about most dinosaurs, but if the zephyrosaurus was a hypsilophodont, in the ornithopod order, doesn't that mean it was a vegetarian? Do you know what it would eat? It looks like a meat-eater, I guess, because I think it looks like a small raptor.

I think this is my favorite saurian name so far, I think, and an awesome picture - looks like racing stripes!


Zephyrosaurus would have been just as herbivorous as any other hypsilophodont- I think the picture is just low resolution (it looks like it has sharp teeth, but that's probably actually a beak.) It's among my favorite dinos.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 13, 2007, 7:18pm


Quote:
While I like this idea, I'd like to make a suggestion- you should post your sources for the information and pictures. It's probably not a big deal, but some people, especially paleoartists, get cranky when their work is used without at least credit. Also, it's just a good habit to get into (my college was very strict about plagiarism- even accidently forgetting to cite a source could cause you to fail!)

Also, two pages of theropods and no ornithomimids? What's up with that? ;) (Just kidding. Keep up the non-theropods- herbivores don't get enough respect.)




There are links to the info sources on the first post at the top.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by quickstride on Jan 13, 2007, 8:07pm

Whoops, sorry, for some reason I didn't see it the first time I looked. :P I was looking for them in the individual posts.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 13, 2007, 9:26pm

Pachycephalosaurus

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Pic from © Dinosauricon

The unique Pachycephalosaurus had a thick, dome-shaped head with some remains measuring up to 10 inches thick. While it had been believed that the Pachycephalosaurus used its thick skull to ram head-to-head against other males and predators as defense and as a sign of dominance, further studies have disproven this myth. The domed area of its skull was actually made of porous and fragile bone that would have crumpled had two skulls collided. All of the remains found so far show no signs of scarring, leading scientists to believe that Pachycephalosaurus never rammed its head into anything as hard as its own skull. More likely, it would ram another or a predator in the side, damaging internal organs and causing massive bruises while suffering little to no damage itself.

The dome-headed dino would not automatically start ramming a predator, though. Running was its first line of defense and, despite traveling in herds, it would much rather flee than risk its own life. Two powerful hind legs carried the Pachycephalosaurus' body, and it had two short forelimbs that may have let it walk (and possibly run) on all four limbs while scavenging for food. Its tail was stiff, filled with a mesh of tendons around the base. What purpose this could have served is unknown, but it may have aided in balance while charging at a predator or could even have allowed for fast whipping actions.

KINGDOM: Animalia

PHYLUM: Chordata

ORDER: Ornithischia

SUBORDER: Pachycephalosauria

INFRAORDER: Carnosauria

GENUS: Pachycephalosaurus
Additional Sources:

Zoom Dinosaurs, www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/ ~ Shawn Sackenheim, All Game Guide





Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 13, 2007, 9:59pm

Tuojiangosaurus

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Info from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Pic from © Dinosauricon


Tuojiangosaurus ('Tuo River lizard') is a dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period, recovered from the Upper Shaximiao Formation of what is now Sichuan Province in China. It is a stegosaur. Physically similar to the North American Stegosaurus, Tuojiangosaurus is the best understood of the Chinese stegosaurs. It was around 7.0 m (23 ft) long and 2 m (7 ft) high, with a postulated weight of around 2.7 tonnes (6000 lbs).

Discovery and species

The only species, T. multispinus, was named in 1977 (exactly a hundred years after Stegosaurus) on the strength of two specimens, one over half complete. Like its compatriot Kentrosaurus, it had spikes above the hips and it had two rows of 15 pointed plates along the spine. It also had two outward-pointing spikes on each side of the end of the tail, angled approximately at 45 degrees to the vertical. In stegosaurs, this spike arrangement has become affectionately known as the "Thagomizer".

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Reptilia

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Thyreophora

Infraorder: Stegosauria

Family: Stegosauridae

Genus: Tuojiangosaurus
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 13, 2007, 10:20pm

Info from answers.com and

Wikipedia


Pics by Dino-World, and

The Dinosauricon

Rutiodon

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Info from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Pic © FossNet - Internet Fossilienshop

Rutiodon is an extinct genus of archosaur reptile belonging to the phytosaur group. It was up to 7 m (23 ft) long.
Like other phytosaurs, Rutiodon strongly resembled a crocodile, with the only exception being the fact that its nostrils were positioned close to the eyes. Because of its enlarged front teeth, it most closely resembled the gharial. It probably caught fish and also snatched land animals from the waterside.

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Suborder: Phytosauria

Family: Phytosauridae

Genus: Rutiodon
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 14, 2007, 1:41am

Had to make some changes to some of the Pics and add Who they were from. [image]
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by mathrim on Jan 15, 2007, 12:05pm

dwaggie uve worked hard on this and i appreciate it... i think i speak fer every1 when i say thankyou.......


(btw ne1 know what a red flaming folder next to post meen?)
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by admin on Jan 15, 2007, 12:25pm


Quote:
(btw ne1 know what a red flaming folder next to post meen?)


That means the topic is a 'very hot' topic. Any topic with over 60 replies will get that status. Any topic with over 40 replies becomes a hot topic.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by mathrim on Jan 15, 2007, 12:31pm

ah ok that you Az *bows**falls over due to unbalance*
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 15, 2007, 7:24pm

Ceratosaurus

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Pic © Joe Tucciarone and Jeff Poling


Ceratosaurus / meaning 'horned lizard', in reference to the horn on its nose (Greek keras/keratos meaning 'horn' and sauros meaning 'lizard'), was a large predatory dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period, found in the Morrison Formation of North America, in Tanzania and possibly in Portugal. It was characterized by large jaws with enormous, bladelike teeth, a large, blade-like horn on the snout and a pair hornlets over the eyes. The forelimbs were powerfully built but very short. The bones of the sacrum were fused (synsacrum) and the pelvic bones were fused together and to this structure (Sereno 1997) (i.e. similar to modern birds). Evidence suggests that there may also have been a row of small spurs or even a low sail, along the spine.

Discovery and species


Ceratosaurus is known from the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in central Utah and the Dry Mesa Quarry in Colorado. The type species, described by O. C. Marsh in 1884 and redescribed by Gilmore in 1920, is Ceratosaurus nasicornis. Two further species have recently been described in 2000, C. magnicornis, and dentisulcatus. However, additional species, including C. ingens, C. stechowi and a species that has been referred to as C. meriani, from Portugal, have been described from less complete material. While C. nasicornis remains the type species and is cited at around 6 meters (20 feet) in length, additional finds indicate that this species may be misleadingly small, and that Ceratosaurus was likely larger. Very scant remains of a Ceratosaurus-like theropod have been found in Tanzania and would have belonged to an animal at least 15 meters (50 feet) in length, much larger than Allosaurus.

Paleobiology


Ceratosaurus lived alongside dinosaurs such as Allosaurus, Torvosaurus, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and Stegosaurus. It may have competed with Allosaurus for prey, though it was smaller at around 6 to 8 meters (20-27 feet) in length, weighing 500 kg up to 1 tonne. Ceratosaurus had a longer, more flexible body, with a tail shaped like a crocodilian. This suggests that it was a better swimmer than the stiffer Allosaurus. A recent study by Bakker confirmed that Ceratosaurs generally hunted aquatic prey, such as fish and crocodiles, although it had potential for feeding on large dinosaurs. The study also suggests that sometimes adults and juveniles ate together. This evidence is, of course, very debatable and Ceratosaurus tooth marks are very common on large, terrestrial dinosaur prey fossils.



Classification


Relatives of Ceratosaurus include Elaphrosaurus and the abelisaur Carnotaurus. The classification of Ceratosaurus and its immediate relatives has been under intense debate recently. In the past, Ceratosaurus, the Cretaceous Albelisaurs and the primitive Coelophysoidae were all grouped together and called Ceratosauria, defined as theropods closer to Ceratosaurus than to the lineage of aves. Recent evidence, however, has shown large distinctions between the later, larger and more advanced Ceratosaurs and earlier forms like Coelophysis, leading to the naming of the later theropods as Neoceratosauria and closer to, or perhaps even ancesteral to, Tetanuran carnosaurus like Allosaurus. Many Theropods no longer considered close to Ceratosaurus were once classified as relatives, including Eustreptospondylus and Yangchuanosaurus. While it is likely that they are not Neoceratosaurs these 'more advanced' theropods do display a sort of middle ground of primitive characteristics compared to Allosaurs (Eustreptospondylus lacks the Allosaur expanded boot-shaped pubic bone, instead having a rod shaped pubis like Ceratosaurus. Many Sinraptors and Allosaurs have a tendency to grow elaborate and multiple horn rows, very visible in Yangchuanosaurus and prominent in Ceratosaurus). Some of the most modern publishings have even begun listing Ceratosaurus as a basal Tetanurae and closer to Allosaurus than Coelophysis. While considered distant from the lineage of aves among the theropods, Ceratosaurus and its kin were still very bird-like and even had a more 'advanced-looking tarsus than Allosaurus. As with all dinosaurs, the more fossils found of these animals, the better their evolution and relationships can be understood.

Info Copyright © 2006 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 15, 2007, 7:41pm

Stegosaurus

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Pic © Joe Tucciarone and Jeff Poling


Stegosaurus (Steg·o·sau·rus)[Gr.,=roof lizard], quadriped ornithischian dinosaur of the late Jurassic period. About 29 ft 6 in (9 m) long, it had short forelegs, four long bony spikes on a flexible tail, and two rows of upright triangular bony plates running along the back, which gave it a serrated profile. The function of the plates is debated. They may have acted as deterrents to predatory dinosaurs, but some scientists have suggested that they were not strong enough to have functioned that way. Other theories are that they helped regulate body temperature by dissipating heat or absorbing solar rays or that they helped members of the species recognize each other. The head of Stegosaurus was small, and the brain weighed about 2.5 oz (71 grams). The front of the mouth was beak-shaped; there were small leaf-shaped teeth in the cheek area. An herbivore, Stegosaurus, along with Ankylosaurus, belongs to the group of armored dinosaurs, Thyreophora. Fossil skeletons have been found in the Jurassic beds of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.


Stegosaurus is one of the most easily identifiable dinosaurs thanks to its large and foreboding appearance. Truth be told, paleontologists are unsure of how the spike-like plates on the Stegosaurus' back aligned themselves as they were not part of the bone. Some theories suggest that the plates were used to regulate the dinosaur's temperature (possibly by flapping the plates back and forth) or to ward off insects like cows and horses do today. They were most likely placed upward when a predator approached to give the illusion that the Stegosaurus was sharp and deadly. The plates could also have been used in mating practices.

Though the number of plates on the Stegosaurus' back hardly differ from skeleton to skeleton (they all had 17 plates), the number of horns on its tail does differ depending upon the species. Stegosaurus ungulatis carried eight horns on its tail while Stegosaurus stenops carried only four. Its rear legs were nearly twice as long as its front legs and reached more out to the side than its front limbs. The feet on each front legs had five toes while the rear feet had only three. Any reason for this uneven set up is unknown.

Despite its large size, the Stegosaurus' brains were tiny, only about the size of a walnut. In fact, it was once believed that Stegosaurus had two brains, one in its head and another near its hips. This has been disproved, though, revealing that what scientists thought was a brain was merely an enlarged spinal area that held either fatty tissues or nerve endings that may have been used to control the rear legs and powerful tail.

Copyright © 2006 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 15, 2007, 8:03pm

Protoceratops multilinguous

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Pic Copyright © infoseek

Protoceratops, (its name meaning 'First Horned Face' derived from the Greek proto-/ meaning 'first', cerat-/ meaning 'horn' and -ops/ meaning face) was a sheep-sized (1.5 to 2m long) herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur, from the Upper Cretaceous Period of what is now Mongolia. Unlike later ceratopsians, it lacked well-developed horns.
Protoceratops had a large neck frill, which may have served to protect the neck, to anchor jaw muscles, to impress other members of the species or combinations of these functions.

Discovery and species


Protoceratops was discovered during the 1920s, in the Gobi desert, in Gansu, Inner Mongolia. Many skeletons were discovered by the American expedition. the type species, P. andrewsi, was formally described by Granger and Gregory in 1923. The fossils date from the Campanian epoch of the Upper Cretaceous (83.5 to 70.6 Million Years Ago).

In 1971, a fossil was found that captured a Velociraptor clutched around a Protoceratops in Mongolia. It is believed that they died simultaneously, while fighting, when they were either surprised by a sand storm or buried when a sand dune collapsed on top of them.
A second species, P. hellenikorhinus, was named in 2001 from the Bayan Mandahu formation in Inner Mongolia, China and also dates from the Campanian epoch of the Upper Cretaceous. It is notably larger than P. andrewsi.
In the 1920s, Roy Chapman Andrews discovered the first known fossilized dinosaur eggs, in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Due to the proximity of Protoceratops, these eggs were believed at the time to belong to this species. The nearby theropod Oviraptor was thought to have been engaged in the process of stealing and eating them. However, later discoveries indicate that the eggs were in fact Oviraptor's own.

Copyright © 2006 Answers Corporation





Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 15, 2007, 8:05pm

The list just keeps growing eh. [image]
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 19, 2007, 11:42pm

Parasaurolophus walkeri

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Pic and Info © 2006 Answers Corporation

Parasaurolophus was a genus of hadrosaurid (duck-billed) dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Period (about 76-65 million years ago) of what is now North America. Its name means 'near crested lizard', which refers to another hadrosaurid, Saurolophus, discovered before Parasaurolophus. Parasaurolophus were about 10 m (33 ft) long, 5 m (16 ft) high and weighed around 3500 kg (7,700 lb). Like other hadrosaurs, they were facultatively bipedal, i.e. they could alternate between two legs and four, probably preferring a quadrupedal gait while they foraged for food and assuming a bipedal mode for faster running.Their most noticeable feature would have been the six-foot long curved crest, protruding from the rear of the head, often longer in males than in females. This hollow crest was probably used for intraspecific communication by both males and females and for display by the males. Many scientists also think the crest gave Parasaurolophus an excellent sense of smell. Parasaurolophus is often depicted with a flap of skin running from the bottom of the crest to the base of the neck, though there is no evidence of this. There were about three species but two of them are known only by incomplete remains. The best known species is Parasaurolophus walkeri. Parasaurolophus probably lived in large herds and inhabited flood plains. They were herbivores but they were not, as was once thought, aquatic. They were fully terrestrial animals, as evidenced by footprints. They could possibly swim but they lived their entire lives on land. Parasaurolophus may have been prey for large carnivorous theropods, such as Daspletosaurus. Fossils of Parasaurolophus have been found across North America and a complete skeleton was found in Canada.

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Ornithopoda

Infraorder: Iguanodontia

Superfamily: Hadrosauroidea

Family: Hadrosauridae

Subfamily: Lambeosaurinae

Tribe: Parasaurolophini

Genus: Parasaurolophus


Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 19, 2007, 11:43pm

Corythosaurus

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Pic and Info © 2006 Answers Corporation

Corythosaurus / meaning 'helmet lizard' because of the shape of its crest (Greek korythos meaning 'helmet' and sauros meaning 'lizard') was a duck-billed dinosaur genus from the Upper Cretaceous Period, about 80 million years ago. It lived in what is now North America.

Discoveries
The first specimen was discovered in 1912 by Barnum Brown in Red Deer River, Alberta, Canada . As well as an almost complete skeleton, the find was remarkable because much of the creature's fossilised skin had also survived. In 1916, the Canadian (Canadian Pacific Lines) ship Mount Temple was carrying two specimens and other fossils from today's Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada to Britain. It was sunk by the German surface raider SMS Moewe, sending its 75 million year old cargo to the bottom of the North Atlantic, where it rests to this day.

Characteristics

The beak was toothless, but the back of the jaws contained a dental battery composed of hundreds of small, interlocking teeth. These were used to crush and grind plant matter and were continually replaced as they wore away. The nasal passages extended into the frill and probably allowed it to act as a sounding device. Corythosaurus weighed in at 4 tonnes and measured roughly 10 metres (35 ft) from nose to tail. It was once thought that this dinosaur lived mostly in the water, due to the appearance of webbed hands and feet. However, it was later discovered that the so-called "webs" were in fact deflated padding, much like that found on many modern mammals. Over 20 skulls have been found from this dinosaur. As with other lambeosaurs, the animal bore a tall, elaborate bony crest atop its skull, which contained the elongate nasal passages. The size and shape may have depended on the gender and age. Before that was discovered, up to seven different species were found. Now only one of them has been approved.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 19, 2007, 11:45pm

Hylaeosaurus

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Pic Unknown Info © 2006 Answers Corporation

Hylaeosaurus (hi-LAY-ee-oh-SORE-us), from the Greek words hylēe/ "forest" and saurus/ "lizard", is the most obscure of the three animals used by Sir Richard Owen to first define the new group Dinosauria, in 1842. The original specimen, recovered by Gideon Mantell in 1832 from the Tilgate Forest in the south of England in 1832, now resides in the Natural History Museum of London, where it is still encased in the limestone block in which it was found. Despite never having been prepared, it is still the best specimen that exists of this primitive, armored ankylosaurian dinosaur.


Description and environment


Hylaeosaurus lived about 135 million years ago, in the Valanginian to Berriasian ages of the early Cretaceous Period. Gideon Mantell originally estimated that the Hylaeosaurus was about 25 feet (7.5 meters) long, or about half the size of the other two original dinosaurs, the Iguanodon and the Megalosaurus. Modern estimates range from 3 to 6 meters (10 to 20 feet) in length. It is a fairly typical armored dinosaur, with three long spines on its shoulder, two at the hips, and three rows of armor running down its back. It may also have had a row of plates down its tail. It has a long head, more like the head of a Nodosaurus than an Ankylosaurus; and a beak, which it probably used to crop low-lying vegetation.

Classification


Hylaeosaurus armatus was first named by Gideon Mantell in 1833, and is currently considered the only species in the genus. It is known from only two partial skeletons, some horny (dermal) spines, armor, and various other minor pieces. The best specimen (the original) is composed of the front end of a skeleton minus most of the head, though only the parts on the face of the stone block are easily studied. Polacanthoides ponderosus, Hylaeosaurus conybearei, and Hylaeosaurus oweni have all been considered distinct dinosaurs in the past, but are now considered to be alternate names for this species (junior synonyms), along with Hylaeosaurus. It has also been suggested that Polacanthus is same species, but there are a number of differences in their bone structure (osteology). Hylaeosaurus is traditionally considered to be a primitive nodosaurid, in the Polocanthinae subfamily, like Gastonia and Polocanthus. In the 1990s, the polocanthines were reclassified as primitive ankylosaurids, because they were mistakenly believed to have small tail-clubs; they are probably primitive ankylosaurids, but as a whole the polacanthines are poorly known. The group peaked in the Barremian age in North America and Europe, and then vanished shortly after, replaced by more advanced ankylosaurians.

History


The first Hylaeosaurus fossils were discovered in Sussex. Additional remains have been discovered on the Isle of Wight (also part of Great Britain), and in Ardennes, France, though the remains from France may actually belong to a Polacanthus. Mantell published a lithograph of his find in The Geology of the South-east of England in 1833; and another drawing in the fourth edition of The Wonders of Geology, in 1840. Gideon Mantell originally claimed the name Hylaeosaurus meant "forest lizard", after the Tilgate Forest in which it was discovered. Later, he claimed that it meant "Wealden lizard" ("wealden" being another word for forest), in reference to the Wealden Group, the name for the early Cretaceous geological formation in which the dinosaur was first found.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 20, 2007, 12:09am

Polacanthus

[image]

Pic © 2005 By Russell J. Jacobson


Polacanthus, deriving its name from the Ancient Greek poly-/ "many" and acantha/ "thorn" or "prickle", was an early armored, spiked, plant-eating ankylosaur from the early Cretaceous period. It lived 132 to 112 million years ago in what is now western Europe.

Description

Polacanthus grew to between 4 and 5 meters long. It was a quadrupedal ornithischian or "bird-hipped" dinosaur. There are not many fossil remains of this creature, and some important anatomical features, such as its skull, are poorly known. Polacanthus had a large sacral shield, a single fused sheet of dermal bone over its hips (sacral area) which was not attached to the underlying bone and decorated with tubercles. This feature is shared with other Polacanthine dinosaurs such as Gastonia and Mymoorapelta.

Discovery and species


The genus Polacanthus comprises two species from Europe, with a possible third from the Lower Cretaceous of North America. However, this latter species has been placed by some into a separate genus and is alternately known as Hoplitosaurus marshi.


Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 26, 2007, 2:44am

Osteodontornis orri


Sorry no pic available Text © 2006 Answers Corporation

Osteodontornis is an extinct genus of pelecaniform bird. It contains a single described species, O. orri ("Orr's Bony-toothed Bird"), which was the first of the Pelagornithidae or "pseudo-tooth birds" to become known to science. The arrangement of serrations of the bill - one small "tooth", sometimes flanked by small points, between each 2 larger ones - is characteristic for this genus. This species is well documented (although usually by much fragmented remains due to the thin and tender bones it had) from various locations, between Early Oligocene and Pliocene in age, in Europe, Western North America and Japan. Most importantly, it was found in Early and Middle Miocene sites on both sides of the North Pacific. It is not certain whether all Osteodontornis remains belong to a single species; size differences suggest that some evolution took place during the considerable timespan in which the genus existed. Thus, some fossils are referred to Osteodontornis only, without further assigning them to this species.

With a wingspan of 5,5-6 m (c.18-20 ft) and a height of 1,20 m (4 ft) when on the ground (Olson, 1985), Osteodontornis orri was the second-largest flying bird ever, surpassed only by Argentavis. It had a robust, but extremely light-boned body, procellariiform-like legs and a long beak with teeth-like serrations (not unlike the saw-billed ducks) that ended in a hooked tip. This beak was so heavy the creature probably held it between its shoulders while in flight, just like modern pelicans do.

Osteodontornis' wings were long and narrow. Due to its size, the creature is presumed to have built its nest on high plateaus where it could easily take flight. It was a seabird that apparently lived mainly off squid; the "teeth" were less saw-like than in the fish-eating saw-billed ducks, pointing straight downwards instead. This arrangement would have helped to hold on to such soft-bodied prey. In general lifestyle, it was probably most similar to the albatrosses, tropicbirds and frigatebirds of today, with long slender winds adapted for soaring vast distances over the open seas.

The species was named after then-recently deceased naturalist Ellison Orr.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 26, 2007, 2:53am

Stenonychosaurus/Troodon


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Text © 2006 Answers Corporation

Troodon was a relatively small, bird-like dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period (75-65 mya). Discovered in 1855, it was among the first dinosaurs found in North America. It is believed to have been one of the most intelligent dinosaurs.

Characteristics

This small dinosaur was around 2 m (6.5 ft) in length, 1 m (3 ft) tall, and weighed 60 kg (130 lb). Its eyes were large (perhaps suggesting nocturnal activity) and slightly forward facing, giving Troodon some depth perception.

Troodon (pronounced "Tro-odon") is Greek for "wounding tooth", referring to the dinosaur's serrated teeth (although these may actually have been adapted for herbivorous feeding, see below). Its diet consisted of smaller animals, including mammals and perhaps a significant amount of plant material as well.

Troodon had long 'arms' that folded back like a bird's and its 'hands' possessed partially opposable thumbs. It had large, sickle-shaped claws on its second toes, which were raised off the ground when running. This claw is common in the group Maniraptora, to which Troodon belongs.

Troodon had one of the largest known brains of any dinosaur, relative to its body mass (comparable to modern birds). Eggs have also been discovered, in nests.

Distribution


Troodon is known from the Judith River Formation of Montana, the Judith River Group of Alberta, the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, the North Slope of Alaska and in the famous Hell Creek Formation of the USA. There is some evidence that Troodon favored cooler climates, as it seems to have been particularly abundant in northern areas and during cooler intervals, such as the Early Maastrichtian. It seems unlikely that all of these fossils, which come from localities hundreds or thousands of miles apart, separated by millions of years of time, represent a single species of Troodon. However, further study and more fossils are needed to determine how many species of Troodon existed.


Biology


Troodon had very long, slender limbs, suggesting that the animal was able to move quite quickly. Although originally thought to have been a predator, there is some evidence that Troodon may either have been an omnivore or a herbivore. The jaws met in a broad, U-shaped symphysis similar to that of an iguana and the teeth were leaf-like, bearing large serrations like those of herbivorous dinosaurs. In addition, the teeth were short but broad, with wear facets on their sides. In these respects Troodon was again more like plant eating dinosaurs than carnivores such as Dromaeosauridae. A specimen of Troodon is known from Montana, sitting atop a clutch of eggs.

History

Troodon was originally spelled Troödon (with a diaeresis) by Joseph Leidy in 1856, which was officially amended to its current status by Sauvage in 1876.

The Troodon tooth was originally classified as a "lacertian" (lizard) by Leidy, but re-assigned as a megalosaurid dinosaur by Nopsca in 1901 (Megalosauridae having historically been a wastebin taxon for most carnivorous dinosaurs). In 1924, Gilmore suggested that the tooth belonged to the herbivorous pachycephalosaur Stegoceras, and that Stegoceras was in fact a junior synonym of Troodon (the similarity of troodontid teeth to those of herbivorous dinosaurs continues to lead many paleontologists to believe that these animals were omnivores). In 1945, Charles Hazelius Sternberg rejected the possibility that Troodon was a pachycephalosaur due to its stronger similarity to the teeth of other carnivorous dinosaurs.

The first specimen of Troodon that was not a tooth, then referred to its own genus (Stenonychosaurus), was named by Sternberg in 1932, based on a foot, fragments of a hand, and some caudal vertebrae from Alberta. A remarkable feature of these remains was the enlarged claw on the second toe, which is now recognized as characteristic of Deinonychosauria. Sternberg initially classified Stenonychosaurus as a member of the family Coeluridae. Later, Sternberg (1951) speculated that since Stenonychosaurus had a "very peculiar pes" and Troodon "equally unusual teeth", they may be closely related. Unfortunately, no comparable specimens were available at that time to test the idea.

A more complete skeleton of Stenonychosaurus was described by Dale Russell in 1969, which eventually formed the scientific foundation for a famous life-sized sculpture of Stenonychosaurus accompanied by its fictional, human-like descendant, the "dinosauroid". Stenonychosaurus became a well-known theropod in the 1980s, when the feet and braincase were described in more detail. Phil Currie, reviewing the known Troodontidae in 1987, reclassified Stenonychosaurus inequalis as a junior synonym of Troodon formosus. This synonymy has been widely adopted by other paleontologists, and therefore all of the specimens once called Stenonychosaurus are now referred to as Troodon in the recent scientific literature.





Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 26, 2007, 2:59am

Info from answers.com and

Wikipedia


Pics by Dino-World, and

The Dinosauricon


Euoplocephalus


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Text © 2006 Answers Corporation

The Euoplocephalus is most easily compared to its relative, the Ankylosaurus, that lived during the same time. Both exhibited a small, top-covered body and sides with thick, oval-shaped plates that were actually fused onto the skin underneath. The Euoplocephalus also had several spike-like protrusions on its head and just below its neck as well as smaller protrusions down its back. Its long tail had a thick bony club at the end that it could use to swing at predators, delivering a heavy blow to even the largest animals. Its only weak spot was the underbelly and if a Euoplocephalus was turned over, it almost certainly meant death.

The Euoplocephalus moved around on four legs, the hind legs being longer than the front. Its skull had only a pair of unique "cheek teeth" which aided in chewing harder plants and sticks. The rest of its "beak," meanwhile, was toothless. The dinosaur's brain was tiny and offered little intelligence, and swinging its tail may even have been an involuntary reaction to the stimuli of being attacked.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 26, 2007, 3:11am

Chasmosaurus


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Pic (c) 1998 M.Shiraishi (Dinosauricon)

Text © 2006 Answers Corporation

Chasmosaurus (KAZ-mo-sawr-us) is a ceratopsid dinosaur genus from the Upper Cretaceous Period of North America. Its name means 'opening lizard', referring to the large openings (fenestrae) in its frill (Greek chasma meaning 'opening' or 'hollow' or 'gulf' and sauros meaning 'lizard'). With a length of 5 - 6 metres and a weight of 3.6 tonnes, Chasmosaurus was a ceratopsian of average size. Like all ceratopsians, it was purely herbivorous. It was initially to be called Protorosaurus, however this name had been previously published for another animal.


Discoveries and species

Chasmosaurus fossils were first recovered in 1902 but were thought to be from a previously-known short-frilled ceratopsian - Monoclonius. However, in 1913, Charles Sternberg and his sons found several complete skulls of what is now known as Chasmosaurus, in Alberta, Canada. These were finally described in 1914, by Lawrence M. Lambe of the Geological Survey of Canada. Since that date, more skulls have been found. There are some differences across these skulls, detailed below.

There are a number of known species of Chasmosaurus. Lambe's original C. belli ('Bell's cleft lizard') was joined by C. canadensis ('chasm lizard from Canada') in the same year. The latter species had been described as Eoceratops canadensis by Lambe but was later reclassified as a chasmosaur by Lehman. Lull named an unusual, short-muzzled skull, collected in 1926, C. brevirostris. C. M. Sternberg added C. russelli, in 1940, from southwestern Alberta. The most recently described species is C. irvinensis, which stems from the uppermost beds of the Dinosaur Park Formation.

Lehman described C. mariscalensis in 1989 from Texas, which has now been renamed Agujaceratops.


Characteristics

Ceratopsians are split into two subfamilies by taxonomists; those with short frills (centrosaurines), such as Centrosaurus and those with long frills (chasmosaurines), of which Chasmosaurus was one. In addition to the larger frill, the long-frilled ceratopsians typically had longer faces and jaws and it is suggested by some paleontologists that they were more selective about the plants they ate. Long frills were a relatively late development in dinosaur evolution, since even Chasmosaurus dates from the late Cretaceous Period, 76 to 70 million years ago. The frill of Chasmosaurus has been described as "heart-shaped", since its bone structure consists of two large 'loops' from a central bone.

Some finds include a number of smaller ossifications (called epoccipitals), which may have grown from the perimeter of the frill. The frill may also have been brightly coloured, to draw attention to its size or as part of mating display. However, the frill was so large and yet so flimsy (since it was mainly skin stretched between the bones) that it could not have provided much functional defence. It is possible that it was simply used to appear imposing or conceivably for thermoregulation. In the event of a chasmosaur herd being attacked by a predator (such as Tyrannosaurus), the males could have formed a ring and, with all the frills facing outwards, would have presented a formidable sight.

Like many ceratopsians, chasmosaurs had three main facial horns - one on the nose and two on the brow. Different fossil finds have produced inconclusive results - one species of Chasmosaurus, named C. kaiseni, bore long brow horns, while C. belli had only short ones. Although these were initially named as different species, it now seems possible that the long horns belonged to males and the shorter horns to females.

Interestingly, paleontologists have recovered some fossilized chasmosaur skin. The skin appears to have had many bony knobs (osteoderms), with five or six sides each. Unfortunately, nothing more can be learned from these samples - the colour of dinosaurs remains a mystery.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jan 26, 2007, 3:15am

Ornithomimus


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Pic (c) 2002 M.Shiraishi

Text © 2006 Answers Corporation

Ornithomimus (meaning 'bird mimic') is a genus of dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now North America. Ornithomimus velox was named on the basis of a foot and partial hand from the Maastrichtian Denver Formation, but better material has since been found in Canada, including the Edmontonian-age Ornithomimus edmontonicus and an excellent articulated specimen (species unknown) from Dinosaur Provincial Park.


Description

Like other ornithomimidae, Ornithomimus is characterized by a three-toed foot, long slender arms and a long neck with a birdlike skull. It differs from other ornithomimids, such as Struthiomimus, in having very slender, straight hand and foot claws and in having metacarpals and fingers of similar lengths. Its hands are remarkably sloth-like in appearance, which led Henry Fairfield Osborn to suggest that they were used to hook branches during feeding.

Ornithomimus was 12 ft (3.5 meters) long, 7 feet (2.10 meters) high and weighed around 100-150 kg. It was bipedal and superficially resembled an ostrich, except for its long tail. It would have been a swift runner.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 2, 2007, 5:06pm

Sinosauropteryx prima


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Image and text copyright 2004-2007, Feenixx Publishing, Inc.


Name Means: "Chinese dragon feather"

Pronounced: SIEN-o-sawr-OP-ter-iks

When it lived: Early Cretaceous - 130 MYA

Where found: Liaoning Province, China

Length: 4 feet (1.3 m)

Weight: 5.5 pounds (2.5 kg)


Sinosauropteryx is the first dinosaur fossil ever found that showed evidence of having feathers. It has been called one of the most exciting scientific discoveries in decades. This animal was not a bird, but rather a theropod dinosaur. This Chinese fossil clearly shows defined feathers around much of this little dinosaur! It was a small, swift hunter that could not fly, but it seems to demonstrate that dinosaurswere beginning to look and act more like birds. It is a very important fossil for a number of reasons. First, and perhaps most importantly, it is a critical piece of evidence supporting the argument that birds descended from dinosaurs. Additionally, depending on its exact classification, it shows that at least some non-avian coelurosaurs were feathered. The exact use of the feathers will be debated for some time. They are clearly not flight feathers, but they may have been used for insulation, courtship display, individual identification, or a combination of all of these. It all began in 1994, when farmer Li Yinfang broke open a slab of rock in the Province of Liaoning in northeastern China. He was amazed to find the complete skeleton of a long-tailed turkey sized animal appeared. He knew he had discovered something very important. This exciting new species was first reported by Ji and Ji in 1996, then received further studies by Chen, Dong and Zhen in 1998 and Currie and Chen in 2001. Sinosauropteryx is important not only because of its integument, but also because it is a basal coelurosaur and represents an important stage in theropod evolution that is poorly understood. Sinosauropteryx has the longest tail of any known theropod, and a three-fingered hand dominated by the first finger, which is longer and thicker than either of the bones of the forearm. It also has a thick coat of feather-like structures, which seem to be simple branching structures. One specimen of Sinosauropteryx also preserves stomach contents, and a pair of eggs in the abdomen. The area of Liaoning Province where Sinosauropteryx was found is extremely rich in 140 million year old fossils. By studying fossil sites we know what animals and plants existed at the same period in time as Sinosauropteryx. This information allows us to write the story you are about to read. Three complete skeletons of Sinosauropteryx have been found, including unlaid eggs and some internal organs. It was a meat-eater as one specimen had the jawbone of a mammal in its stomach. The jawbone was not enough to identify the mammal.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 2, 2007, 5:07pm

Saltasaurus



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Image and test Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation.


Saltasaurus (which means "lizard from Salta") was a sauropod dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous Period. Relatively small among sauropods, though still massive by human standards, it was characterized by a diplodocid-like head (with blunt teeth, only in the back of the mouth) and was the first discovered with small bony plates embedded in its skin. The bony plates (a form of armour called osteoderms) have since been found in other titanosaurids, and a crest of scutes has also been discovered, running down the back of diplodocids. When the plates of a saltosaur were originally found, independently of skeletal remains, they were assumed to be from an ankylosaurian, whose plates they resemble. The word "Saltasaurus" is occasionally spelled "Saltosaurus", even by palaeontologists. The Saltasaurus may also be confused with Saltopus, because of the similarity between their names, although the two genera are quite unlike one another.

Fact summary

Saltasaurus was first described by José Bonaparte and Jaime E. Powell, in 1980 and had an estimated length of 12 metres (39 feet) and a mass of 7 tonnes (8 tons). Like all sauropods, Saltasaurus was purely herbivorous and is thought to have been able to rear up on its hind legs, to reach higher branches. The name "Saltasaurus" is taken from the region of north-west Argentina, where the first fossils were recovered. Other fossils have since been found in Uruguay. There is currently only one known species of Saltasaurus, S. loricatus. S. robustus is no longer considered a distinct species, and S. australis is now considered to be a separate genus, the Neuquensaurus. The fossils of Saltasaurus include vertebrae, limb bones and several jaw bones — plus various pieces of armour. Some of these plates appear to have spikes as well, but there is not enough evidence available to be certain.


Changing perceptions


In the Cretaceous Period, sauropod dinosaurs in North America were losing the survival game to duck-billed dinosaurs, such as Edmontosaurus. However, like modern Australia, South America was an island continent and life evolved rather differently there. Specifically, the duck-billed dinosaurs never gained a foothold and so sauropods, specifically the titanosaurids, continued down their own path of evolution. (See also: allopatric speciation.) Saltasaurus was one such highly-evolved sauropod and lived 70 to 65 million years ago. When it was first discovered, in 1980, it forced palaeontologists to reconsider many of their assumptions about what was and what was not a sauropod because Saltasaurus, although clearly a sauropod, had armour plating. Previously, it had been assumed that size alone was sufficient defence for the massive sauropods.However, a Saltasaurus was discovered covered with bony knobs, 10 to 12 centimetres (4 to 5 inches) in diameter. Since then, palaeontologists have investigated the possibility that other sauropods may also have had armour; for example, the Argentinian Laplatasaurus.


Eggs?


A large titanosaur nesting ground was discovered in 1997, by Luis Chiappe and his team, near Auca Mahuevo, in Patagonia, Argentina. The small eggs, about 11 to 12 centimetres (4 to 5 inches) in diameter, contained fossilised embryos, complete with skin impressions (although there was no indication of feathers or dermal spines). These eggs may have belonged to Saltasaurus. Apparently several hundred females dug holes, laid their eggs and then buried them under dirt and vegetation. This gives evidence of herd behavior, which, along with their armour, may have been a defence against large predators like the Abelisaurus.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 2, 2007, 5:09pm

Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus


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Genus of giant herbivorous dinosaur, one of the largest land animals of all time. Apatosaurus lived between 147 million and 137 million years ago during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous Periods in North America and Europe. It weighed as much as 30 tons and was as long as 70 ft (21 m), including the very long neck and tail. Formerly known as Brontosaurus because of incomplete fossil evidence, its head was depicted until 1978 as massive and snub-nosed, with sthangylike teeth; scientists now know the animal had a slender, elongated skull and long, peglike teeth. Skeletal evidence indicates that, despite their great bulk, apatosaurs were primarily land animals.

Text Copyright © 2007 Britannica Concise





Apatosaurus, [Gr.,=deceptive lizard], quadruped saurischian dinosaur, estimated to be from 70 to 90 ft (21 to 27 m) in length and to weigh up to 30 tons (27 metric tons). Apatosaurus was called Brontosaurus [Gr.,=thunder lizard] until it was discovered that the two animals were, in fact, the same. Paleontologist O. C. Marsh named a specimen he uncovered in 1877 Apatosaurus ajax. Marsh discovered parts of a second fossil skeleton in 1879 and, not recognizing it as the same animal, called it Brontosaurus excelsius. Since the name Apatosaurus was published first, it takes priority as the valid name, although Brontosaurus continues to be used popularly. It is one of the best known dinosaurs. Apatosaurus had a long, whiplike tail, stout legs, and a long neck. It was herbivorous and dwelled on land, possibly in forests, using its long neck to feed from trees. The eyes and nostrils were located toward the top of the skull. It flourished in the late Jurassic period. Apatosaurus bones and those of other sauropods have long been excavated in the Morrison formation of the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous strata in Colorado, Wyoming, and other Western states. No satisfactory skull specimen has been discovered attached to an Apatosaurus, and for many years an incorrect Camarasaurus-like head was mounted on the famous skeleton on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Apatosaurus is related to Diplodicus and Barosaurus.

Text Copyright © 2007 Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia


Apatosaurus, previously known as Brontosaurus, is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs that lived about 140 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period. They were some of the largest land animals that ever existed, about 4.5 metres (15 feet) tall at the hips, with a length of up to 21m (70 feet) and a mass up to 35 metric tonnes (40 tons). Their name means 'deceptive lizard', so-named because the chevron bones were like those of Mosasaurus (Greek apatelos or apatelios meaning 'deceptive' and sauros meaning 'lizard'). The cervical vertebrae and the bones in the legs were bigger and heavier than that of Diplodocus although, like Diplodocus, Apatosaurus also had both a long neck and a long tail. The tail was held above the ground during normal locomotion. Like most sauropods, Apatosaurus had only a single large claw on each forelimb. The skull was first identified in 1975, a century after this dinosaur acquired its name.


Discovery and species


Fossils of this animal have been found in Nine Mile Quarry and Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming and at sites in Colorado, Oklahoma and Utah, USA. A. ajax is the type species of the genus, and was named by the paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1877 after Ajax, the hero from Greek mythology. It is the holotype for the genus and two partial skeletons have been found, including part of a skull. A. excelsus (originally Brontosaurus) was named by Marsh in 1879. It is known from six partial skeletons, including part of a skull, which have been found in the United States, in Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. A. louisae was named by William Holland, in 1915. It is known from one partial skeleton, which was found in Colorado, in the United States. Robert T. Bakker made A. yahnahpin the type species of a new genus, Eobrontosaurus in 1998, so it is now properly Eobrontosaurus yahnahpin. It was named by Filla, James and Redman in 1994. One partial skeleton has been found in Wyoming. On March 23 1983 the Apatosaurus was made the official state dinosaur of Guam.


Paleobiology


Early on, it was believed that Apatosaurus was too massive to support its own weight on dry land, so it was theorized that the sauropod must have lived partly submerged in water, perhaps in a swamp. Recent findings do not support this. In fact, like its relative Diplodocus, Apatosaurus was a grazing animal with a very long neck and a long tail that served as a counterweight. Fossilized footprints indicate that it probably lived in herds. To aid in processing food, Apatosaurus may have swallowed gizzard stones (gastroliths) in the same way that many birds do today, as its jaws lacked molars with which to chew tough plant fibers.

Neck

Apatosaurus browsed the tops of trees, on riverbanks. Scientists believe that these sauropods could not raise their necks to an angle of 90 degrees, as doing so would slow blood flow to the brain excessively; blood starting at the body proper would take two or more minutes to reach the brain. Furthermore, studies of the structure of the neck vertebrae have revealed that the neck was not as flexible as previously thought.


Physiology


With such a large body mass, combined with a long neck, physiologists encounter problems determining how these animals managed to breathe. Beginning with the assumption that Apatosaurus, like crocodilians, did not have a diaphragm, the dead-space volume (the amount of unused air remaining in the mouth, trachea and air tubes after each breath) has been estimated at about 184 liters for a 30kg specimen.

Its tidal volume (the amount of air moved in or out during a single breath) has been calculated based on the following respiratory systems:

904 liters if avian
225 liters if mammalian
19 liters if reptilian

On this basis, its respiratory system could not have been reptilian, as its tidal volume would not have been able to replace its dead-space volume. Likewise, the mammalian system would only provide a fraction of new air on each breath. Therefore, it must have had either a system unknown in the modern world or one like birds, i.e. multiple air sacs and a flow-through lung. Furthermore, an avian system would only need a lung volume of about 600 liters compared to a mammalian requirement of 2,950 liters, which would exceed the available space. The overall thoracic volume of Apatosaurus has been estimated at 1,700 liters allowing for a 500-liter, four-chambered heart (like birds, not three-chambered like reptiles) and a 900-liter lung capacity. That would allow about 300 liters for the necessary tissue. Assuming Apatosaurus had an avian respiratory system and a reptilian resting-metabolism (it certainly could not fly), it would need to consume only about 262 liters (69 gallons) of water per day. It is not known how Apatosaurs ate enough food to satisfy their enormous bodies. It is likely that they ate constantly, pausing only to cool off, drink or to remove parasites. It is surmised that they slept standing upright. They likely relied on their enormous size and herd behavior to deter predators.


Classification


Apatosaurus is a member of the Diplodocidae, along with Diplodocus, Barosaurus and Seismosaurus, although it is not as closely related to the others as they are to each other and hence placed in its own subfamily Apatosaurinae.


Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus controversy


In 1877, Othniel Charles Marsh published notes on his discovery of Apatosaurus ajax. He followed this in 1879 with a description of another, more complete, dinosaur specimen. He speculated that the latter specimen represented a new genus and named it Brontosaurus excelsus. In 1903, it was discovered that Brontosaurus excelsus was in fact an adult Apatosaurus and the name Apatosaurus, having been published first, was deemed to have priority as the official name; Brontosaurus was relegated to being a synonym. In the 1970s, it was proven that the traditional "Brontosaurus" image known to all was, in fact, an Apatosaurus excelsus with a Camarasaurus head incorrectly placed on its body.

Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 2, 2007, 5:11pm

Styracosaurus "Spiked lizard"


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Image Copyright Dinosaur Society

Styracosaurus was a dinosaur that walked on four short legs. This large plant-eater had a six-spiked frill projecting from the back of its skull. It also had an upward-pointing horn on its nose (2 feet (60 cm) long and 6 inches (15 cm) wide), and two small horns above its eyes. These spikes and the horn probably provided protection from predators, and were possibly used in mating rituals and rivalry. It had a short, thick, pointed tail, a large, bulky body, a large skull and a beak. Styracosaurus hatched from eggs. Styracosaurus was about 18 feet (5 m) long, 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, and weighed up to 3 tons.

WHEN STYRACOSAURUS LIVED

Styracosaurus lived in the late Cretaceous period, about 77-70 million years ago. It was among the last of the dinosaur species to evolve before the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction 65 million years ago. Among the contemporaries of Styracosaurus were Tyrannosaurus rex, Ankylosaurus (an armored herbivore), Corythosaurus (a crested dinosaur), and Dryptosaurus (a meat-eating dinosaur).

BEHAVIOR

Styracosaurus may have been a herding animal, like some other ceratopsians. This hypothesis is supported by the finding of bone beds, large deposits of bones of the same species in an area. Styracosaurus hatched from eggs, and the young may have been cared for by parents. When threatened by predators, Styracosaurus may have charged into its enemy like a modern-day rhinoceros does. This would have been a very effective defense.

DISCOVERY OF FOSSILS

Styracosaurus was named in 1913 by L. M. Lambe from a fossil found near Alberta, Canada. Fossils have been found in the USA and Canada. A bonebed of about 100 Styracosaurus fossils was found in Arizona, USA, indicating that they travelled in herds.

CLASSIFICATION

Styracosaurus was a late ornithischian dinosaur, the order of bird-hipped, herbivorous dinosaurs. It was a member of the suborder Marginocephalia, and of the family of large, horned, frilled, herding herbivores, the ceratopsians. The ceratopsians were one of the last major groups of dinosaurs to evolve, and include Psittacosaurus, Leptoceratops, Pachyrhinosaurus, Montanoceratops, Chasmosaurus, Centrosaurus, Triceratops, Styracosaurus, Protoceratops, and others.

Text Copyright ©1996-2007 EnchantedLearning.com
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 11, 2007, 4:51pm

Woolly Mammoth


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Image copyright Joe Tucciarone

Many different species of animals lived in areas adjacent to the glaciers. Since these areas were considerably colder, the vegetation was also different. Tundra like habitats existed with numerous types of grasses and low-lying shrubs. Of all the animals that lived during the Ice Age, the Woolly Mammoth is best known.


Mammoths, like elephants, were very inefficient in the digestion of their food. It is believed that they were only able to digest less than half the food that they ate, as result they would have needed great quantities of food to stay alive. Due to the large volume of food that these animals would need daily, undoubtedly most of their day was spent searching for food and eating.


From carcasses found frozen in Siberia, it was discovered that Mammoths ate a wide range of plant life. This would have included anything from grasses, mosses, small plants to brush.


Relatives of the Mammoths first appeared in Africa some 3.5 million years ago. Descendants of these first Mammoths would have reached Europe by way of the Strait of Gibraltar (at that time a land bridge between Europe and Africa), or through the Middle East. These early ancestors of the Woolly Mammoth arrived in North America about 2.8 million years ago. During this period, the Ice Age was at a peak and sea levels were at their lowest. During these periods of low sea level several land bridges formed. Probably one of the most famous of these land bridges is known as the Bering Land Bridge connecting Siberia and North America. This Bering Land Bridge was once again exposed about 35 thousand years ago during the late Pleistocene Age. The Woolly Mammoth could have migrated back and forth several times during the last Ice Age. However, because of their adaptation to cold climate and dietary needs (tundra type vegetation) the Woolly Mammoth would have been restricted to the northern latitudes of the American continent.


Woolly Mammoths closely resembled the modern elephant in certain physical characteristics such as tusks and an elongated trunk. Much is known about these animals because complete specimens are occasionally found in the melting ice fields of Siberia. The Mammoths are so well preserved that soft body tissue has been recovered, and even in some rare instances their last meal is still present in their stomachs.


Adult Mammoths stood about 12 feet tall and weighed around 11,000 to 18,000 pounds. The calves of the Mammoths were about 2.5 feet tall and weighed about 250 pounds.

Mammoths had large heads with a dome on the top that sloped downward toward the backside of the animal. As indicated by the name, Woolly, the entire body of the Mammoth was covered with hair. The hair on the head, ears, and trunk was relatively short only a few inches in length. Hair covering the sides of the stomach and on the legs was up to several feet in length. Overall, the hair was red to reddish brown in color. Mammoths most likely shed their winter coats in the summer to help regulate their body temperature.


The trunks of the Mammoths were used to pick up food and water without bending down on their knees. Their trunks also had finger-like projections on the end which enabled them to be more agile when picking up objects. The ears on Mammoths were only about a foot in length as opposed to the larger ears of the modern elephant which are used to fan and cool body temperatures. Since Mammoths rarely needed to cool off, smaller ears were more than sufficient to aid in hearing, and because of their smaller size actually helped to conserve body heat. The Mammoth also had a very thick layer of fat beneath their skin which acted as insulation against the cold.


Mammoth teeth are used to determine the age of the animal. Mammoths had several sets of teeth that they lost through use and as they aged. As a tooth was worn down by grinding action it was ejected from the jaw and replaced by a new tooth. New teeth were successively larger as the animal grew. The teeth were made up of a series of vertical enamel plates alternating with layers of dentine. The age of a Mammoth can be determined by the size of the tooth and by the number of enamel plates in a single tooth.


Mammoths had very large rootless tusks that grew out of the skull and continued growing throughout the Mammoth’s life. In some excavated remains the tusks exceeded nine feet in length from the tip to the base of the skull. Tusks were used to show dominance within family groups and aid in the search for food under blankets of snow or ice.

The Mammoths began to die off about 15,000 years ago. Their ultimate extinction may have been a result of global warming, loss of suitable food supplies, lower breeding numbers, or the hunting of early hominids. Their extinction may have been a result of all, a few, or one of the previous stated factors.


An Ice Age is actually a series of ice advances and retreats. As the global climate warmed, the ice would melt. Then, after a period of prolonged cold the glaciers would be renewed and advance. This advance-retreat cycle would be repeated numerously, until the ice sheets would finally retreat for the last time, marking the end of a particular Ice Age. This last retreat of the ice would have been brought about by a global wide warming trend of only about 10 degrees Fahrenheit within a relatively short period of time. This rapidly warming climate had a great effect on vegetation. The plants that supported the Mammoths began changing from tundra vegetation to forests of evergreens. The increase in temperature melted the ice resulting in increased sea levels. The size of continental land masses were reduced as ocean levels rose from glacial melt water, flooding existing shore lines.


The vegetation may have changed too rapidly for the Mammoths digestive system to adapt. Those remaining Mammoths that were able to migrate or retreat with the shrinking glacial ice fields, would compete for the dwindling tundra vegetation. The vegetation loss and smaller habitat may have forced them into extinction.


Mammoths are thought to breed in a similar fashion as modern elephants. A female Mammoth probably could have given birth to no more than six calves in her lifetime. Because of this low reproduction rate, only a few females dying would drastically reduce the numbers within an individual herd. Soon there would not be enough individuals within a given herd to maintain a healthy population. The herd would eventually die out.

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Struthiomimus


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Struthiomimus - Copyright (c) Baskerville Forlag and it's licensors

Struthiomimus was a long-legged, ostrich-like dinosaur of the family ornithomimidae, which lived in the area that is now Alberta, Canada, during the late Cretaceous Period, approximately 75 million years ago. Its generic name is derived from the Greek/strouthion meaning 'ostrich' and/mimos meaning 'mimic' or 'imitator'. The specific name altus is from Latin, meaning 'lofty' or 'noble'. The bipedal Struthiomimus stood about 3.7 meters long and 1.4 meters (4'6") tall at the hips and weighed around 150 kg (330 lb). Struthiomimus is one of the more common small dinosaurs in the Dinosaur Provincial Park; its abundance suggests that it was an herbivore or an False Doctrinevore rather than a carnivore.

Discovery and species

In 1901 Lawrence Lambe found some incomplete remains and named them Ornithomimus altus, placing them in the same genus as material earlier described by Marsh in 1890. However in 1914, a nearly complete skeleton was discovered by Barnum Brown, at the Red Deer River site in Alberta and officially described as the separate genus Struthiomimus by Henry Fairfield Osborn, in 1917. Of the specimens found in Alberta, some were found in and under piles of ash, suggesting a forest fire may have killed them. Struthiomimus is also known from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta and the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. These animals have not been thoroughly studied yet but they may represent new species of Struthiomimus.

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Brachiosaurus


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Image Copyright © 2005 Miles Kelly Publishing.

Brachiosaurus meaning "Arm Lizard", from the Greek brachion/meaning 'arm' and sauros/σαυρος meaning 'lizard', was a genus of sauropod dinosaur which lived during the Late Jurassic Period. It was thus named because its forelimbs were longer than its hind limbs. One of the largest animals ever to walk the earth, it has become one of the most famous of all dinosaurs and is widely recognised worldwide.

For many decades, Brachiosaurus was the largest dinosaur known. It has since been discovered that a number of giant titanosaurians (Argentinosaurus, for example) surpassed Brachiosaurus in terms of sheer mass. More recently, another brachiosaurid, Sauroposeidon, has also been discovered; based on incomplete fossil evidence, it too is likely to have outweighed Brachiosaurus.

Brachiosaurus is often considered to be the largest dinosaur known from a relatively complete fossilized skeleton. However, the most complete specimens, including the Brachiosaurus in the Humboldt Museum of Berlin (excavated in Africa, the tallest mounted skeleton in the world), are members of the species B. brancai which some scientists consider to be part of a separate genus, Giraffatitan. The holotype material of the type species, B. altithorax. includes a sequence of seven posterior dorsal vertebrae, sacrum, proximal caudal vertebra, coracoid, humerus, femur and ribs: enough from which to estimate size.

Based on a complete composite skeleton, Brachiosaurus attained 25 metres (82 feet) in length and was probably able to raise its head about 13 metres (42 ft) above ground level. Fragmentary material from larger specimens indicates that it could grow 15% longer than this. Such material includes an isolated fibula HMN XV2 1340 cm in length and the brachiosaurid scapulocoracoid referred to Ultrasauros.

Brachiosaurus has been estimated to have weighed anywhere between 15 tonnes (Russell et al., 1980) and 78 tonnes (Colbert, 1962). These extreme estimates can be discarded as that of Russell et al. was based on limb-bone allometry rather than a body model, and that of Colbert on an outdated and overweight model. More recent estimates based on models reconstructed from osteology and inferred musculature are in the range 32 tonnes (Paul 1988) to 37 tonnes (Christiansen 1997). The 15% longer specimens hinted at above would have massed 48 to 56 tonnes.

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Dryosaurus


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Dryosaurus (DRY-oh-sawr-us) meaning 'oak lizard', due to the vague oak shape of its cheek teeth (Greek dryo meaning 'oak' and sauros meaning 'lizard') was a genus of an ornithopod dinosaur that lived in the Late Jurassic Period. It was an iguanodont (formerly classified as a hypsilophodont). Fossils have been found in the western United States and Tanzania and were first discovered in the late 19th century. The Tanzanian site proved to be an especially fertile hunting ground for Dryosaurus fossils, this specimen was previously called Dysalotosaurus (Lost wood reptile). An expedition led by German paleontologist Werner Janensch found a great many fossils that represented Dryosaurus at all stages of development.

Dryosaurus had a long neck, long, slender legs and a long, stiff tail. Its 'arms', however, with five 'fingers' on each 'hand', were short. It was about eight to 14 feet (2.5 to 4.5 m) long, five feet (1.5 m) tall (at the hips) and weighed 170 to 200 pounds (80 to 90 kg). Its eyes were quite large, leading many to believe that it possessed excellent eyesight.

Dryosaurus had a horny beak and cheek teeth and, like other ornithopods, was a herbivore. Some scientists suggest that it stored food in its cheeks. It was probably a herd animal, which raised and protected its young after hatching.

A quick and agile runner with strong legs, Dryosaurus used its tail as a counter-balance. It probably relied on its speed as a main defense against carnivorous dinosaurs.

Its intelligence, as measured by its Encephalization Quotient (brain-to-body ratio), was midway when compared to other dinosaurs.

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Post by dwaggie on Feb 11, 2007, 7:19pm

Dimorphodon


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Dimorphodon (dy-MORF-oh-don) ("Two-form Teeth") was a genus of medium-sized pterosaur from the Early Jurassic Period. It was named by paleontologist Richard Owen in 1859. Dimorphodon means "two-form tooth" (Greek di meaning 'two', morphe meaning 'shape' and odon meaning tooth), referring to the fact that it had two distinct types of teeth in its jaws - which is comparatively rare among reptiles. Fossil remains have been found in England. Mary Anning (1799 - 1847) was famous for her Dimorphodon (D. macronyx) discovery at Lyme Regis in Dorset, UK. This region of Britain is now a World Heritage Site, dubbed the Jurassic Coast. Dimorphodon was approximately 1 m (3.3 ft) long, with a 1.2 m (4 ft) wingspan.

It has been argued that Dimorphodon was a biped, though fossilised track remains of other pterosaurs (ichnites) show a quadrupedal gait while on the ground. Its teeth and jaws suggest it was, like most pterosaurs, a piscivore (fish eater). Most depictions display a puffin-like 'beak'.

Dimorphodon lived approximately 200 million to 180 million years ago.

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Post by dwaggie on Feb 11, 2007, 7:30pm

Lambeosaurus


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Lambeosaurus ("Lambe's lizard") is a bipedal herbivore of the late Cretaceous period, found in North America. At about 15 m (50 ft), it may have been the longest Ornithischian.


Discovery

Lambeosaurus was discovered by Dr. William Parks in 1923 in Alberta, Canada. The dinosaur was named after Lawrence Lambe, an early Canadian fossil hunter. Specimens have since been discovered in Alberta, Baja California and Montana.


Biology

Like other hadrosaurs such as Parasaurolophus and Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus had a distinctive crest on the top of its head; a large square crest pointing forward and a small spine pointing backwards. Its nasal cavity ran back through this crest making it mostly hollow. It is believed that that this could have enhanced the animals sense of smell, or have created a loud bleating noise. Different crests on the animal initially led scientists to believe that it distinguished separate species, but it is now thought that the crest is attributable to age and sex. (juveniles being crestless)

Fossilized skin imprints have shown that Lambeosaurus had thin skin with uniform polygonal bumps everywhere except for its belly.

Foot prints have shown that Lambeosaurus traveled in herds, moving on its hind limbs, dropping to all fours to feed. It was a quick animal, which was probably its only real defense against carnivores, as it was otherwise defenseless, although its large size would have helped to put off attackers.
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Post by dwaggie on Feb 17, 2007, 7:33pm

Camarasaurus

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© The Natural History Museum, London 2007

Camarasaurus (KAM-ah-rah-SAWR-us) meaning 'chambered lizard', referring to the holes in its vertebrae (Greek kamara meaning 'vaulted chamber', or anything with an arched cover, and sauros meaning 'lizard') was a genus of quadrupedal, herbivorous dinosaurs. It was the most common of the giant sauropods to be found in North America but only average in size: about 18 metres (60 feet) in length as adults, and weighing up to 18 tonnes (19.8 tons). It lived in the Late Jurassic Period, between 155 and 145 million years ago.



Anatomy

The arched skull of Camarasaurus may have contributed to the name 'chambered lizard'. The skull was remarkably square and the blunt snout had many fenestrae, though it was sturdy and is frequently recovered in good condition by paleontologists. The huge nostrils, positioned in front of the eyes, probably contained a large area of moist membrane to cool the brain in the hot climate of the Jurassic. The 19 centimetre long (7.5 inch) teeth were shaped like chisels (spatulate) and arranged evenly along the jaw. The strength of the teeth indicates that Camarasaurus probably ate coarser plant material than the slender-toothed diplodocids. Like a chicken, it would probably have swallowed stones (gastroliths) to help grind the food in the stomach and then regurgitated or passed them when they became too smooth. Consistent with this suggestion, the rock formation, in which they are frequently found (the Morrison Formation), includes a large number of isolated piles of unusually smooth stones.

Each giant foot bore five toes, with the inner toe having a large sharpened claw for self-defense. Like most sauropods, the front legs were shorter than the hind legs, but the high position of the shoulders meant there was little slope in the back. In some sauropods, there were long upward projections on each vertebra but the absence of such structures from the spine of Camarasaurus suggests that it was not able to raise itself on its hind legs.

The vertebrae were nevertheless specialised. Serving the purpose of weight-saving, as seen in many later sauropods, some of the vertebrae were hollowed out. This feature may have contributed to the name "chambered lizard". Like a modern elephant, Camarasaurus appears to have had a wedge of spongy tissue at the base of the heel, to support the weight of such a large creature. The neck and counter-balancing tail were shorter than usual for a sauropod of this size.

Camarasaurus, again like certain other sauropods, had an enlargement of the spinal cord near the hips. Palaeontologists originally believed this to be a second brain, perhaps necessary to co-ordinate such a huge creature. Modern opinion asserts that, while it would have been an area of large nervous possibly reflex (automatic) activity, it was not a brain. However, this enlargement was actually larger than the remarkably small brain contained in the animals' box-like skull.

It is suggested by some palaeontologists that Camarasaurus may have lived for up to a hundred years.

Behaviour

There is a fossil record of two adults and a 12.2 metre (40 ft) long juvenile that died together in the Late Jurassic Period, approximately 150 million years ago (in north east Wyoming, USA, excavated by the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Centre, during the 1997 and 1998 'field seasons'). It is assumed that their bodies were washed to their final resting place, in alluvial mud, by a river in spate. This suggests that Camarasaurus travelled in herds or, at least, 'family' groups. Also, recovered camarasaur eggs have been found in lines, rather than in neatly arranged nests as with some other dinosaurs, which appears to suggest that, like most sauropods, Camarasaurus did not tend its young.

Discovery

The first record of Camarasaurus comes from 1877, when a few scattered vertebrae were located in Colorado, by Oramel W. Lucas. The paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope paid for the bones, as part of his long-running and acrimonious competition with Othniel Charles Marsh (known as the Bone Wars) and named them in the same year. Marsh later named some of his sauropod findings Morosaurus grandis but most paleontologists today consider this to be a species of Camarasaurus [1]. Such naming conflicts were common between the two rival dinosaur hunters, the most famous being Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus.

It was not until 1925 that a complete skeleton of Camarasaurus was recovered, by Charles W. Gilmore. However, it was the skeleton from a young Camarasaurus, which is why so many illustrations of the dinosaur from the time show it to be much smaller than it is now known to be.

The Morrison Formation, along the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains, is home to a rich stretch of Late Jurassic rock. A large number of dinosaur species can be found here, including relatives of the Camarasaurus such as Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus. However, camarasaurs are the most abundant of all the dinosaurs in the Formation and there have been a number of complete skeletons recovered from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

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Post by dwaggie on Feb 17, 2007, 7:34pm

Deinocheirus


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Deinocheirus (dy-no-KY-rus, Greek: 'terrible hand') was a theropod dinosaur which lived in what is now southern Mongolia, during the Late Cretaceous Period. The only known fossil remains are a single pair of massive, eight-foot-long (2.4 m) forelimbs, with 10-inch long claws and the remains of some ribs and vertebrae. Deinocheirus was named by Halszka Osmólska and Ewa Roniewicz in 1970. The type species and only named species is D. mirificus (Latin: 'unusual', 'peculiar'). Replicas of the fossilized 'arms' are currently on display at the Paleontological Museum of the University of Oslo, Norway, the American Museum of Natural History, New York and the Natural History Museum, London.

Classification

Deinocheiridae. The family Deinocheiridae was initially placed in the infraorder Carnosauria, owing to the "gigantic size and thick-walled limb bones" but Osmólska and Roniewicz also speculated that it possibly "constitutes a link between Carnosauria and Coelurosauria". Within Carnosauria, the family Deinocheiridae was tentatively assigned to the superfamily Megalosauroidea, basically because it was obviously not a tyrannosauroid (tyrannosaurids having greatly reduced forelimbs). Deinocheirus is now considered by most paleontologists to be an ornithomimosaur, as the structure of its arms is similar to other dinosaurs of this group. This would make Deinocheirus by far the largest ornithomimosaur, at approximately 23-40 ft (7-12 m) long and weighing roughly 9000 kg. Makovicky et al pointed out that if Deinocheirus is an ornithomimosaur, it is a fairly primitive one, since it lacks some of the features typically seen in ornithomimosaurs. Kobayashi and Barsbold added Deinocheirus to several recent cladistic analyses of theropods and were unable to resolve its exact relationships but noted some support for it as a possible ornithomimosaur.


Biology

Early work generally envisioned Deinocheirus as a carnivore that used its long forelimbs "in tearing dead or weakly agile prey asunder" (Osmólska & Roniewicz 1970: 15). Lambert embellished this view, describing the clawed hands of Deinocheirus as "horrifying weapons for attacking dinosaurs of almost any size ... capable of ripping open a sauropod's soft underbelly". Paul disagreed, writing that the claws are too blunt for killing but would have been good defensive weapons. Rozhdestvensky compared the forelimbs of Deinocheirus to sloths, leading him to hypothesize that Deinocheirus was a specialized climbing dinosaur, that fed on fruits and leaves and perhaps also eggs and any small animals found in trees. Rozhdestvensky imagined Deinocheirus with the trunk and hind limbs no longer than the fore limbs but there is no hard evidence for this and the climbing hypothesis has not received much support from other scientists.

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Post by dwaggie on Feb 17, 2007, 7:35pm

Info from answers.com and

Wikipedia


Edmontosaurus

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(C) 1997 M.Shiraishi

Edmontosaurus (ed-MON-toh-sawr-us) meaning 'Edmonton lizard' (after where it was found, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and Greek sauros meaning lizard) was a hadrosaurid dinosaur genus from the Maastrichtian, the last stage of the Cretaceous Period, 71-65 million years ago. A fully-grown adult could have been up to 9 metres (30 feet) long and some of the larger species reached 13 metres (43 feet). Its weight was in the region of 3.5 tonnes, making it one of the largest hadrosaurids.


Species

Edmontosaurus was erected by Lawrence Morris Lambe in 1917 from a find in the Edmonton Rock Formation, Alberta, using E. regalis as type species. Marsh named Claosaurus annectens in 1892, but this has now been reclassified as E. annectens. Likewise, Charles Mortram Sternberg named Thespesius in 1926, but this is also a species of Edmontosaurus, namely E. saskatchewanensis.

The well-known hadrosaurid genus Anatosaurus has been synonymized with Edmontosaurus. Anatosaurus, meaning "duck lizard", because of its wide, duck-like bill (Latin anato = duck + Greek sauros = lizard). The type species of Anatosaurus, A. annectens, was re-named Edmontosaurus annectens, forcing the name Anatosaurus to be abandoned as a junior synonym. Similarly, Anatosaurus saskatchewanensis was sunk into Edmontosaurus as E. saskatchewanensis. Two other species of Anatosaurus, A. longiceps (originally Trachodon) and A. copei (the famous mount at the American Museum of Natural History), were found to differ from Edmontosaurus were placed in a separate genus, Anatotitan.

Characteristics

Edmontosaurus could pass the toughest food back and forth across the teeth with its muscular cheek pouches. To fit so many teeth into its mouth, they were packed into tight "banks" of up to sixty rows, and new teeth constantly grew to replace lost teeth — analogous to a modern shark. The bones of the upper jaw would flex outwards as lower jaw came up, so the mandible could grind against it. Typical food would have included conifer needles, seeds and twigs, and these have been found in the body cavities of fossilized edmontosaurs. It was evidently a tree-browser.

The 1908 discovery in Wyoming was especially remarkable in that paleontologists actually recovered fossilized imprints of Edmontosaurus' skin. The impression must have been left by the skin drying very quickly and fixing its shape into the mud. It is from these impressions that we know the skin was scaly and leathery, and the thigh muscle was under the skin of the body. This would have given the impression that the leg left its body at the knee, and the whole thigh was under the skin. This only contributes to its resemblance to a duck. It also had a number of tubercles (bumps) along its neck and down its back and tail.

Edmontosaurus was bipedal but could certainly have walked on four legs. The forelimbs are shorter than the hinds but not sufficiently that four-legged motivation was unfeasible. The front feet also had hooves on two fingers, and weight-bearing pads like those of Camarasaurus. The rear feet had three funtional toes and all were hoofed. The bone structure in the lower limbs suggests that both the legs and feet were attached to very powerful muscles. The spine curved downwards at the shoulders, so Edmontosaurus would have had a low posture and would have browsed close to the ground. Despite the power of the limbs, Edmontosaurus would only have been slow-moving and had few defensive features. To survive, it must have had keen eyesight, hearing and smell to get early warning of predators.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 17, 2007, 7:36pm

Pteranodon


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(C) 2000 by thangy Hodgman

Pteranodon (from Greek- "wing" and "toothless"), from the Late Cretaceous (santonian-campanian, 85-82 million years ago) of North America (Kansas, Alabama, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota) was one of the largest pterosaur genera, with a wingspan of up to 9 m (30 feet).

Unlike earlier pterosaurs such as Rhamphorhynchus and Pterodactylus, Pteranodon had toothless beaks, like modern birds.

Pteranodont fossils have been generally found in the Cretaceous chalk beds of Kansas. These chalk beds were deposited at the bottom of what was once an epicontinental seaway on what is now the North American continent.The first Pteranodon skull was found on May 2, 1876, in Smoky Hill River, Wallace County, Kansas, USA, by S. W. Williston, a fossil collector working for Othniel Marsh. The Niobrara Formation is possibly the most famous unit here, and other fossils found in this formation include those of sea turtles, mosasaurs, and earlier birds.

Pteranodons were reptiles, but not dinosaurs. By definition, all dinosaurs were diapsid reptiles with an upright stance. Pterosaurs probably had a semi-upright stance. There is a small minority of paleontologists who think that the pterosaurs' stance could have been upright and that pterosaurs should therefore be included in the clade of dinosaurs (being derived theropods). Either way, dinosaurs and pterosaurs are certainly closely related.


Discovery and species


A number of species of Pteranodon have been named, the most well-supported being P. longiceps, with a wingspan of 9 m (30 feet) and the slightly smaller P. sternbergi, with a wingspan of 6 m (20 feet).
Other species include P. occidentalis, P. velox, P. umbrosus, P. harpyia, and P. comptus, though many are dubious and may be synonymous with the more well-known species. Notable authors who have discussed the various aspects of Pteranodon include Bennett, Padian, Unwin, Kellner, and Wellnhofer.

Paleobiology

The diet of Pteranodon is known to have included fish – fossilized fish bones have been found in the stomach of one Pteranodon, and a fossilized fish bolus has been found between the rami of another Pteranodon. Pteranodon's wing shape suggests that it would have flown rather like a modern-day albatross, soaring by navigating through thermals. This is a suggestion based on the fact that the Pteranodon had a high aspect ratio (wingspan to chord length) similar to that of the albatross – 9:1 for Pteranodon, compared to 8:1 for an albatross. However, other scientists have suggested that Pteranodon could flap their wings and fly with power. They flew long distances using large, light-weight wings.

Pteranodon was notable for its skull crest. These may have been used as mating displays, or it might have acted as a rudder, or perhaps both. It has been suggested that males of the species bore larger crests, but with fossil animals it is often difficult to tell whether differences in crest shape reflect different sexes or different species.

Consensus regarding the terrestrial locomotion of Pteranodon (whether it was bipedal or quadrupedal) has historically been the subject of debate. Today, most pterosaur researchers agree that that pterosaurs were quadrupedal, thanks largely to the discovery of several pterosaur trackways. The possibility of swimming has been discussed briefly in two papers (Bennett 2001 and Bramwell & Whitfield), and is currently being studied in detail at Michigan State University through the use of quantitative morphometrics and an Extant Phylogenetic Bracket (a morphologically comparative technique invented by Larry Whitmer).
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 17, 2007, 7:59pm

Moropus


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No copyright was pointed at this site Image taken from http://big_game.at.infoseek.co.jp/Pleistocene/Daeodon/Daeodon.html

Moropus (meaning "slow foot") is an extinct mammal, belonging to a group called chalicotheres, which were perissodactyl ("odd-toed") mammals that include the modern horse, rhino, and tapir. Moropus lived mainly during the Miocene epoch.

Like other chalicotheres, they differed from their modern relatives in having large claws, rather than hooves, on the front feet; these claws may have been used for defense or digging for food. Moropus stood about eight feet tall at the shoulder.

Fossils of Moropus have been found in North America.

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Post by dwaggie on Feb 17, 2007, 8:20pm

Brontotherium

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Brontotherium ('thunder beast') is an extinct genus of mammal.

The 2.50 m (8 ft 4 in) tall creature resembled a rhinoceros, possessing a forked (in a Y, or slingshot shape), horn-like protrusion on its nose, with blunt ends. Many Brontotherium remains have been found in South Dakota and Nebraska. In the past, specimens exposed by severe rainstorms were found by Native Americans of the Sioux tribe. The Sioux believed these creatures produced thunderstorms when running over the clouds, and called them 'thunder horses'. Many of the skeletons found by the Sioux belonged to herds which were killed by volcanic eruptions of the Rocky Mountains, which were volcanically active at the time.

Brontotherium's dorsal vertebrae above the shoulders had extra long spines to support the huge neck muscles needed to carry the heavy skull. Possibly, Brontotherium had fleshy lips and a longe tongue, perfect for carefully selecting preferred food (soft stems and leaves).

According to Mihlbachler et al. 2004, the species within genus Brontotherium were merged with the genus Megacerops, though not all authorities agree on this.
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Post by dwaggie on Feb 17, 2007, 8:38pm

Amargasaurus


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© 2007 Answers Corporation

Amargasaurus (ah-MAHR-gah-SAWR-us; "La Amarga lizard") is a genus of dicraeosaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. It was small for a sauropod, reaching 10 meters (33 feet) length. It would have been a quadrupedal herbivore with a long, low skull on the end of a long neck, much like its relative Dicraeosaurus. However, this dinosaur sported two parallel rows of tall spines down its neck and back, taller than in any other known sauropod, which may have supported skin sails.

Discovery and species

The name Amargasaurus was coined in 1991 by Argentine paleontologists Leonardo Salgado and Jose Bonaparte, because its fossil remains were found alongside the La Amarga Arroyo in the Neuquén province of Argentina. La Amarga is also the name of a nearby town, as well as the geologic formation the remains were recovered from. The word amarga itself is Spanish for "bitter," while sauros is Greek for "lizard." The one named species (A. cazaui) is named in honor of the man who discovered the site, Dr. Luis Cazau, a geologist with the YPF oil company, which at the time was state-owned.

This site is located in the lower (older) sections of the La Amarga Formation, which dates to the Barremian through early Aptian stages of the Early Cretaceous Period, or around 130 to 120 million years ago.


Paleobiology

Amargasaurus is known from a relatively complete skeleton from a single individual. This skeleton includes the back of the skull, and all vertebrae of the neck, back, and hips, as well as a bit of the tail. The right side of the shoulder girdle is also known, as are the left forelimb and hindlimb, and the left ilium, a bone of the pelvis.


Vertebral spines


The most obvious feature of Amargasaurus' skeleton is the series of tall spines on the neck and back vertebrae. The spines are tallest on the neck, where they are paired in two parallel rows. These rows continue along the back, decreasing in height as they approach the hips. The lower back and sacral (hip) vertebrae feature only single spines, which are long but much shorter than those of the neck, comparable to other sauropods. These spines may have supported a pair of tall skin sails. Similar sails are seen in the unrelated dinosaurs Spinosaurus and Ouranosaurus, as well as the pelycosaur Dimetrodon. There are a variety of hypotheses for the function of these sails, including defense, communication (for mating purposes or for simple species recognition), or temperature regulation. However, their true function remains unknown.

Similar spines are found on the presacral vertebrae of Dicraeosaurus from Africa, although not nearly as tall.
© 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 24, 2007, 2:15pm

By request from Arri here is the Mei long

Mei long "Sleeping Dragon" - a troodontid

[image]
Image and text copyright 2004-2007, Feenixx Publishing, Inc

Pronounced: my-long
Length: 21 inches
Weight: 8 pounds
When it lived: 130 MYA
Where found: Liaoning Province, China

TheOctober 13, 2004, National Geographic News carried a story on the new dinosaur recently discovered in China, quickly dubbed, "The sleeping dragon." because of its posture. The new fossil specimen is an almost fully grown adult. It sits on long, folded hind limbs. Its forelimbs are folded birdlike next to its body and its neck curves to the left, so that its relatively small head lies between the left elbow and body. "I never expected we'd find a sleeping dinosaur in general, let alone with the tuck-in position," said Xu Xing, a curator at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China.
Mark Norell, chairman of the division of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the discovery further strengthens the chain linking dinosaurs and birds, suggesting this birdlike sleeping posture first evolved in dinosaurs. "This is another stereotypical bird behavior in another nonavian theropod," he said. Theropods are meat-eating dinosaurs characterized by short forelimbs and powerful hind legs. Many scientists believe small theropods are ancestors to the first birds. The posture is identical to the "tuck-in" posture of many living birds, according to Xu and Norell.
Mei long was found in layers of volcanic and riverbed sediment that have been dated to about 130 million years ago. At that time, Liaoning Province was a volcanically active, forested region filled with lakes and streams. "It is kind of difficult to imagine how a fossil can be preserved in such a posture. It must be like it instantly died and was buried," Xu said. Scientists are uncertain as to exactly how the fossil was preserved. Sues and Philip Currie, curator of dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrell Museum in Alberta, Canada, point out that an incomplete troodontid skeleton from Mongolia, Sinornithoides, was discovered in 1994 in a similar pose. "Overall, I think [Mei long] is a very remarkable find and is especially amazing because it is the second small troodontid in this pose," Currie said. "Not much doubt that this is the way they slept."
While feathered-dinosaur discoveries are becoming almost routine, the discovery of a sleeping dinosaur is a rare surprise, Norell said. "There are so very few fossils of animals which are basically buried alive, preserving behavior that's interesting."
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 24, 2007, 2:16pm

Mosasaur



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Public domain, retrieved from copyrightexpired.com

This image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired in the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less.

Mosasaurs, from Latin Mosa meaning the 'Meuse river' in the Netherlands, where the first fossil remains were discovered about 1780, and Greek sauros meaning 'lizard', were serpentine marine reptiles. These ferocious marine predators are considered by some experts to be closely related to snakes, due to extreme similarities in jaw and skull anatomies. Mosasaurs were not dinosaurs but "lepidosaurs". These predators evolved from semi-aquatic squamates known as the "aigialosaurs", close relatives of modern-day monitor lizards, in the Early Cretaceous Period and became the dominant marine predators, during the last 25 million years of the Cretaceous Period (Turonian-Maastrichtian), with the extinction of the last "ichthyosaurs" and the decline of the Cretaceous "plesiosaurs" and "pliosaurs".

Known genera include "Clidastes", "Mosasaurus", "Prognathodon", "Globidens", "Plotosaurus", "Plesiotylosaurus", "Carinodens", "Dallasaurus", "Igdamanosaurus", "Halisaurus", "Tylosaurus", Platecarpus, Selmasaurus, Plioplatecarpus, Amphekepubis, "Goronyosaurus", "Liodon", "Moanasaurus", "Pluridens", "Lakumasaurus", "Yaguarasaurus", "Eonatator", "Hainosaurus", "Tethysaurus", "Angolasaurus", "Kourisodon" and "Russellosaurus".

Description

Mosasaurs breathed air and were powerful swimmers that were well-adapted to living in the warm, shallow epicontinental seas prevalent during the Late Cretaceous Period. Mosasaurs were so well adapted to living in shallow epicontinental seas that they gave birth to live young, rather than return to the shore to lay eggs, as sea turtles do.

The smallest-known Mosasaur was "Carinodens belgicus", which was about 3 to 3.5 m long and probably lived in shallow waters near shore, cracking mollusks and sea urchins with its bulbous teeth. Larger mosasaurs were more typical: mosasaurs ranged in size up to 17 m: "Hainosaurus" holds the record for longest mosasaur, at 17.5 m.

Mosasaurs had a body shape similar to that of modern-day monitor lizards (varanids), but were more elongated and streamlined for swimming. Their limb bones were reduced in length and their paddles were formed by webbing between their elongated digit-bones. Their tails were broad and supplied the locomotor power. This method of locomotion may have been similar to that used by the conger eel or sea snakes today. The animal may have lurked and pounced rapidly and powerfully on passing prey, rather than hunting for it.

Mosasaurs had a double-hinged jaw and flexible skull (much like that of a snake), which enabled them to gulp down their prey almost whole, a snakelike habit that has helped identify the gut contents fossilized within mosasaur skeletons. A skeleton of "Tylosaurus proriger" from South Dakota included remains of the diving seabird "Hesperornis", a marine bony fish, a possible shark and another, smaller mosasaur (Clidastes). Mosasaur bones have also been found with shark teeth embedded in them.

Based on features such as the double row of pterygoid teeth on the palate, double-hinged jaw, modified/reduced limbs and probable locomotion, many researchers believe that snakes and mosasaurs may have had a common ancestor. This theory was first suggested in 1869, by "Edward Drinker Cope", who coined the term "Pythonomorpha" to include them. The idea lay dormant for more than a century, before being revived in the 1990s.


Environment

Sea levels were high during the Cretaceous Period, causing marine transgressions in many parts of the world and a great inland seaway in what is now North America. Mosasaur fossils have been found in the Netherlands, in Sweden, in Africa, in Australia, in New Zealand and on Vega Island, off the coast of Antarctica. In Canada and the United States, complete or partial specimens have been found in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia and in almost all the states covered by the seaway: Texas, southwest Arkansas, New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana. Mosasaurs are also known from California, Mexico, and Peru.

Many of the 'dinosaur' remains found on New Zealand—a volcanic island arc that has never been part of a continent—are actually mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, another group of Mesozoic predatory marine reptiles.

Discovery

The first publicized discovery of a fossil mosasaur (the first mosasaur remains were found 20 years earlier but were generally unknown to scientists of the day) preceded any dinosaur fossil discoveries and drew the Age of Enlightenment's attention to the existence of fossilized animals; the specimen was discovered in 1780 by quarry-workers in a subterranean gallery, who quickly alerted Doctor C. K. Hoffman, a surgeon and fossil-hunter in the Dutch city of Maastricht, although rights of ownership lay with a canon of Maastricht, as owner of the overlying land.

Dr. Hoffman's correspondence among men of science made the find famous. When the Revolutionary forces occupied Maastricht, the carefully-hidden fossil was uncovered, betrayed, it is said, by a case of wine and transported to Paris, where Georges Cuvier was able to describe it for science, although le grand animal fossile de Maastricht was not actually described as a Mosasaur ('Meuse reptile') until 1822 and not given its official name, "Mosasaurus hoffmanni", until 1829. Several sets of mosasaur remains, that had been discovered earlier at Maastricht, have been on display in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, since about 1770.

The Maastricht limestone beds were rendered so famous they have given their name to the ultimate 6-million-year epoch of the Cretaceous: the Maastrichtian.

Evoutionary antecedents

Based on features such as the loosely-hinged jaw, modified/reduced limbs and probable locomation, many researchers believe that snakes may be descended from mosasaurs, a suggestion advanced in 1869, by Edward Drinker Cope, who coined the term "Pythonomorpha" to include them. The idea lay dormant for more than a century, to be revived in the 1990s.

On 2005-11-16, research reported in Netherlands Journal of Geosciences, confirmed that the recently uncovered "Dallasaurus turneri" is an early link between land-based moniter lizards (such as the Komodo dragon) and the aquatic mosasaurs.

Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by tygerwolfe on Feb 24, 2007, 7:37pm

Wonderful to see some ancient mammals being added to this as well! Any chance we could get the Dire Wolf or Smilodon? :) Pretty please?
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by arri on Feb 24, 2007, 8:16pm

How about prehistoric birds like the Terror Bird?
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 24, 2007, 9:38pm

Just PM me a list you want and I will try to get them up if I can find
them. or you can E-Mail them to me.

Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 25, 2007, 12:39pm

Mymoorapelta maysi


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© 2000-2007 Two Guys Fossils

Mymoorapelta ("Shield of Mygatt-Moore") is an ankylosaur from the Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian-Tithonian) Morrison Formation (Brushy Basin Member) of western Colorado. The taxon is known from portions of a disarticulated skull, parts of three different skeletons and other postcranial remains. There is presently some controversy as to this ankylosaur's position within the Ankylosauria. Vickaryous et. al. (2004) considered it Ankylosauria incertae sedis, while Kirkland et Carpenter (1994) placed it within the Family Polacanthidae. To date, only a single species has been named for this taxon, M. maysi. Along with Gargoyleosaurus pankinorum, Mymoorapelta is one of the earliest known ankylosaurs, providing a look at the early evolution and diversification of this group of dinosaurs.

Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 25, 2007, 12:40pm

Kronosaurus queenslandicus


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(c) Stanton F. Fink

Kronosaurus (pronounced Kroe-noe-sore-uss) was one of the sea reptiles known as pliosaurs — a member of the plesiosaur group, but in the Pliosauridae family, with the distinctive feature of a much shorter, thicker neck. Pliosaurs were more heavily built, more streamlined, faster and fiercer than other plesiosaurs, and were suited to catch fewer, larger meals with their massive jaws and rows of sharp teeth up to 25 cm (10 inches) long. The huge head, which was mostly mouth, also had large eyes and an offset pair of nostrils that gave it directional "water-sniffing" ability, as in other plesiosaurs. A pliosaur swam with all of its four limbs, which had evolved into long, wide, strong flippers, one at each corner of the elongated body. The tail was short and tapering, as in other plesiosaurs, and was perhaps used only for steering.

Kronosaurus was one of the largest pliosaurs and lived in the Early Cretaceous Period. Most of its fossils are known from Australia, where they were first discovered in 1889 in Queensland, which was covered by shallow sea some 120 million years ago, though the most complete fossil to date was found in Villa de Leyva (Colombia) in 1977. The name was given in 1924 by Heber Longman. For many years, estimates put the total length of Kronosaurus at up to 13 meters (43 feet), but recent studies of its fossil skull and other parts, and comparisons with other pliosaurs, suggest that the true length was probably only 9–10 meters (30–33 feet). Other creatures preserved from the time include numerous fish and various molluscs such as squid, ammonites and belemnites. Some of their fossil shells bear tooth marks that could have been made by Kronosaurus, whose rear teeth were rounded and suited to crushing hard-cased victims.

The holotype specimen of the species K. queenslandicus was described by Longman in 1924, and is currently in the Queensland Museum. Hampe described a second species, K. boyacensis, in 1992 but the dubious state of the holotype specimen makes the assignment to the Kronosaurus genus uncertain.

It is named after the Greek Titan Kronos, who ate his own children, the Olympians.

The Kronosaurus is featured in the Steve Alten novel, "The Trench", although he has taken great creative liberties with them by presenting them as evolved versions of their prehistoric ancestors, living thousands of feet below sea level and having gills.

Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 25, 2007, 1:48pm

Bactrites

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image copyright PaleoBase.com

Bactrites

genus of extinct cephalopods (animals related to the modern squid, octopus, and nautilus) found as fossils in marine rocks from the Devonian to the Permian periods (between 408 and 245 million years ago). Some authorities have identified specimens dating back to the Silurian Period (beginning 438 million years ago), but their classification is uncertain. The shell consists of a linear series of chambers, each successively occupied by the body of the animal. Bactrites fed on animals it caught in its tentacles. It is possible that Bactrites gave rise to more advanced cephalopods of later geologic periods, notably the ammonoids and the belemnoids.

© 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 26, 2007, 2:41am

The Dire Wolf


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© Mark Hallet


The Dire Wolf (Canis dirus) is an extinct member of the genus Canis (which contains the other wolves, the Coyote, jackals, and the other canines), and was most common in North America during the Pleistocene. Although it was closely related to the Gray Wolf, it was not, as commonly assumed, the direct ancestor of any species known today. The Dire Wolf co-existed with the Gray Wolf in North America for about 100,000 years. They were one of the abundant Pleistocene megafauna - a wide variety of very large mammals that lived during the Pleistocene. Circa 10,000 years ago the Dire Wolf became extinct along with most other North American megafauna.

The first specimen of a Dire Wolf was found by Francis Lick on the banks of the Ohio River near Evansville, Indiana in 1854, but the vast majority of fossils recovered have been from the La Brea Tar Pits in California.

Characteristics


Dire Wolves were significantly larger than the Gray Wolf, the largest living wild canid; they averaged about 2.1 metres (7 feet) in length and weighed about 63-91 kilograms (138-200 pounds). Gray Wolves, by contrast, usually range between 23–59 kilograms (50–130 pounds), so a large modern wolf would be about the same size as a small Dire Wolf.

Despite superficial similarities in appearance, there were significant differences between the two species. The legs of the Dire Wolf were proportionally shorter and sturdier than those of the Gray Wolf, which suggests that the Dire Wolf was a poorer runner, and that like the hyenas, the Dire Wolf may have scavenged for food or hunted large, slower-moving prey.

The Dire Wolf had a larger, broader head and smaller brain-case than that of a similarly-sized Gray Wolf, and had teeth that were quite massive. Many paleontologists think that the Dire Wolf may have used its relatively large teeth to crush bone, an idea that is supported by the frequency of large amounts of wear on the crowns of fossilized Dire Wolf teeth.


Evolution and extinction

The fossil record suggests that the genus Canis diverged from the small, foxlike Leptocyon in North America sometime in the Late Miocene Epoch 9 to 10 million years ago (Ma), along with two other genera, Urocyon, and Vulpes. Canids soon spread to Asia and Europe (8 Ma) and become the ancestors of modern wolves, jackals, foxes, and the Raccoon Dog. By 4 Ma – 5 Ma, canids spread to Africa (Early Pliocene) and South America (Late Pliocene).

Over the next nine million years, extensive development and diversification of the North American wolves took place, and by the Mid-Pleistocene (800,000 years ago) Canis ambrusteri appeared and spread across North and South America. It soon disappeared from North America, but probably continued to survive in South America to become the ancestor of the Dire Wolf. (However there is some evidence to suggest that the Dire Wolf may have arisen from other small South American wolves.)

During the Late Pleistocene (300,000 years ago) the Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) crossed into North America via the Bering Strait land bridge. By 100,000 years ago the Dire Wolf also appeared in North America (probably from South America).

Starting about 16,000 years ago, coinciding with the end of the most recent Ice Age and the arrival of humans on the North American continent, most of the large mammals upon which the Dire Wolf depended for prey began to die out (possibly as a result of human-induced changes). Slower than the other wolf species on the continent at the time, primarily the Gray Wolf and Red Wolf, it could not hunt the swifter species that remained and was forced to subsist on scavenging. By 10,000 years ago, the large mammals and the Dire Wolf were extinct, although some fossils found in Arkansas suggest that they may have lived as a relic population in the Ozark mountains as recently as 4,000 years ago.


La Brea Tar Pits

The Dire Wolf is best known for its unusually high representation in the La Brea Tar Pits in California. In total, fossils from more than 3,600 individual Dire Wolves have been recovered from the tar pits, more than any other mammal species. This large number suggests that the Dire Wolf, like modern wolves and dogs, probably hunted in packs; it also gives some insight into the pressures placed on the species near the end of its existence.

Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation: Online Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, Dictionary
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Feb 26, 2007, 2:53am

Smilodon californicus (saber-toothed tiger)


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No copyright was pointed at this site. Image taken from http://www.biocrawler.com/Pictures/?d=Zoology/Dinosaurs

Smilodon SMILE-o-don (a bahuvrihi from Greek: "knife" and (Ionic) "tooth") is an extinct genus of large machairodontine saber-toothed cats that are understood to have lived between approximately 3 million to 10,000 years ago in North and South America. They are the only known successors to Machairodus. Smilodon means knife tooth, an entirely appropriate name given its enormous fangs. The smilodon species are also known as Saber-Toothed Cats or Saber-Toothed Tigers.

A fully-grown Smilodon weighed approximately 200 kilograms (450 pounds) and had a short tail, powerful legs and a large head. About the size of a lion, smilodon was extremely powerful. Its jaws could open 120 degrees. Its fangs were about 17 cm (7 inches) long.

Many Smilodon fossils have been unearthed at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. The Smilodon is the prehistoric cat that researchers know the most about.

Copyright© 2007 Answers Corporation: Online Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, Dictionary
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 1, 2007, 1:23am

Terataspis grandis


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image copyright Tiffany Miller

Terataspis grandis ("Grand Monster Shield") was a huge, 60 centimeter long lichid trilobite from the Devonian. It lived in a shallow sea in what is now New York State and Ontario. No whole specimens have been found, only disarticulated fragments of its exoskeleton, but enough fragments have been found to allow researchers to form reconstructions of the whole animal.

T. grandis, like many other trilobites, was presumed to have been a detritivore that was also an opportunistic predator, preying on small burrowing animals, such as molluscs, worms, or arthropods, it came across.

Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by tygerwolfe on Mar 2, 2007, 2:05am

Yay! :)
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 9, 2007, 6:54pm

Phorusrhacoids, or Terror Birds


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© 2007 Answers Corporation
Phorusrhacoids, or Terror Birds, were large carnivorous flightless birds that were the dominant predators in South America during the Cenozoic, 62–2.5 million years ago. They were roughly 1–3 meters (3–10 feet) tall. Titanis walleri, one of the largest species, is known from North America, marking one of the comparatively rare examples where animals that evolved in South America managed to spread north after the Isthmus of Panama landbridge formed. The ancestors of T. walleri have not been found; however, it is possible that more North American species await discovery. Only a few bones of T. walleri have been discovered at scattered locations in Florida and at a site along the Texas coast. No complete skeleton exists of North America's only known phorusrhacoid.

Phorusrhacoids are colloquially known as "terror birds", because their larger species were top-level predators and among the most fearsome carnivores of their habitat. Their wings had evolved into meathook-like structures that likely could be outstretched like arms to perform a hacking motion which theoretically was helpful in bringing down prey. Most of the smaller and some of the larger species are believed to have been fast runners.

Their closest modern-day relatives are the seriemas.

A new (2006) specimen from Patagonia represents the largest bird skull found yet; it has not been formally described yet but might belong to a new taxon.

Taxonomy

Following the revision by Alvarenga and Höfling (2003), there are now 5 subfamilies, containing 13 genera and 17 species:


Subfamily Brontornithinae - gigantic species, standing over 2 meters high


Genus Brontornis


Brontornis burmeisteri


Genus Physornis


Physornis fortis


Genus Paraphysornis


Paraphysornis brasiliensis


Subfamily Phorusrhacinae - gigantic species, but somewhat smaller and decidedly more nimble than the Brontornithinae


Genus Phorusrhacos


Phorusrhacos longissimus


Genus Devincenzia


Devincenzia pozzi


Genus Titanis


Titanis walleri


Subfamily Patagornithinae - medium-sized and very nimble species, standing around 1.5 meters high


Genus Patagornis


Patagornis marshi


Genus Andrewsornis


Andrewsornis abbotti


Genus Andalgalornis


Andalgalornis steulleti


Subfamily Psilopterinae - small species, standing 70-100 centimeters high


Genus Psilopterus


Psilopterus bachmanni


Psilopterus lemoinei


Psilopterus affinis


Psilopterus colzecus


Genus Procariama


Procariama simplex


Genus Paleopsilopterus


Paleopsilopterus itaboraiensis


Subfamily Mesembriornithinae - medium-sized species, standing between 1 and 1.5 meters high


Genus Mesembriornis


Mesembriornis milneedwardsi


Mesembriornis incertus


Alvarenga and Höfling do not include the Ameghinornithinae and Aenigmavis sapea from Europe in the phorusrhacoids; they conclude that the former are close relatives, and the latter is of uncertain affiliation.
© 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 9, 2007, 6:55pm

Elasmotherium


[image]
No copyright was pointed at this site Image taken from
http://www.angelseven.de/Unicorns/Wissenschaft/Palaontologie/palaontologie.html

The Giant Unicorn (Elasmotherium sibiricum) was a giant rhinoceros which stood two meters high and six meters (20 feet) long, with a single two-meter-long (7 feet) horn in the forehead. The animal may have weighed up to 5 tonnes. Its legs were longer than those of other rhinos and were designed for galloping, giving it a horse-like gait. It was probably a fast runner, in spite of its size. Its teeth were similar to those of horses, and it probably grazed low herbs.

E. sibiricum lived in Southern Russia, Ukraine and Moldova during the Early Pleistocene. It appeared during the Late Pliocene in Central Asia. Its origin appears to be connected to the genus Sinotherium. E. inexpectatum and E. peii inhabited Eastern China during the Upper Pliocene - Lower Pleistocene. They disappeared approximately 1.6 Ma. The earliest records of Elasmotherium species in Russia are known from the Upper Pliocene assemblages near the Black Sea. E. caucasicum was widely distributed in this area between 1.1 Ma and 0.8 Ma. The more advanced E. sibiricum appeared in the Middle Pleistocene. It occupied all of the southwestern part of Russia, reaching eastward to western Siberia. Elasmotherians persisted in eastern Europe until the end of the Middle Pleistocene.

Morphological peculiarities of elasmotherians have generated two main hypotheses concerning their appearance and the character of their habitat. The first, most widely accepted view which was also described above, portrays them as large woolly animals with a large forehead horn that thrived on an open steppe. Fossils of the horn, however, have not been found. The other view assigns elasmotherians to riparian biotopes. It is probable that elasmotherians dwelt in both riparian and steppe biotopes. The riparian biotope is suggested by dental and skull morphology. The combination of such characters as the absence of canines and strongly developed lateral processes of the atlas implies lateral movements of the head, presumably for grasping grass. The hypsodont dentition indicates presence of mineral grains in the food. Such food could be obtained by pulling out dense plants from the moist soil. These conditions are typical for riparian biotopes. On the other hand, a steppe biotope is indicated by their rather long and slender limbs, which would have served well for creatures grazing over vast areas.

Historical Witnesses

Elasmotherium probably died out in prehistoric times. However, according to the Nordisk familjebok and to space scientist Willy Ley, the animal may have survived long enough to be remembered in the legends of the Evenk people of Russia as a huge black bull with a single horn in the forehead.


There is also a testimony by the medieval traveller Ibn Fadlan, who is usually considered a reliable source, which indicates that Elasmotherium may have survived into historical times.


Ibn Fadlan's account states:


There is nearby a wide steppe, and there dwells, it is told, an animal smaller than a camel, but taller than a bull. Its head is the head of a ram, and its tail is a bull’s tail. Its body is that of a mule and its hooves are like those of a bull. In the middle of its head it has a horn, thick and round, and as the horn goes higher, it narrows (to an end), until it is like a spearhead. Some of these horns grow to three or five ells, depending on the size of the animal. It thrives on the leaves of trees, which are excellent greenery. Whenever it sees a rider, it approaches and if the rider has a fast horse, the horse tries to escape by running fast, and if the beast overtakes them, it picks the rider out of the saddle with its horn, and tosses him in the air, and meets him with the point of the horn, and continues doing so until the rider dies. But it will not harm or hurt the horse in any way or manner.


The locals seek it in the steppe and in the forest until they can kill it. It is done so: they climb the tall trees between which the animal passes. It requires several bowmen with poisoned arrows; and when the beast is in between them, they shoot and wound it unto its death. And indeed I have seen three big bowls shaped like Yemen seashells, that the king has, and he told me that they are made out of that animal’s horn.


Some have argued that the survival of Elasmotherium into historical times may be the source of the unicorn myth, as the animal's description fits well with the Persian karkadann unicorn, and the Chinese zhi unicorn.
© 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 9, 2007, 6:56pm

Incisivosaurus


[image]
This image of Incisivosaurus, by Portia Sloan, was released to the press by the IVPP.

Incisivosaurus ("incisor lizard") was a basal oviraptorosaurian theropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Period of what is now the People's Republic of China. The holotype, a skull, mandible, and an incomplete cervical vertebra, was collected from the lowermost levels (fluvial beds) of the Yixian Formation (Jehol Group, Barremian) in the Sihetun area, near Beipiao City, in western Liaoning Province. The most significant, and highly unusual, characteristic of this theropod is it apparent adaptation to an herbivorous or False Doctrinevorous lifestyle. The genus was named for its prominent and rodent-like incisiform premaxillary teeth, which exhibit wear patterns common to plant-eating dinosaurs. The species name honors Dr. Jacques Gauthier. The skull, which measures approximately 10 cm, preserves the most complete dentition known for any oviraptorosaurian. A cladistic analysis published by Xu et al. (2002) indicates that Incisivosaurus is the basalmost of the Oviraptorosauria, below Caudipteryx + the Caenagnathoidea polytomy.




Description


Osmolska et al. (2004) describe Incisivosaurus gauthieri as follows: "The long preorbital region is approximately half the length of the skull. The pterygoid has an accessory ventral flange that contacts its fellow on the midline. The mandible is slender with a reduced coronoid bone and a long external fenestra. The upper jaws and mandible bear a heterodont dentition; the first premaxillary tooth is mesiodistally compressed and greatly enlarged, while the second through fourth premaxillary teeth are much small and subconical. The nine maxillary teeth and eight or nine dentary teeth are small and lanceolate." The skull also possesses a vertically oriented ectopterygoid, a fused dentary symphysis, a long and shallow posteroventral process of the dentary, large mandibular fenestra, a strap-like splenial, and long retroarticular process. All these traits are shared with more typical oviraptorosaurs.


However, the skull of Incisivosaurus lacks the following traits generally used to unite oviraptorosaurs and derived avialians: toothless jaws, abbreviated nasal, elongate parietals, quadrates with lateral cotyles for the quadratojugal, a rodlike jugal bar, a long maxillary process of the palatine, an absence of a subsidiary palatine fenestra, an ectopterygoid that articulates primarily with the lacrimal and maxilla laterally, absence of a jugal hook on the ectopterygoid. In most of these particular instances, Incisivosaurus more closely resembles therizinosaurs than birds.


Incisivosaurus is assumed to have been feathered like most other maniraptoran theropods and may have been secondarily flightless. Its total body length has been estimated at just under a meter.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 9, 2007, 6:58pm

Meganeura


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Wikipedia Image © 2007 BBC

Meganeura monyi was a prehistoric insect of the Carboniferous period (300 million years ago), resembling and related to the present-day dragonfly. With a wingspan of more than 75 cm (2 feet) wide, it was the largest known flying insect species to ever appear on earth (the Permian Meganeuropsis permiana being another contender). It was predatory, feeding on small amphibians and other insects.

Fossils were discovered in the Stephanian Coal Measures of Commentry in France in 1880; in 1885, French paleantologist Charles Brongniart described and named the fossil. Another fine fossil specimen was found in Bolsover, Derbyshire, in 1979. The holotype is housed in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris.


Controversy has prevailed as to how insects of the Carboniferous period were able to grow so large. The way oxygen is diffused through the insect's body via its tracheal breathing system puts an upper limit on body size, which prehistoric insects seem to have well exceeded. It was originally proposed (Harlé & Harlé, 1911) that Meganeura was only able to fly because the atmosphere at that time contained more oxygen than the present 20 percent. This theory was dismissed by fellow scientists, but has found approval more recently through further study into the relationship between gigantism and oxygen availability (Chapelle & Peck, Nature, 1999). If this theory is correct, these insect giants would have been perilously susceptible to falling oxygen levels and certainly could not survive in our modern atmosphere. The word Meganeura means "Big Genes"





Popular Culture


Meganeura appears briefly in BBC's Walking With Monsters, in which it snatches a small reptile from a giant spider


Meganeura also appears as the main villain in the Japanese Kaiju film "Godzilla x Megaguirus" which substantially exaggerates both the species size and its role in the food chain.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 9, 2007, 7:00pm

Deinosuchus



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Copyright Unknown

Deinosuchus is an extinct genus of alligatorid from the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) of North America. It was thought for several decades to be the largest crocodilian that ever lived. Deinosuchus is known mainly from skull material, and recent studies have reduced its estimated length. Some other giant crocodilians, including Sarcosuchus (the "SuperCroc"), Purussaurus and Rhamphosuchus, were as big or bigger, but accurate comparisons are difficult as Sarcosuchus is the only species known from a largely-complete skeleton.




Size


The skull of Deinosuchus measures more than 2 m (6 ft 7 in) from front to back and has a broad rather than narrow snout. Recent studies have reduced the estimate of the animal's total length from more than 15 m (50 ft) to between 10 m and 12 m (33 ft & 40 ft). Even at this reduced estimate, Deinosuchus was larger than the salthangyer crocodile of Australia, Southern and Southeast Asia, which is the biggest living reptile.





Diet and habitat


The proportions of Deinosuchus are similar to the skull of today's Nile crocodile, which is a generalist carnivore that hunts fish, crustaceans, and large mammals, such as wildebeest and zebra.


Deinosuchus probably lurked in rivers or swamps waiting for prey to come and drink from the water's edge (much like modern species). It would then have grabbed its prey in its massive jaws, containing large but somewhat blunt teeth, and then drag it into the water to drown. Perhaps it would have spun lengthways to tear off chunks of flesh (the "death roll" behaviour in modern species). It most likely preyed on fish, dinosaurs (especially the abundant hadrosaurs of the time), and anything else that strayed too close to the water.


Deinosuchus specimens have been discovered in freshwater and marine deposits.





Discovery and classification


The type species, Deinosuchus hatcheri was found by Holland at Willow Creek, Montana, in the Judith River Formation. Specimens from Big Bend National Park in Texas were originally assigned to the genus Phobosuchus in 1954 by Colbert and Bird, but are now assigned to Deinosuchus as the species D. riograndensis. Specimens have also been found in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Wyoming, and New Mexico.


Originally classified in the family Crocodylidae, a better skull specimen shows it is likeliest a basal alligator in the superfamily Alligatoroidea.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 9, 2007, 7:02pm

Columbian Mammoth


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Photo copyright and credit: ©2001 S.W. Clyde http://www.byways.org/

The Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited North America between 100,000 and 9,000 years ago. It was the largest mammoth species and one of the largest elephants to have ever lived, measuring 4 metres, or 13 feet, at the shoulder and weighing 10,000kg or (9.8 tons). It was an herbivore, with a diet consisting of varied plant life ranging from grasses to conifers. It is also theorised that the Columbian Mammoth ate the giant fruits of North America such as the Osage-orange, Kentucky coffee and Honey locust as there was no other large herbivore in North America then that could ingest these fruits. Using studies of African elephants, it has been estimated that a large male would have eaten approximately 450 pounds, or 200 kilograms, of plant material daily. A pair of Columbian Mammoth tusks discovered in central Texas was the largest ever found for any elephant: 5 metres, or 16 feet, long.

Based on studies of their close relatives, the modern elephants, mammoths probably had a gestation period of 22 months, resulting in a single calf being born. Their social structure was probably the same as that of African and Asian elephants, with females living in herds headed by a matriach, whilst bulls lived solitary lives or formed loose groups after sexual maturity. Recent DNA studies indicate that their closest living relatives are the Indian elephants, with African elephants slightly more distantly related.


The Columbian Mammoth was one of the last members of the American Megafauna to become extinct, with several specimens dating to 9,000 years ago or less and one near Nashville, Tennessee, reliably dated to only about 7,800 years ago.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 10, 2007, 3:07am

Dunkleosteus


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© Dinosauromorpha http://www.dinosauromorpha.de/

Dunkleosteus was a large Placoderm (armoured prehistoric fish) that lived in the late Devonian period, about 360 – 415 million years ago. The largest of the genus grew to around 8 to 10 m (27 to 33 feet) long, and were probably the top predators of their time.

Dunkleosteus was probably the largest member of the Placodermi, a Class of armour-plated fishes. The Placodermi first started appearing in the Silurian, and all of them were extinct by the late Devonian. There are no modern descendants.


Due to its heavily armoured nature, Dunkleosteus was likely a relatively slow (albeit massively powerful) swimmer, and may have encountered stiff competition from the smaller yet swifter sharks who had then only recently evolved. It is presumed to have dwelled in diverse zones of inshore waters, although it is unknown whether or not it was also somewhat pelagic, that is, swimming freely in open ocean. Fossilization tends to have preserved only the especially armoured frontal sections of specimens, and thus it is uncertain what exactly the hind sections of this ancient fish were like.





By Devonian standards, Dunkleosteus was highly evolved. It was one of the earliest jawed fishes. Instead of actual teeth, Dunkleosteus possessed two long, bony blades that could slice through flesh and snap and crush bones and almost anything else. After studying a biomechanical model of the fish's jaws, scientists at the Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago concluded that Dunkleosteus had the most powerful bite of any fish, well ahead of sharks, including the Great White. Dunkleosteus could concentrate a force of up to 8,000 pounds (3,628 kg) per square inch at the tip of its mouth, effectively placing Dunkleosteus in the league of Tyrannosaurus rex and crocodiles as having the most powerful known bite. Dunkleosteus could also open its mouth in one-fiftieth of a second, which would have caused a powerful suction that pulled the prey into its mouth, a food-capture technique reinvented by many of the most advanced teleost fishes today.


It was a vicious hunter, and probably ate whatever it could find, including sharks and probably other Dunkleosteus. It was a glutton, as well. Frequently, fossils of Dunkleosteus are found with semi-digested and partially eaten remains of other fish. As a result, the fossil record indicates that it may have routinely regurgitated prey bones rather than dissolving them. Dunkleosteus, like most other Placoderms, may have also been among the first vertebrates to internalize egg fertilization, and thus sexually reproduce in the manner that most mammals and sharks do today.





Although Placoderms only existed for 60 million years, their mark on the fossil record is quite visible. They were a pioneer in the later scenes of the Paleozoic, and were vital to the success of the vertebrates. The Placoderms died out in the late Devonian for reasons that are still not well understood. See Late Devonian extinction.


They were found in Morocco, Belgium, Poland, and North America.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 10, 2007, 3:09am

Hallucigenia


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© 2003 by Karen Carr

Hallucigenia is an extinct genus of animal found as fossils in the Middle Cambrian-aged Burgess Shale formation of British Columbia, Canada. It was named by Simon Conway Morris when he re-examined Charles Walcott's Burgess Shale genus Canadia in 1979. Morris found that what Walcott had called one genus in fact included several quite different animals. One of them was so unusual that nothing about it made much sense. Since the species clearly was not a polychaete worm, Morris had to provide a new generic name to replace Canadia. Morris named the species Hallucigenia sparsa because of its "bizarre and dream-like quality" (like a hallucination).

The 0.5 to 3 cm-long animal is wormlike — that is, long and narrow — with a poorly defined blob, or stain, on one end. This "blob" was arbitrarily designated the 'head' even though it had none of the features generally associated with heads: mouth, eyes, or other sensory organs. The animal has seven pincher-tipped tentacles lined up on one side and seven pairs of jointed spines on the other. Six of the tentacles are paired with spines, while one is in front of the spines. There are also six smaller tentacles which may be configured in three pairs behind the seven larger ones. In addition, there is a flexible, tube-like body extension behind the tentacles.


Faced with an animal that had no obvious head and two types of appendages, neither of which seemed appropriate for any reasonable form of locomotion, Morris assigned the blob as the head and hypothesized that the spines were legs and that the tentacles were feeding appendages. Morris was able to demonstrate a workable if improbable method of walking on the spines. Only the forward tentacles can easily reach to the 'head,' meaning that a mouth on the head would have to be fed by passing food along the line of tentacles. Morris suggested that a hollow tube within each of the tentacles might be a mouth. This is a less-than-satisfactory reconstruction, but it was accepted as the best available. A picture of the animal as reconstructed by Morris can be found at.


An alternative interpretation favored by some paleontologists was that Hallucigenia is actually an appendage of some larger, unknown animal. Given the uncertainty of its taxonomy, Hallucigenia was tentatively placed within the phylum Lobopodia, a catch-all clade containing numerous odd "worms with feet."


In 1991, Ramiskold and Hou Xianguang, working with additional specimens of a "hallucigenid" from the lower Cambrian Maotianshan shales of China, reinterpreted Hallucigenia as an Onychophore. They inverted it, interpreting the tentacles, which they believe to be paired, as walking structures and the spines as protective. Interestingly, none of the 30 or so known Burgess Shale specimens shows any sign of pairing in the large tentacles; nor do their Chinese counterparts. The pairing is based on a dissection of the actual fossil, which revealed what is probably a second tentacle structure. Ramiskold and Hou also believe that the 'head' is actually a stain that appears in many specimens, not a preserved portion of the anatomy.


Though Ramiskold and Hou's is the accepted modern interpretation, it is far from problem-free. Unlike its contemporary Aysheaia, Hallucigenia has very little resemblance to modern Onychophora. The possibly paired pincher-tipped tentacles bear little resemblance to the paired annulated legs of the Onychophora. It is unknown what the spines were made of and how much 'protection' they offered. They do not seem to be preserved independent of the soft-shelled animals as carbonate or chitinous shells would probably be. It is not easy to explain why 30 or more specimens — each hypothesized to have seven pairs of rather long, flexible legs — do not show even one example of paired legs. But at least this reconstruction of the animal can plausibly walk, and the spines serve a reasonable purpose. A picture of this reconstruction as well as a photograph of an actual fossil can be seen at.


Some paleontologists accept Ramiskold and Hou's interpretation of the animal's legs, spines, and head, but also believe that Hallucigenia might be an "armored lobopod" related to Anomalocaris, rather than (or as well as) being related to the Onychophora.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 10, 2007, 3:10am

Pterygotus


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Image taken from Wikipedia

Pterygotus was the largest eurypterid, or sea scorpion. It was also the largest arthropod of all time, rivaled in size only by the giant millipede, Arthropleura. It could reach a length of 2.3 m (about 7 feet), had two large as well as two smaller eyes, and six pairs of walking legs, as well as pinching claws. The foremost 6 tergites, or tail sections, contained gills and the reproductive organs of the animal.

Pterygotus' two large compound eyes were probably able to detect armoured fish from far away in muddy waters, and grab it, or swim towards it, boosting its speed by slapping its tail up and down, and proceed to crush its victim in two with its claws.


Pterygotus existed in the Silurian period - about 435 to 410 million years ago - and was related to Jaekelaopterus and Slymonia.
© 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 10, 2007, 3:13am

Opabinia regalis


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Image taken from Wikipedia

Opabinia was a highly unusual extinct animal found in early Cambrian fossil deposits. Its sole species, Opabinia regalis, is known from only two fossil beds: the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia, and the Lower Cambrian Maotianshan shales of Yunnan, China. Its discoverer, Charles Doolittle Walcott, named it after a local mountain, Opabin Peak.

The animal was segmented and had a soft-shelled exoskeleton. The head carried an array of five, fully functional eyes that would have given their owner a range of vision of almost 360°, and a long, flexible, hose-like proboscis or snout which appears to be in no way homologous to the head appendages of any other known contemporary lifeform. At the end of the proboscis were grasping spines; these are theorised to have served as a grab to catch prey, which would then be brought to the mouth, which was located underneath the head, behind the base of the proboscis.


The body segments each featured a set of gills and a pair of flap-like appendages that are also dissimilar to other known animals of the time, save Anomalocaris. The three rearmost flaps formed the tail. Unlike known arthropods, the head does not appear to be formed from fused segments. The animal was covered with what seems to be a soft, flexible, uncalcified shell with no joints between the segments. Opabinia has no known relatives, except possibly Anomalocaris.


Opabinia is thought to have lived on top of the soft sediment on the seabed, although it presumably could have swum after prey using its side flaps. On the bottom, the proboscis could have plunged into burrows after worms. It could also have been used to rapidly stir up sea floor sediment in search of food. If this were the case, Opabinia would then have folded back the proboscis to bring the food to its mouth on the underside of its head.


Although Opabinia is a relatively minor constituent of the early faunas, it has historical significance because it was one of the first truly unusual animals to be completely studied and described during the redescription of the Burgess shale faunas in the 1970s. Harry Blackmore Whittington showed convincingly in 1975 that the animal, previously thought to be an arthropod, was indeed not an arthropod, and moreover, that it was unlikely it belonged to any other known phylum. Taken with two other unexpectedly unique arthropods, Marrella and Yohoia, both of which had been previously described, Opabinia has demonstrated that the softbodied Burgess faunas were much more complex and diverse than anyone had previously suspected.


Simon Conway Morris pursued further studies that compared the bodyplans of Opabinia and Anomalocaris. Ultimately, due to the extreme similarities of the body segments, the swimming "flaps," and the tail segments, Opabinia's closest relatives were the Anomalocarids.
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P.S. I have no clue why the font colour changed on me >:(
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 15, 2007, 10:44pm

Archaeopteryx


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Copyright © 2000-2005 by Mariano Jimenez II and Mariano G. Jiménez and its licensors http://www.damisela.com/zoo/ave/taxa.htm

Archaeopteryx (from Ancient Greek archaios meaning 'ancient' and meaning 'feather' or 'wing'; pronounced /(är'kē-ŏp'tər-ĭks), from the late Jurassic Period (Kimmeridgian stage, 155-150 million years ago) of what is now Germany, is the earliest and most primitive known avian. Archaeopteryx was similar in size and shape to a magpie, with broad, rounded wings and a long tail, and reached up to 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) in length. Its feathers resembled those of modern birds but Archaeopteryx was rather different from any bird known today, in that it had jaws lined with sharp teeth, three 'fingers' ending in curved claws and a long bony tail. In 1862, the description of the first intact specimen of Archaeopteryx, just two years after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, set off a firestorm of debate about evolution and the role of transitional fossils that endures to this day.

Archaeopteryx and the origins of birds

In the 1970s, John Ostrom argued that the birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs. Archaeopteryx provides a critical piece of this argument, as it preserves a number of avian features (a wishbone, flight feathers, wings, a partially reversed first toe) and a number of dinosaur and theropod features (for instance, a long ascending process of the astragalus, interdental plates, an obturator process of the ischium, and long chevrons in the tail). In particular, Ostrom found that Archaeopteryx was remarkably similar to the theropod family Dromaeosauridae. Further research on dinosaurs from the Gobi Desert and China has since provided more evidence of a link between Archaeopteryx and the dinosaurs, such as Chinese feathered dinosaurs.





Archaeopteryx is probably close to the ancestry of modern birds - it shows most of the features one would expect in an ancestral bird - but it may not be the direct ancestor of living birds, and it is arguable how much divergence was already present in the early birds at its time.





Plumage


Archaeopteryx specimens were most notable for their well-developed remiges (flight feathers). These are markedly asymmetrical and show the structure of flight feathers of modern birds, with vanes given stability by a barb-barbule-barbicel arrangement. The tail feathers are less asymmetrical, again in line with the situation in modern birds, and also have firm vanes. The thumb did not bear a separately movable tuft of stiff feathers (alula) yet.


Body plumage is less well documented, and only properly researched in the well-preserved Berlin specimen. Thus, as more than one species seems to be involved, the following does not necessarily hold true for all of them. In the Berlin specimen, there are "trousers" of well-developed feathers on the legs; some of these feathers seem to have a basic contour feather structure but are somewhat decomposed (i.e., lack barbicels as in ratites: Christiansen & Bonde, 2004), but at least in part they are firm and thus capable of supporting flight (Longrich, 2006).


There was a patch of pennaceous feathers running along the back which was quite similar to the contour feathers of the body plumage of modern birds in being symmetrical and firm (though not as stiff as the flight-related feathers). Apart from that, the feather traces in the Berlin specimen are limited to a sort of "proto-down" not dissimilar to that found in the dinosaur Sinosauropteryx, being decomposed and fluffy, and possibly even appeared more like fur than like feathers in life (though not in their microscopic structure). These occur on the remainder of the body, as far as such structures are both preserved and not obliterated by preparation, and the lower neck (Christiansen & Bonde, 2004).





On the other hand, there is no indication of feathering on the upper neck and head; while these may conceivably have been nude as in many closely related feathered dinosaurs for which good specimens are available, this may still be an artifact of preservation: it appears that most Archaeopteryx specimens became embedded in anoxic sediment after drifting some time on their back in the sea - the head and neck and the tail are generally bent downwards which suggests that the specimens had just started to rot when they were embedded, with tendons and muscle relaxing so that the characteristic shape of the fossil specimens was achieved. This would mean that the skin was already softened and loose (further evidence is provided by the fact that in some specimens, the flight feathers were starting to detach at the point of embedding in the sediment), and in specimens moving along the ground in shallow water, this would cause the head and upper neck, but not the more firmly attached tail feathers to slough off (Elżanowski, 2002).


It must be mentioned that the feather, the initial specimen described, does not agree too well with the flight-related feathers of Archaeopteryx. It certainly is a remix of a contemporary species, but its size and proportions indicate that it probably belongs to an as of yet undiscovered species of primitive bird or possibly bird-like dinosaur. As the feather was the original type specimen, this has created quite some nomenclatorial confusion.





Flight ability


The flight feathers of Archaeopteryx were highly asymmetrical, as in the wings of modern birds, and the tail feathers are rather broad. This implies that the wings and tail were used for lift generation, but it is unclear whether Archaeopteryx was simply a glider, or capable of flapping flight. The lack of a bony breastbone suggests that Archaeopteryx was not a very strong flier, but flight muscles might have attached to the thick, boomerang-shaped wishbone, the platelike coracoids, or perhaps to a cartilagenous sternum. The sideways orientation of the glenoid (shoulder) joint between scapula, coracoid and humerus - instead of the dorsally angled arrangement found in modern birds - suggests that Archaeopteryx was unable to lift its wings above its back, a requirement for the upstroke found in modern flapping flight. Thus, it seems likely that Archaeopteryx was indeed unable to use flapping flight as modern birds do, but it may well have utilized a downstroke-only flap-assisted gliding technique (Senter, 2006).


Archaeopteryx wings were relatively large, which would have resulted in a low stall speed and reduced turning radius. The short and rounded shape of the wings would have increased drag, but could also have improved Archaeopteryx' ability to fly through cluttered environments such as trees and brush (similar wing shapes are seen in birds which fly through trees and brush, such as crows and pheasants). The presence of "hind wings", asymmetrical flight feathers stemming from the legs similar to those seen in dromaeosaurids such as Microraptor, would also have added to the aerial mobility of Archaeopteryx. The first detailed study of the hind wings by Longrich (2006) suggested that the structures formed up to 12% of the total airfoil. Considering that it is not certain to what extent such feathers capable of supporting flight were present on the legs, this would have reduced stall speed by up to 6% and turning radius by up to 12%, in addition to the stall and turning radius reduction provided by the primary wing and tail feathers.





In 2004, scientists analyzing a detailed CT scan of Archaeopteryx's braincase, concluded that its brain was significantly larger than that of most dinosaurs, indicating that it possessed the brain size necessary for flying. The overall brain anatomy was reconstructed using the scan. The reconstruction showed that the regions associated with vision took up nearly one-third of the brain. Other well-developed areas involved hearing and muscle coordination (Winter, 2004). The skull scan also revealed the structure of the inner ear. The structure more closely resembles that of modern birds than the inner ear of reptiles. These characteristics taken together suggest that Archaeopteryx had the keen sense of hearing, balance, spatial perception and coordination needed to fly.





Archaeopteryx continues to play an important part in scientific debates about the origin and evolution of birds. Some scientists see Archaeopteryx as a semi-arboreal climbing animal, following the idea that birds evolved from tree-dwelling gliders (the "trees down" hypothesis for the evolution of flight proposed by O.C. Marsh). Other scientists see Archaeopteryx as running quickly along the ground, supporting the idea that birds evolved flight by running (the "ground up" hypothesis proposed by Samuel Wendell Williston). Still others suggest that Archaeopteryx might have been at home both in the trees and on the ground, like modern crows, and this latter view is what today is considered best-supported by morphological characters. Altogether, it appears that it was a species which was neither particularly specialized for running on the ground, nor for perching. Considering the current knowledge of flight-related morphology, a scenario as outlined by Elżanowski (2002), namely that Archaeopteryx used its wings mainly to escape predators by glides punctuated with shallow downstrokes to reach successively higher perches, and alternatively to cover longer distances by (mainly) gliding down from cliffs or treetops, appears quite reasonable.


Given that it is now well established that several lineages of theropods evolved feathers and flight independently, the question of how precisely the ancestors of Archaeopteryx became able to fly has lost dramatically in importance for the time being. Since it is quite likely that this species belongs to a lineage of birds unrelated to the Neornithes (the Jurassic ancestor of which remains unknown), how exactly flying ability was gained in Archaeopteryx may be a moot point, having little bearing on how this happened in the ancestors of modern birds.





Taxonomy


The relationships of the specimens are problematic. Most specimens have been given their own species at one point or another. The Berlin specimen has been designated as Archaeornis siemensii, the Eichstätt specimen as Jurapteryx recurva, the Munich specimen as Archaeopteryx bavarica and the Solnhofen specimen was designated as Wellnhoferia grandis.


Recently, it has been argued that all the specimens belong to the same species. However, significant differences exist among the specimens. In particular, the Munich, Eichstätt, Solnhofen and Thermopolis specimens differ from the London, Berlin, and Haarlem specimens in being smaller or much larger, having different finger proportions, having more slender snouts, lined with forward-pointing teeth and possible presence of a sternum. These differences are as large as or larger than the differences seen today between adults of different bird species. However, it is also possible that these differences could be explained by different ages of the living birds.





Fossils


Over the years, ten body fossil specimens of Archaeopteryx and a feather that may belong to it have been found. All of the fossils come from the limestone deposits near Solnhofen, Germany.
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P.S. It did it again. [image]
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 15, 2007, 10:45pm

Giganotosaurus carolinii


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Copyright © James Gurney http://www.dinotopia.com/ ;D

Giganotosaurus (meaning 'giant southern lizard', derived from the Ancient Greek gigas meaning 'giant', meaning 'south wind' and saurus/ meaning 'lizard') was a genus of carcharodontosaurid dinosaur that lived 93 to 89 million years ago during the Turonian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period. It is one of the largest known terrestrial carnivores, longer than Tyrannosaurus, but smaller than Spinosaurus. Its fossils have been found in Argentina.Discovery and species

Giganotosaurus carolinii was named for Ruben Carolini, an amateur fossil hunter, who discovered the fossils in the deposits of the Rio Limay Formation of Patagonia, southern Argentina, in 1993. It was published by Rodolfo Coria and Leonardo Salgado in the journal Nature in 1995.

The holotype specimen's (MUCPv-Ch1) skeleton was about 70% complete and included the skull, pelvis, leg bones and most of the backbone. A second specimen (MUCPv-95), 8% larger, has also been recovered. The largest Giganotosaurus is estimated to be 13.7 m (45 ft) long, and weighed 5.2 tons. The specimen's skull was the size of a bathtub, measuring 1.95 m (6 ft 5 in). Giganotosaurus surpasses Tyrannosaurus rex in length by almost 2 m.

Paleobiology

G. carolinii was larger than T. rex but had a much smaller brain that was the size and shape of a banana. A well-developed olfactory region means it probably had a good sense of smell.

Titanosaur fossils have been recovered near the remains of Giganotosaurus, leading to speculation that these carnivores may have preyed on the giant herbivores. Fossils of related carcharodontosaurid fossils grouped closely together may indicate pack hunting, a behavior that could possibly extend to Giganotosaurus itself.


Giganotosaurus was also seen in the book, Dinotopia: The World Beneath as it scared off a T. rex going after the main characters. =D =D =D



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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 15, 2007, 10:46pm

Cryolophosaurus


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Cryolophosaurus (meaning "cold crest lizard") was a large bipedal dinosaur, with a bizarre crest on its head that looked like a Spanish comb. Due to the resemblance to Elvis Presley's pompadour haircut in the 1950s, the dinosaur was at one point informally known as the Elvisaurus.

Cryolophosaurus was discovered in Antarctica's Falla Formation by paleontologist Dr. William Hammer in 1991. It is the first carnivorous dinosaur to be discovered in Antarctica and the first dinosaur of any kind from the continent to be officially named. Dating from the Early Jurassic Period, it is also the earliest tetanuran theropod yet discovered.





Description


Cryolophosaurus was about 6 to 8 meters (20 to 26 feet) long, which is significantly smaller than the largest Allosaurus, which reached up to 12 meters (40 feet) in length.


A high, narrow skull was discovered, 65 centimeters (25 inches) long. The peculiar nasal crest runs just over the eyes, where it rises up, perpendicular to the skull and fans out. It is furrowed, giving it a comb-like appearance. It is an extension of the skull bones, near the tear ducts, fused on either side to horns which rise from the eye sockets (orbital horns). While other theropods like the Monolophosaurus have crests, they usually run along the skull instead of across it.


The crest is too fragile to be used in combat, so it was probably used in mating displays.





Forests of the night


The remains of the Cryolophosaurus were found in the Hanson Formation with the remains of a very large prosauropod (related to plateosaurids like the Plateosaurus and Lufengosaurus), a small pterosaur, a mammal-like reptile (a tritylodont, which is a type of synapsid about the size of a rat), and another unknown theropod. There were also fossilized tree trunks two meters away. The site is about 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) above sea level. During the early Jurassic it was a river bed on the southern coast of the supercontinent of Gondwana.


This supports the idea that, even at high altitudes, early Jurassic Antarctica had forests populated by a diverse range of species, at least along the coast. Even though Antarctica was closer to the equator and the world was considerably warmer than today, the climate was still cool temperate. Recent models of Jurassic air flow indicate that coastal areas probably never dropped much below freezing, although more extreme conditions existed inland. This suggests that dinosaurs could endure relatively cool environments and even possibly survive snow.


Cryolophosaurus was found about 650 kilometers (400 miles) from the South Pole but, at the time it lived, this was about 1000km or so farther north. Cryolophosaurus, therefore, did not have to contend with the polar night.


The specimen was found in conjunction with a platter from the prosauropod which has led to speculation that it may have choked to death, although there is no concrete evidence of this one way or the other.
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Post by dwaggie on Mar 15, 2007, 10:47pm

Carnotaurus

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copyright @ Jurassic Park Institute

Carnotaurus (kahrn-oh-TAWR-us) meaning "meat-eating bull", referring to its distinct bull-like horns (Latin carn = flesh + taurus = bull) was a large predatory dinosaur, with horns vaguely resembling a bull's.

Carnotaurus lived in Patagonia, Argentina during the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous, and was discovered by José F. Bonaparte, who has discovered many other bizarre South American dinosaurs.

Description


Carnotaurus was a medium-sized theropod, about 9.0 m (30 ft) in length, 3.5 m (10 ft 7 in) tall at the hips, and weighing about 1,600 kg (1.76 tons). The most distinctive features of Carnotaurus are the two thick horns above the eyes, and the extremely reduced forelimbs with four fingers. It had a small skull, a thick chest, and a thin tail. The eyes of the Carnotaurus faced forward, which is unusual in a dinosaur, and may indicate binocular vision and depth perception.


A single nearly complete skeleton has been described including impressions of skin along almost the entire right side, that show Carnotaurus lacked feathers, unlike the more advanced coelurosaurian theropods (see also feathered dinosaurs). Instead, the skin is lined with rows of bumps, that become larger toward the spine.


The type species Carnotaurus sastrei is the only known species. Its closest relatives include Aucasaurus (Argentina), Majungatholus (Madagascar), and Rajasaurus (India). Together, these dinosaurs form the subfamily Carnotaurinae in the family Abelisauridae. Among the carnotaurines, Carnotaurus is most closely related to Aucasaurus, and together these two genera form the tribe Carnotaurini.
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Post by dwaggie on Mar 17, 2007, 8:16pm

Megatherium (Giant Ground Sloth)

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Megatherium skeleton. From James Parkinson, "Organic Remains of a Former World", c.1830.



Megatheriinae were a subfamily of elephant-sized ground sloths that lived from 2 million to 8,000 years ago. Their smaller ground sloth cousins were the Mylodon.
Unlike its living relative, the tree sloth, Megatherium was one of the largest mammals to walk the Earth. Weighing almost as much as an African bull elephant, it had huge claws on its feet. These claws meant that it could not put its feet flat on the ground and so, like a modern anteater, it had to walk on the sides of its feet. Its footprints show that it walked mainly on its hind legs. When it stood on its hind legs, it was about twice the height of an elephant, or about twenty feet tall. They were one of the abundant Pleistocene megafauna - a wide variety of very large mammals that lived during the Pleistocene epoch.

Megatherium had a robust skeleton with a large pelvic girdle and a broad muscular tail. Its large size and specially adapted body made it possible to feed at heights otherwise unobtainable to other contemporary herbivores. Rising on its powerful hind legs and using its tail to form a tripod, Megatherium was able to support its massive body weight while using its long forelegs with curved claws to pull down branches with the choicest leaves. Its large deep jaw is believed to have housed a long tongue, as in the modern tree sloth, which it would then use to pull leaves into its mouth.


Some recent morpho-functional analysis (Bargo, 2001) indicate that M. americanum was well adapted for strong and mainly vertical biting. The teeth are extremely hypsodont and bilophodont, and the sagittal section of each loph is triangular with a sharp edge. This suggests that the teeth were used mainly for cutting, rather than grinding, and that hard and fibrous food was not the main dietary component.


There is a common misbelief that the sabre-toothed cat Smilodon hunted Megatherium, but the sloths were far too big for even this large cat to attack. Richard Fariña and Ernesto Blanco of the Universidad de la República in Montevideo have analysed a fossil skeleton of M. americanum and discovered that its olecranon—the part of the elbow to which the triceps muscle attaches—was very short. This adaptation is found in carnivores and optimises speed rather than strength. The researchers say this would have enabled M. americanum to use its claws aggressively, like daggers (Fariña and Blanco, 1996). The conclusion is that due to its nutrient-poor habitats, Megatherium may have actually taken over the kills of Smilodon. A number of adult glyptodon fossils have also been found where the shell was turned upside down. This hints at Megatherium scavenging or hunting this animal, as no other known animal existed in South America during that period that could flip an adult glyptodon.





It was formerly thought that Megatherium lived only in South America. However, a University of Florida research team recently found a skeleton in North America. This was a new species of giant sloth, which weighed nearly as much as an African bull elephant, more than 5 tons. Unlike previous discovered species, it had 5 digits and 4 claws instead of 4 digits and three claws.





Habits


Little is known about the giant ground sloth, but we do know that it was big and powerful. When it stood on its hind legs, it was about twice the height of an elephant. Its very thick skin, which was covered with dense, heavy fur, protected it from predators. The giant ground sloth was an herbivorous animal that fed mainly on plants that grew on the ground. Its believed that the giant sloth lived in groups, but it may have lived singly in caves.





Food & Feeding


The giant ground sloth lived in the lightly wooded area s of South America, feeding on the leaves such as yuccas, agaves, and grasses. Eremotherium, close relative of the sloth, lived in more tropical environments further north. Pulling itself upright to sit on its haunches or to stand, the giant ground sloth balanced its weight with its tail. It then tugged at plants with is feet, digging them up with the five sharp claws on each foot. The sloth used its simple teeth to grind down food before swallowing it, and its highly developed cheek muscles helped in this process. The sloth's stomach was able to digest coarse and fibrous food. For millions of years, the sloth had no enemies to bother it, so it was probably a day time feeder. It is likely that it spent a lot of time resting to aid digestion.
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Post by dwaggie on Mar 17, 2007, 8:18pm

Andrewsarchus mongoliensis


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British Broadcasting Corporation © 2002-2005


Andrewsarchus mongoliensis was a giant mammalian predator of Central Asia and the largest, and most famous member of the mesonychids, a group of extinct prehistoric mammals. The mesonychids were the only known group of ungulates to become carnivorous, and looked vaguely like wolves, with blunt, hoof-like nails instead of claws. Andrewsarchus (Andrews + Greek "ruler") was named for the famous explorer and fossil hunter Roy Chapman Andrews, who led the expedition on which it was discovered.




Description


Andrewsarchus is known only from an enormous, meter-long skull and pieces of bone, but the skull's similarity to that of smaller mesonychids suggests that Andrewsarchus had the same wolf-like body on a larger scale. The skull, the only fossil bone known, was itself over a metre long. Extrapolating from the body proportions of similar mesonychids, Andrewsarchus was most likely about 4-6 metres (13-18 feet) long, standing nearly 2 metres (6 feet) at the shoulder, making it the largest terrestrial carnivorous mammal that has ever existed. It probably averaged about 1500 kilograms in weight with some exceptional animals over 2000 kilograms, making it over twice as heavy as most Kodiak brown bears, and rather heavier than a Percheron horse.





Prehistory


Andrewsarchus lived from the early Eocene until about 32 million years ago, in the Late Eocene period. To judge from its immense jaws, and the coastal location of the fossils, Andrewsarchus may have fed on beached primitive whales, shellfish and hard-shelled turtles, and contemporary large mammals at various periods during its existence. Toward the end of the Eocene very large mammals (such as the brontotheres) had evolved in the region of Central Asia. Andrewsarchus possessed some of the strongest jaws ever evolved in a land mammal, able to bite through large bones if needed.


Despite the enormous jaws and very sturdy teeth, Andrewsarchus did not have teeth adapted for the carnassial shear, though its immensely powerful jaws rendered such an adaptation unnecessary. Judging by its sheer size, the animal fed on large animals such as the extinct brontotheres, which were among the largest herbivorous mammals at the time. Simply scavenging smaller animals would not have required a body and jaws of the size that Andrewsarchus possessed (over twice that of a modern brown bear). It was not adapted to eating plants or digging, and hence could not enjoy an False Doctrinevorous lifestyle as do pigs and bears today. Most likely, it fed off of brontotheres, possibly both hunting them, and scavenging already dead carcasses.


By the mid Oligocene, the Creodonts supplanted both the Mesonychids, and giant flightless predatory birds entirely in North America, Eurasia and Africa, and in turn, competed with their relatives, the true carnivores until the last creodont genus, Dissopsalis, went extinct about 8 million years ago. The order Carnivora includes such animals as the dogs, cats, and bears. Various species of Carnivora have now spread (partly assisted by humans) to every continent, as well as most islands, and have replaced most other large non-avian terrestrial predators worldwide.
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Post by dwaggie on Mar 17, 2007, 8:41pm

Mesosaurus



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Photo credit: ArthurWeasley

Mesosaurus is an extinct genus of anapsid reptile from the Permian period. It was about 1 m (3 ft 4 in) long. Mesosaurus was one of the first reptiles to return to the water where its amphibian ancestors originally came from. Its feet were webbed, body streamlined, and its long tail supported a fin. Since the hind legs were much longer, they are presumed to have been used to propel the creature through the water. Its body was flexible and could easily move sideways, but it could not turn as a result of highly thickened ribs (a feature also seen in modern sea cows).




Skull and teeth


Mesosaurus had a small skull with long jaws. The nostrils were located at the top, allowing the creature to breathe with only the upper side of its head breaking the surface (similar to a crocodile). Mesosaurus's most striking feature were its numerous, thin teeth. Each tooth had its own socket, but were too thin to catch prey. Instead, they are thought to have been used to filter plankton from the water.





Distribution


Mesosaurus was significant in the providing evidence of the theory of continental drift, because its remains were found in southern Africa and eastern South America, two far away places. As Mesosaurus lived in fresh water, and therefore could not have crossed the Atlantic Ocean, this distribution indicated that Africa and South America used to be joined together. Indeed, all the world's continents were joined into one supercontinent called Pangaea in the time Mesosaurus existed.
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Post by dwaggie on Mar 17, 2007, 8:55pm

Archelon ischyros, (the Sea Turtle)


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Photo credit:© Michael Patrick Corriss
August 1,2001


Archelon is a genus of extinct sea turtle, the largest that has ever lived. The largest Archelon fossil, found in the Pierre Shale of South Dakota in the 1970s, measures more than 13.5 feet (4 meters) long, and about 16 feet wide from flipper to flipper. It was a sea going turtle, related to present day Leatherback Sea Turtles. Its fossils date to 70 million years ago in the Cretaceous period, when a shallow sea covered most of central North America. The live weight of an Archelon ischyros is estimated at more than 4,500 pounds (2200 kilograms).
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Post by darius on Mar 28, 2007, 9:29pm

Love dem ALLS. <3
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Post by dwaggie on Apr 3, 2007, 9:07pm

Geosaurus


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(c) ArthurWeasley

Geosaurus was a small, gracile genus of marine crocodyliform within Metriorhynchidae. Geosaurus was a carnivore that spent much, if not all, its life out at sea. No Geosaurus eggs or nest have been discovered, so little is known of the reptile's lifecycle, unlike other large marine reptiles of the Mesozoic, such as plesiosaurs or ichthyosaurs which are known to give birth to live young out at sea. Where Geosaurus mated, whether on land or at sea, is currently unknown
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Post by dwaggie on Apr 3, 2007, 9:08pm

Placodont


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(C) Stanton F. Fink

Placodonts ("Tablet teeth") were a group of marine reptiles that lived during the Triassic period, becoming extinct at the end of the period. It is believed that they were related to the Sauropterygia, the group that includes Plesiosaurs. Placodonts were generally between one to two metres in length, with some of the largest measuring three metres long.

In appearance, they resembled some of today's large bottom-feeding mammals such as walruses or dugongs, others looking more turtle-like due to large bony plates on their backs. They had short limbs and were highly robust.


Because of their dense bone and heavy armour plating, these creatures would have been too heavy to float in the ocean and would have used a lot of energy to reach the water surface. For this reason and because of the type of sediment found accompanying fossils it is suggested they lived in shallow waters and not in deep oceans.


Their diet consisted of marine bivalves, brachiopods, and other invertebrates. They were notable for their large, flat, often protruding teeth which they used to crush molluscs and brachiopods, which they hunted on the sea bed (another way in which they were similar to walruses). The Palate teeth were extremely thick and large enough to crush thick shell.


The first specimen was discovered in 1830, and they have since been discovered throughout Europe and the Middle East.
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Post by dwaggie on Apr 3, 2007, 9:09pm

Turritella



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This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.





Turritella is a genus of gastropod in the family Turritellidae with highly coiled shells in a pronounced, elongated cone. The shells are quite frequently found as fossils, and the carbonate stone made from large quantities of Turritella shells is often referred to as "Turritella limestone", or, if silicified, "Turritella agate". Both varieties of this stone are commonly sold as polished cabochons.


Turritella species originated in the Cretaceous and span to the present day.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Apr 3, 2007, 9:09pm

Stygimoloch


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Image taken from http://lesdinos.free.fr/Au%20temps%20des%20dinosaures%20Dinoliste-S.htm


Stygimoloch ("river devil") was a pachycephalosaurid that lived during the Cretaceous Period between 68-65 million years ago in what is now North America. This dinosaur measured about 10 feet long and bore a thick skull that was decorated with six large spikes that covered the top rim of its head. This may have served the dinosaur as a display of recognition, helping the dinosaur to identify its companions. This dinosaur was a plant-eater and it lived in herds for protection from predators such as Tyrannosaurus, Dromaeosaurus, and Gorgosaurus. Males would often challenge one another to battle, either for females with which to mate, or for supremacy in the herd. It was previously thought that, like goats, they would butt heads with each other until one weakened and backed off, leaving the victor to choose a female or to lead a herd. However, the lack of apparent cranial damage exhibited by recent fossil discoveries has given rise to the hypothesis that they did not actually butt heads with other members of the herd. Some conjecture that stygimoloch headbutted other dinosaurs in their much softer underbelly regions, as a measure of self-defense against predation.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Jun 2, 2007, 7:58pm

Hypsilophodon


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Image taken from http://www.leute.server.de/frankmuster/_files/Frameseite.htm


Hypsilophodon ( meaning 'high-crested tooth') is an ornithopod dinosaur genus from the Early Cretaceous Period of Europe. It was a small bipedal animal with an herbivorous or possibly omnivorous diet. Abundant fossil remains found in England indicate that Hypsilophodon reached about 2 meters (6.5 feet) in length.

The first remains of Hypsilophodon were recovered in the early days of paleontology in 1849. However, at the time, the bones were thought to belong to a young Iguanodon. It was not until 1870 that paleontologist T. H. Huxley was able to publish a full description of Hypsilophodon as we know it today. He had been provided with a number of skeletons by the Reverend William Darwin Fox, after whom the first species of Hypsilophodon was named.

Early paleontologists modeled the body of this small, bipedal, herbivorous dinosaur in various ways. In 1882 some paleontologists suggested that, like a modern tree-kangaroo, Hypsilophodon was able to climb trees in order to seek shelter. This was the accepted view for almost a century. However, Peter M. Galton finally performed more accurate analysis of the musculo-skeletal structure in 1974 and convinced most paleontologists that Hypsilophodon remained firmly on the ground.

Since then, three near-complete and over twenty minor finds have been made, especially on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England. Other finds have been made in southern England, Portugal and South Dakota, USA.

There is only one known species of Hypsilophodon, Huxley's original H. foxii. Galton and Jensen named another species, H. wielandi in 1979, but it now seems likely this was just a variant individual within H. foxii.





Paleobiology





Hypsilophodon was a relatively small dinosaur. While not quite so small as, for example, Compsognathus, Hypsilophodon was only around 2.3 metres in length. It would have reached approximately waist-height on a modern man and would have weighed about the same, at 50-70 kg.


Like most small dinosaurs, Hypsilophodon was bipedal and ran on two legs. Its entire body was built for running; a light-weight, minimized skeleton, low, aerodynamic posture, long legs and stiff tail for balance all would have allowed it to travel remarkably fast for its size.


Due to its small size, Hypsilophodon fed on low-growing vegetation, most likely preferring young shoots and roots in the manner of modern deer. The structure of its skull, with the teeth set far back into the jaw, strongly suggests that it had cheeks, an advanced feature that would have facilitated the chewing of food. There were twenty-eight to thirty ridged teeth in the animal's jaw which, due to their alternate arrangement, appear to have been self-sharpening. As in almost all dinosaurs and certainly all the ornithischians, the teeth were continuously replaced.


The level of parental care in this dinosaur has not been defined, although a neatly-arranged nest has been found, suggesting that some care was taken before hatching. Fossils of large groups have been found, so it is likely that the animals moved in herds. For these reasons, the hypsilophodonts, particularly Hypsilophodon, have often been referred to as the "deer of the Mesozoic".





Despite living in the last of the periods in which dinosaurs walked the earth, the Cretaceous, Hypsilophodon had a number of primitive features. For example, there were five digits on each 'hand' and four on each foot. Most dinosaurs had lost these redundant features by the Cretaceous period. Also, although it had a beak like most ornithischians, Hypsilophodon still had pointed triangular teeth in the front of the jaw. Most herbivorous dinosaurs had, by this stage, become sufficiently specialized that the front teeth had been altogether lost (although there is some debate as to whether these teeth may have had a specialized function in Hypsilophodon).


The group Hypsilophodontia remained remarkably static from the late Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous. It is possible that this was because the animals were almost perfectly adapted to their lifestyle, therefore selective pressure, it is assumed, was low.





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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dinosaurlover on Jun 2, 2007, 8:05pm

Hypsilophodon


oh cool! in my dinoverse book, they have that little picture in there, and it syas that the dinosaur was pink and green. he looks exactly like the drawing in my book. BTW, dinoverse is fictional and is written by Scott Ciencin, which also writes dinotopia stories. :D lol. but it says that the Deinonychus was also called the raptor, and on a little info card i found it says that the raptor was only two feet tall!
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Post by dwaggie on Jun 2, 2007, 9:11pm

ankylosaur


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Image Copyright © Joe Tucciarone


Ankylosaurus ( meaning 'stiffened lizard') is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaur, containing one species, A. magniventris. Fossils of Ankylosaurus are found in geologic formations dating to the very end of the Cretaceous Period in western North America.

Although a complete skeleton has not been discovered and several other species are represented by more extensive fossil material, Ankylosaurus is often considered the archetypal armored dinosaur. Other ankylosaurids shared its well-known features, like the heavily-armored body and massive bony tail club, but Ankylosaurus was the largest member of its family.

Paleobiology

A full-grown Ankylosaurus was a very large animal, compared to the majority of modern land animals. Some scientists have estimated a length of 9 meters (30 ft.). Another reconstruction suggests a significantly smaller size, at 6.25 m (20.5 ft) long, up to 1.5 m (5 ft) wide and about 1.7 m (5.5 ft) high at the hip. The body shape was low-slung and very wide. Ankylosaurus was quadrupedal, with the hindlimbs longer than the forelimbs. Although its feet are still unknown to science, comparisons with other ankylosaurs suggest Ankylosaurus probably had five toes on each foot. The skull was low and triangular in shape, wider than it was long. The largest known skull measures 64.5 centimeters (25 in) long and 74.5 cm (29 in) wide. Like other ankylosaurs, Ankylosaurus was herbivorous, with very small, leaf-shaped teeth suitable for cropping vegetation. Ankylosaurus did not share the grinding tooth batteries of the contemporaneous ceratopsid and hadrosaurid dinosaurs, indicating that very little chewing occurred. Bones in the skull and other parts of the body were fused to increase their strength.

Armor

The most obvious feature of Ankylosaurus is its armor, consisting of massive knobs and plates of bone, known as osteoderms, embedded in the skin. Osteoderms are also found in the skin of crocodiles, armadillos and some lizards. The bone was probably overlain by a tough, horny layer of keratin. These osteoderms ranged greatly in size, from wide, flat plates to small, round nodules. The plates were aligned in regular horizontal rows down the animal's neck, back, and hips, with the many smaller nodules protecting the areas between the large plates. Smaller plates may have been arranged on the limbs and tail. Compared to the slightly more ancient ankylosaurid Euoplocephalus, the plates of Ankylosaurus were very smooth in texture, without the high keels found on the armor of the contemporaneous nodosaurid Edmontonia. A row of flat, triangular spikes may have protruded laterally along each side of the tail. Tough, rounded scales protected the top of the skull, while four large pyramidal horns projected outwards from its rear corners.





Tail club


The famous tail club of Ankylosaurus was also composed of several large osteoderms, which were fused to the last few tail vertebrae. It was very heavy and supported by the last seven tail vertebrae, which interlocked to form a stiff rod at the base of the club. Thick tendons have been preserved, which attached to these vertebrae. These tendons were partially ossified (or bony) and were not very elastic, allowing great force to be transmitted to the end of the tail when it was swung. It seems to have been an active defensive weapon, capable of producing enough of a devastating impact to break the bones of an assailant. It has also been proposed that the tail club acted as a decoy for the head, although this idea is now largely discredited.





Envnmenirot


Ankylosaurus magniventris existed between 68 to 65.5 million years ago, in the latest Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, and was one of the last dinosaurs to exist just prior to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. The type specimen is from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, while other specimens have been found in the Lance Formation of Wyoming and the Scollard Formation in Alberta, Canada, all of which date to the very end of the Cretaceous.


The Lance, Hell Creek and Scollard Formations represent different sections of the western shore of the shallow sea that divided western and eastern North America during the Cretaceous. They represent a broad coastal plain, extending eastwards from the seaway to the newly-formed Rocky Mountains. These formations are composed largely of sandstone and mudstone, which have been attributed to floodplain environments. The Hell Creek is the best studied of these ancient environments. At the time, this region was subtropical, with a warm and humid climate. Many plant species were supported, primarily angiosperms, with less common conifers, ferns and cycads. An abundance of fossil leaves found at dozens of different sites indicates that the area was largely forested by small trees.


Fossils of Ankylosaurus are very rare in these sediments, compared to Edmontosaurus and the super-abundant Triceratops, which make up most of the large herbivore fauna. Another ankylosaur, Edmontonia, is also found in the same formations. However, Ankylosaurus and Edmontonia seem to have been separated both geographically and ecologically. Ankylosaurus had a wide muzzle, perhaps used for non-selective grazing and may have been limited to the upland regions, away from the coast, while Edmontonia had a narrower muzzle, indicating a more selective diet and seems to have lived at lower elevations, closer to the coast.





Classification


Ankylosaurus was named as the type genus of the family Ankylosauridae. Ankylosaurids are members of the larger taxon Ankylosauria, which also contains the nodosaurids. Ankylosaur phylogeny is a contentious topic, with several mutually exclusive analyses presented in recent years, so the exact position of Ankylosaurus within Ankylosauridae is unknown. Ankylosaurus and Euoplocephalus are often thought to be sister taxa. However, other analyses have found these genera in different positions. Further discoveries or research may clarify the situation.





Discovery


Ankylosaurus was named by American paleontologist Barnum Brown, in 1908. The generic name is derived from the Greek words /ankulos ('curved') and/sauros ('lizard'). Brown intended this name in the same sense as the medical term ankylosis, to refer to the stiffness produced by the fusion of many bones in the skull and body, so the name is often translated as 'stiffened lizard.' The type species is A. magniventris, from the Latin magnus ('great') and venter ('belly'), referring to the great width of the animal's body.


A team led by Brown discovered the type specimen of A. magniventris (AMNH 5895) in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, in 1906. This consisted of the top of the skull, as well as vertebrae, ribs, part of the shoulder girdle and armor. Six years earlier, Brown found the skeleton of a large theropod dinosaur (AMNH 5866) in the Lance Formation of Wyoming. This specimen was named Dynamosaurus imperiosus in 1905 but is now thought to belong to Tyrannosaurus rex. Associated with AMNH 5866 were more than 75 osteoderms of various sizes, which were attributed to Dynamosaurus. However, these osteoderms are nearly identical in form to those of A. magniventris and most probably belong to this species. In 1910, while on an expedition to Alberta, Barnum Brown recovered his third specimen of A. magniventris (AMNH 5214), from the Scollard Formation. AMNH 5214 includes a complete skull and the first known tail club, as well as ribs, limb bones and armor. All three of the above specimens are now housed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The largest known skull of this animal (NMC 8880) was collected in Alberta by Charles M. Sternberg, in 1947 and is now housed at the Canadian Museum of Nature. Many other isolated bones, armor plates and teeth have been found over the years.





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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Aug 26, 2007, 12:44pm

Alphadon


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Image credit: Cox (1988)


Alphadon (meaning “first tooth”) was a small, primitive mammal that was a member of the metatherians, a group of mammals that includes modern-day marsupials. The first fossil of Alphadon was discovered and named by George Gaylord Simpson in 1929.
The appearance of this animal is only a guess because only facts about the teeth are known. The appearance is mainly based on the look of today's opossum. Alphadon usually grew to 1 foot (30 cm), making it one of the largest Mesozoic mammals.

Alphadon lived in the late Cretaceous period and may have had a large variety in its diet, eating fruit, insects, and occasionally small vertebrates.

Alphadon lived in North America, ranging as north as Alberta and as south as New Mexico. It lived alongside dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.

There are twelve different named species in the genus Alphadon. On Gaylord's fossil hunt, he discovered and named the type A. marshi.


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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Aug 26, 2007, 1:13pm

Saurolophus


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Copyright © Jurassic Park Institute

Saurolophus (meaning "reptile crest") is a genus of large hadrosaurine duckbill from the Late Cretaceous of North America (Canada) and Asia (Mongolia), one of the few genera of dinosaurs known from multiple continents. It is distinguished by a spike-like crest which projects up and back from the skull. Saurolophus was a herbivorous dinosaur which could move about either bipedally or quadrupedally.

The type species, S. osborni, was described by Barnum Brown in 1912. The other valid species, S. angustirostris, lived in Asia, and was described by Anatoly Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky. A third species is considered dubious.

Description

Saurolophus is known from material including nearly complete skeletons, giving us a clear picture of its bony anatomy. S. osborni, the rarer Albertan species, was around 9.8 meters long (32 feet), with its skull a meter long (3.3 feet). It weight is estimated at 1.9 tonnes (2.1 tons). S. angustirostris, the Mongolian species, was larger; the type skeleton is roughly 12 meters long (39.4 feet), and larger remains are reported. Aside from size, the two species are virtually identical, with differentiation hindered by lack of study.

Its most distinctive feature is its cranial crest, which is present in young individuals but is smaller. It is long and spike-like and projects upward and backward at about a 45 degree angle, starting from over the eyes. This crest is often described as solid, but appears to be solid only at the point, with internal chambers that may have had a respiratory and/or heat-regulation function.

Classification

Barnum Brown, who described the first specimens, put it in its own subfamily in "Trachodontidae" (=Hadrosauridae), the Saurolophinae. At the time, this also included Corythosaurus and Hypacrosaurus, the only known examples of what would become Lambeosaurinae. This subfamily is no longer accepted, although a clade within Hadrosaurinae including Saurolophus and a few other genera (including Kritosaurus and Prosaurolophus) is sometimes found; this clade is informally known as Saurolophini. Saurolophus is accepted as a good hadrosaurine, as it has a hadrosaurine pelvis and a (largely) solid crest.

Discovery and history

Barnum Brown recovered the first described remains of Saurolophus in 1911, including a nearly complete skeleton (AMNH 5220). Now on display in the American Museum of Natural History, this skeleton was the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton from Canada. It was found in rocks of early Maastrichtian age, in the Upper Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Formation (then known as the Edmonton Formation) near Tolman Ferry on the Red Deer River in Alberta. Brown wasted little time in describing his material, giving it its own subfamily. Saurolophus was an important early reference for other hadrosaurs, as seen in the names of Prosaurolophus ("before Saurolophus") and Parasaurolophus ("near Saurolophus"). However, little additional material has been recovered and described.

Instead, more abundant remains from Asia have provided more data. Initial remains were not promising: a partial fragmentary ischium from Heilongjiang, China that Riabinin named S. kryschtofovici. Much better remains were soon recovered, though, but from Mongolia's early Maastrichtian-age Nemegt Formation. The 1947-49 Polish-Mongolian Paleontological Expedition recovered the large skeleton that became S. angustirostris as described by A.K. Rozhdestvensky. Other skeletons from a variety of growth stages have also been discovered, and S. angustirostris is now the most abundant Asian hadrosaurid.

Species


Two species are regarded as valid today: the type species S. osborni, and S. angustirostris. S. osborni (Brown, 1912) is known from a skull and skeleton, two other complete skulls, and skull fragments. S. angustirostris (Rozhdestvensky, 1952) is known from at least 15 specimens. S, kryschtofovici (Riabinin, 1930) is not considered valid; either it is regarded as a dubious name, or as a synonym of S. angustirostris (although it predates S. angustirostris).

Paleobiology

As a hadrosaurid, Saurolophus would have been a bipedal/quadrupedal herbivore, eating a variety of plants. Its skull permitted a grinding motion analogous to chewing, and its teeth were continually replacing and packed into dental batteries that contained hundreds of teeth, only a relative handful of which were in use at any time. Plant material would have been cropped by its broad beak, and held in the jaws by a cheek-like organ. Its feeding range would have extended from the ground to ~4 m (13 ft) above. Common S. angustirostris would have been an important large herbivore in the Nemegt Formation, but S. osborni was rare in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation and faced competition from other duckbills (Edmontosaurus and Hypacrosaurus).



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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Aug 26, 2007, 1:25pm

Panoplosaurus


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This image is copyright © by Joe Tucciarone

Panoplosaurus means armoured lizard and was the last known nodosaur. Nodosaurs were herbivores that survived for 120 million years. They belonged to the armored ankylosaurian dinosaur group. The earliest nodosaurs originally appeared 185 million years ago in what was the Middle Jurassic period. Panoplosaurus arrived 100 million years later in the Late Cretaceous and survived until the end of the dinosaurs.It lived in what is now North America; fossils have been located in Montana and Alberta. Its size was 5.5-7 m long and was 2 m tall. It weighed approximately 3.5 tons and ate low growing plants. They did not possess a club like tail but had a helmet of bony plates over its head. Bands of stud covered plates covered its back to tail. Spikes jutted outwards from its shoulders.Unlike other nodosaurs it is believed that Panoplosaurus may have fought attackers and charged at them with its shoulder spikes instead of hiding under their body armour.




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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Aug 26, 2007, 1:38pm

Shantungosaurus


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Copyright © Jurassic Park Institute

Shantungosaurus, meaning "Shandong Lizard", is a genus of flat headed hadrosaurid dinosaurs found in the Late Cretaceous Wangshi Formation of the Shandong Peninsula in China. The composite skeleton mounted at the Geological Institute of China in Beijing measures 14.72 meters (49 feet) in length, weighing around 7 tons, making it one of the longest and largest hadrosaurs. Like all hadrosaurs its beak was toothless, but its jaws were packed with around 1,500 tiny chewing teeth. A large hole near its nostrils may have been covered by a loose flap, which could be inflated to make sounds.


Discovery and species


Discovered in 1964, Shantungosaurus is known from 5 incomplete skeletons. Based on the material known to date, it is very similar to, and shares many characters with Edmontosaurus.

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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Sept 25, 2007, 8:41pm

Othnielia



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Megalosaurus bucklandii chasing Othnielia rex

Artwork by Todd Marshall


Othnielia was a genus of hypsilophodont dinosaur, named after its original describer, Professor Othniel Charles Marsh, an American paleontologist of the 19th century. The taxon, Othnielia rex, was named by Peter Galton in 1977 from a species Marsh (1877) called Nanosaurus rex.

Remains assigned to Othnielia have been found in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado in rocks of the Late Jurassic age (Oxfordian-Tithonian) Morrison Formation,[3] but with Galton's 2006 revision of Morrison ornithischians, the only definite remains are YPM 1875 (the holotype femur of "Nanosaurus" 'rex') and possibly some other associated postcranial bits.

Galton (2006) considered the femur undiagnostic and referred the remaining "Othnielia" material to a new genus, Othnielosaurus.[4] It remains to be seen if this will be widely accepted, but this sort of taxonomic decision has much precedent (for example, Marasuchus versus Lagosuchus).

Without the remains now included in Othnielosaurus, this animal is dubious, and can only be described in generalities based on similar animals: small (~ 1.5-2 meters (4.5-6 feet) long, ~10 kilograms (22 pounds) in weight), agile bipedal herbivore with proportionally small arms and long legs.

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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Sept 25, 2007, 9:00pm

Leptoceratops


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Image from Jurassic Park Institute

Leptoceratops (meaning 'lean-horned face' and derived from Greek 'lepto- meaning 'small', 'insignificant', 'slender', 'meagre' or 'lean', 'cerat- meaning 'horn' and '-ops meaning face) was a primitive ceratopsian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now Western North America, at the same time as its giant relatives Triceratops and Torosaurus. Its skulls have been found in Alberta, Canada and in Wyoming. It could probably stand and run on its hind legs. Leptoceratops was around 2 meters long and could have weighed anywhere between 68 kilograms and even 200 kilograms.

Discovery and Species

Leptoceratops, the first small ceratopsian described, was discovered in 1910 (and described four years later), by Barnum Brown in the Red Deer Valley in Alberta, Canada. The first specimen had a part of its skull missing, however there have been later well-preserved finds by C. M. Sternberg in 1947, including one complete fossil (a very rare find indeed). There has been later material found in 1978 in Bighorn Basin in northern Wyoming.

Leptoceratops species

L. gracilis
In 1942, material collected in Montana was named Leptoceratops cerorhynchos but this was later renamed Montanoceratops.

Classification


Leptoceratops belonged to the Ceratopsia (the name is Ancient Greek for 'horned face'), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks that thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period. Within this group, it has been placed either in Protoceratopsidae or its own family Leptoceratopsidae.

Diet

Leptoceratops, like all Ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous Period, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp Ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles.
Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Sept 25, 2007, 9:30pm

Compsognathus


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Image from Jurassic Park Institute


Compsognathus /kɒmp'sɒg.næ.θʊs/ (Greek kompsos/ "elegant", "refined" or "dainty", and gnathos/ "jaw") was a small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod dinosaur. The animal was the size of a chicken and lived around 150 million years ago, the early Tithonian stage of the late Jurassic Period, in what is now Europe. Paleontologists have found two well-preserved fossils, one in Germany in the 1850s and the second in France more than a century later. Compsognathus is one of the few dinosaurs for which the diet is known with certainty: the remains of small, agile lizards are preserved in the bellies of both specimens. Teeth discovered in Portugal may be further fossil remains of the genus.

Although not recognized as such at the time of its discovery, Compsognathus is the first dinosaur known from a reasonably complete skeleton. Today, C. longipes is the only recognized species, although the larger specimen discovered in France in the 1970s was once thought to belong to a separate species, C. corallestris. Until the 1980s and 1990s, Compsognathus was the smallest known dinosaur and the closest supposed relative of the early bird Archaeopteryx. Thus, the genus is one of the few dinosaur genera to be well known outside of paleontological circles.

Description


For decades, Compsognathus was famed as the smallest dinosaur known; the specimens collected were around 1 meter (3 ft) in length. However, dinosaurs discovered later, such as Caenagnathasia, Microraptor and Parvicursor, were even smaller. Compsognathus is estimated to have weighed around 3 kg (6.5 lb).

Compsognathus was a small, bipedal animal with long hind legs and a longer tail, which it used for balance during locomotion. The forelimbs were smaller than the hindlimbs and featured three digits equipped with solid claws suited for grasping prey. Its delicate skull was narrow and long, with a tapered snout. The skull had five pairs of fenestrae (skull openings), the largest of which was for the orbit (eye socket). The eyes were large in proportion to the rest of the skull.

The lower jaw was slender and had no mandibular fenestra, a hole in the lower jawbone commonly seen in archosaurs. The teeth were small but sharp, suited for its diet of small vertebrates and possibly other small animals, such as insects. Its frontmost teeth (those on the premaxilla) were unserrated, unlike those further back in the jaw. Scientists have used these dental characteristics to identify Compsognathus and its closest relatives.

Discovery and species


Compsognathus is known from two nearly complete skeletons, one from Germany that is 89 cm long (35 in) and another from France that is 125 cm (49 in). The physician and fossil collector Joseph Oberndorfer discovered the German specimen (BSP AS I 563) in the Solnhofen lithographic limestone deposits in the Riedenburg-Kelheim region of Bavaria during the 1850s. The limestone of the Solnhofen area has also yielded such well-preserved fossils as Archaeopteryx with feather impressions and some pterosaurs with imprints of their wing membranes that are dated to the lower Tithonian age. Johann A. Wagner described the specimen briefly in 1859 and in more detail in 1861, when he coined the name Compsognathus longipes. In early 1868, Thomas Huxley hypothesized that the specimen was closely related to the dinosaurs, and in 1896, Othniel Marsh recognized the fossil as a true member of that group. John Ostrom thoroughly redescribed the species in 1978, making it one of the best-known small theropods at that time. The German specimen is on display at the Bayerische Staatsammlung für Paläontologie und historische Geologie (Bavarian State Institute for Paleontology and Historical Geology) in Munich, Germany.The larger French specimen (MNHN CNJ 79) was discovered in 1972 in the Portlandian lithographic limestone of Canjuers near Nice in southeastern France. It dates to the lower Tithonian. Although Bidar originally described the specimen as a separate species called Compsognathus corallestris, Michard and others have since relabeled it as another example of Compsognathus longipes. Quimby identifed the smaller German specimen as a juvenile of the same species. In 1983, the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris acquired the French Compsognathus fossil; Michard thoroughly studied it there. Scientists originally identified a partial foot, also from Solnhofen, as belonging to a Compsognathus, but later research has disproved this. Skeletons of related compsognathids indicate a size range from 70–140 cm (28–55 in). Zinke has assigned teeth from the Kimmeridgian Guimarota formation of Portugal to the genus.




Paleobiology

Manus

The Compsognathus specimen discovered in Germany in the 19th century featured only two digits on each forelimb, leading scientists to conclude that this was how the creature appeared in life. However, the fossil discovered later in France revealed the manus (hands) to have had three digits, similar to other members of compsognathid genera. The fossilization of the German Compsognathus had simply failed to preserve the specimen's forefeet. Bidar supposed that the French specimen had webbed forefeet, which would look like flippers in life. In the 1975 book The Evolution and Ecology of the Dinosaurs, L. B. Halstead depicts the animal as an amphibious dinosaur capable of feeding on aquatic prey and swimming out of reach of larger predators. Ostrom debunked this hypothesis by showing conclusively that the French specimen was nearly identical to the German specimen in every aspect but its size. Peyer confirmed these conclusions.




Diet

The remains of a lizard in the German specimen's thoracic cavity show that Compsognathus preyed on small vertebrates. Marsh, who examined the specimen in 1881, thought that this small skeleton inside Compsognathus belly was an embryo, but in 1903, Franz Nopcsa concluded that it was a lizard. Ostrom identified the remains as belonging to a lizard of the genus Bavarisaurus, which he concluded was a a fast and agile runner due to its long tail and limb proportions. This in turn led to the conclusion that its predator, Compsognathus, must have had sharp vision and the ability to rapidly accelerate and outrun the lizard. The Bavarisaurus is in a single piece, indicating that Compsognathus must have swallowed its prey whole. The French specimen's gastric contents consist of unidentified lizards or sphenodontids.


Habitat

During the late Jurassic, Europe was a dry, tropical archipelago at the edge of the Tethys Sea. The fine limestone in which the skeletons of Compsognathus have been found originated in calcite from the shells of marine organisms. Both the Solnhofen and Canjuers area where Compsognathus has been preserved were lagoons situated between the beaches and coral reefs of the Jurassic European islands in the Tethys Sea. Contemporaries of Compsognathus include the early bird Archaeopteryx and the pterosaurs Rhamphorhynchus and Pterodactylus. The same sediments in which Compsognathus has been preserved also contain fossils of a number of marine animals such as fish, crustaceans, echinoderms and marine mollusks, confirming the coastal habitat of this theropod. No other dinosaur has been found in association with Compsognathus indicating that this little dinosaur might in fact have been the top land predator in these islands.



Possible eggs


Excavators discovered eggs 10 mm in diameter near the fossil remains of the German Compsognathus. In 1901, Friedrich von Huene interpreted them as dermal ossifications. Griffiths redescribed them as immature eggs in 1993. However, later researchers have doubted their assignment to the genus because they were found outside the body cavity of the animal. A well-preserved fossil of Sinosauropteryx, a genus related to Compsognathus, shows two oviducts bearing two unlaid eggs. These proportionally larger and less numerous eggs of Sinosauropteryx cast further doubt on the original identification of the Compsognathus eggs.


Feathers and connection with birds?

For nearly a century, Compsognathus was the only well-known small theropod. This led to comparisons with Archaeopteryx and to suggestions of a relationship with birds. In fact, Compsognathus, rather than Archaeopteryx, piqued Huxley's interest in the origin of birds. The two animals share many similarities in shape, size and proportions, so many in fact that a featherless skeleton of an Archaeopteryx was for many years misidentified as a Compsognathus. Many other dinosaurs, including Deinonychus, Oviraptor and Segnosaurus, are now known to have been more closely related to birds.

No feathers or feather-like covering have been preserved with Compsognathus fossils, in contrast to Archaeopteryx, which was found in the same sediments; many depictions of Compsognathus thus show it without feathers. However, the only feathers found in association with Archaeopteryx are the large ones on the wings and tail; the short ones that likely covered the body have rarely been preserved. Von Huene reported the presence of a fossilized patch of skin in the abdominal region of the German Compsognathus, but Ostrom later disproved this. Relatives of Compsognathus, namely Sinosauropteryx and Sinocalliopteryx, have been preserved with the remains of simple feathers covering the body like fur, indicating that Compsognathus might have been feathered in a similar way. In contrast, a patch of fossilized skin from the tail and hindlimb of another presumed compsognathid genus, Juravenator, only shows scales, with no indication that feathers were present in the preserved areas. This may mean that feather covering was not ubiquitous in this group of dinosaurs, though a 2007 re-evaluation by Butler and Upchurch cast doubt on the assignment of Juravenator to the same family as Compsognathus.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Sept 25, 2007, 9:42pm

Bagaceratops

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Image from Jurassic Park Institute

Bagaceratops ("small-horned face") is a genus of ceratopsian dinosaur that lived in Asia around 80 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous. It was around 1 m (3 ft) long, 0.5 m (1.5 ft) high, and weighed around 22 kg (50 lb). It was found in Mongolia. Baga is Mongolian for "small"; ceratops is Greek for "horn face".Bagaceratops had a smaller frill and more triangular skull than its close relative Protoceratops, but was otherwise very similar, having a beak but no brow horns. Bagaceratops evolved later but is considered the more primitive of the two.


Discovery and Species


Bagaceratops is known from five complete and twenty partial crania, the longest of which is 17 cm long. The skulls are spread throughout animal's the life cycle, so the growth cycle is relatively well understood, with the smallest being only 4.7 cm long.Juvenile remains, initially tentatively named Protoceratops kozlowskii, then renamed Breviceratops kozlowskii by Kurzanov in 1990 are now felt to be juvenile Bagaceratops. Sereno (2000) explained this by extrapolating that the juvenile Breviceratops would grow into a mature Bagaceratops.

Bagaceratops Species

B. rozhdestvenskyi
The type species, B. rozhdestvenskyi, was named in honour of the Russian paleontologist A. K. Rozhdestvensky.


Classification


Bagaceratops belonged to the Ceratopsia, a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period, which ended roughly 65 million years ago. Within this, it has been alternately placed in its own family, Bagaceratopsidae, or within Protoceratopsidae.


Diet


Bagaceratops, like all Ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", and so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp Ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles.






Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Oct 11, 2007, 3:12pm

Continuing… :XP


Goyocephale


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Image © The Natural History Museum, London 2007

Goyocephale was a genus of dinosaur which lived during the Late Cretaceous period. It lived in what is now Mongolia. Goyocephale was a pachycephalosaur, which were ornithischians with thick, bony skulls.Goyocephale probably weighed 10-40 kg. The type species, Goyocephale lattimorei, was formally described by Perle, Maryanska, and Osmolska in 1982. It is based on a fairly complete skeleton.



Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Marginocephalia

Infraorder: Pachycephalosauria

Family: Pachycephalosauridae

Genus: Goyocephale
Perle, Maryanska, and Osmolska (1982)

Species:
Goyocephale lattimorei



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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Oct 11, 2007, 3:14pm

Centrosaurus


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Image Copyright © 2003 M.Shiraishi



The name Centrosaurus (SEN-tro-sawr-us) means "pointed lizard" (from Greek kentron = "point or prickle" + sauros = "lizard") is an herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur from the late Cretaceous of North America, approximately 75 million years ago. The name refers to the the series of small hornlets placed along the margin of the frill, and not to the horn on its nose (which was unknown when the dinosaur was named).


Description


Like other centrosaurines, Centrosaurus had a single large horn over the nose. It may curve forwards or backwards in different species. A pair of horns are also found over the eyes; in Centrosaurus apertus these are directed upwards, whereas they are directed to the sides in C. brinkmani. The frill of Centrosaurus was moderately long and its edge bore small hornlets which gave it a scalloped appearance. C. apertus is distinguished by having two large hornlets which hook forwards over the frill, while in C. brinkmani these hornlets are small and covered with small, finger-like growths. Centrosaurus massive body was borne by stocky limbs, although at 18 ft (6m) it was not a particularly large dinosaur.

Classification

Centrosaurus gives its name to the Centrosaurinae subfamily to which it belongs. Its closest relatives appear to be Styracosaurus and Monoclonius.


Palaeobiology


Like other Ceratopsidae, the jaws of Centrosaurus were designed to shear through tough plant material; the frill provided an attachment for large jaw muscles. Vast bonebeds of Centrosaurus are known from Dinosaur Provincial Park, in Alberta, Canada. Some of these beds extend for hundreds of meters and may contain thousands of individuals. They may represent a herd killed by a flood or other natural disaster.


Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Marginocephalia

Infraorder: Ceratopsia

Family: Ceratopsidae

Subfamily: Centrosaurinae

Tribe: Centrosaurini

Genus: Centrosaurus
Lambe, 1904

Species:
C. apertus Lambe, 1904
C. brinkmani Ryan & Russell, 2005

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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Oct 11, 2007, 3:15pm

Torosaurus


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Image Copyright © Unknown. If anyone knows PM me.

Torosaurus ("perforated lizard") was a ceratopsid dinosaur species. It had one of the largest skulls of any land animal known, reaching 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) in length — surpassed only by a recently-described 10 foot (3 meter) skull of Pentaceratops. From head to tail, Torosaurus probably measured about 25 feet (7.6 meters) long and weighed an estimated 4.4 to 6.6 tons (4 to 6 tonnes).

Discoveries and species


Two Torosaurus skulls were discovered in southeastern Wyoming by John Bell Hatcher in 1891 and the species was subsequently named by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1891, two years after Triceratops.

Remains have since been found in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah and Saskatchewan. Some fragmentary remains, which may be Torosaurus, have been found in the Big Bend Region of Texas and in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico. Fossil evidence suggests it may have been uncommon; remains of its relative Triceratops are more frequently found.

Torosaurus species:

T. latus Marsh, 1891 (type species)
Misassignments:

T. gladius Marsh, 1891 (=T. latus)
T. utahensis Lawson, 1976 (=T. latus)

(NB: The last species was originally described as Arrhinoceratops utahensis by Gilmore in 1946. Review by Sullivan et al. in 2005 has left it as Torosaurus utahensis and somewhat older than T. latus.Although the name Torosaurus is frequently translated as 'bull lizard' (from the Latin 'taurus' (bull), it probably means 'perforated lizard' (from the Greek word 'toreo' (pierce, perforate). The name refers to the holes, or fenestrae, in the frill of this animal. This was probably intended by Othniel Charles Marsh (the original namer) to contrast with the condition in Triceratops, which had a solid frill. Much of this confusion results from the fact that Marsh never explicitly gave the etymology of the name in his papers.




Classification


Torosaurus belonged to the subfamily known as Chasmosaurinae, within the family Ceratopsidae, within the Ceratopsia (which name is Ancient Greek for "horned face"), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in North America and Asia during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. Recent studies indicate that Torosaurus is most closely related to Triceratops. Jack Horner has suggested in public lectures that Torosaurus may in fact represent the adult version of one sex of Triceratops, pointing out that there are no juvenile specimens of Torosaurus and that approximately 50% of all subadult Triceratops skulls have two thin areas in the frill that correspond with the placement of "holes" in Torosaurus skulls. The theory is that all Tricertops had solid frills up to adulthood, but on reaching sexual maturity, one sex or the other would have developed longer frills as a form of display. To counterbalance the extra weight of the elongated frill, holes would have necessarily developed in the bone. While this theory does explain the absence of any Torosaurus specimens younger than adults and also explains the even split between uniformly thick frills and frills with thin patches in subadult Triceratops specimens, the theory is not widely accepted in the scientific community and has apparently not been put forward by Dr. Horner outside of informal lectures.


Paleobiology


Torosaurus, like all ceratopsians, was an herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp beak to bite off the leaves or needles.

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Cerapoda

Infraorder: Ceratopsia

Family: Ceratopsidae

Subfamily: Ceratopsinae

Genus: Torosaurus

Species: T. latus


Binomial name

Torosaurus latus
Marsh, 1891


Copyright © 2007 Answers Corporation.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Oct 11, 2007, 3:18pm

Gallimimus


[image]

Image from Jurassic Park Institute

Gallimimus (gal-ih-MY-mus) , meaning 'fowl mimic', is a genus of ornithomimosaurid dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period (Maastrichtian stage) Nemegt Formation of Mongolia. With a maximum length of 4 to 6 meters (13-20 feet) and weighing as much as 440 kilograms (970 pounds), it was one of the largest ornithomimosaurs. Gallimimus is known from multiple individuals, ranging from juvenile (about 0.5 metres tall at the hip) to adult (about 2 metres tall at the hip).The fossil remains of this dinosaur were discovered in the early 1970s in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. In 1972, it was named by paleontologists Rinchen Barsbold, Halszka Osmólska, and Ewa Roniewicz. The only known species is Gallimimus bullatus. A supposed second species, "Gallimimus mongoliensis", has never been formally referred to this genus. A recent reanalysis of the nearly complete skeleton of Gallimimus mongoliensis concluded that it is not a species of Gallimimus but may represent a new, currently unnamed ornithomimid genus (Kobayashi & Barsbold, 2006).

Gallimimus was rather ostrich-like, with a small head, large eyes, a long neck, short arms, long legs, and a long tail. A diagnostic character of Gallimimus is a distinctly short 'hand' relative to the humerus length, when compared to other ornithomimids. The tail was used as a counter-balance. The eyes were located on the sides of its head, meaning that it did not possess binocular vision. Like most modern birds, it had hollow bones. Gallimimus had a number of adaptations which suggest good running ability, such as long limbs, a long tibia and metatarsus and short toes but it is unknown how fast it could run.

A fossilized beak is present in one Gallimimus skull and ridges on the beak have been interpreted as part of a duck-like filter-feeding mechanism. However, similar ridges are seen in herbivorous sea turtles and ornithomimids were relatively common in seasonally dry environments, where filter-feeding was probably not a viable lifestyle. It seems more probable that Gallimimus was an False Doctrinevore or herbivore, using its beak to crop plants and capture small animals.




Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Subclass: Diapsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

Family: Ornithomimidae

Genus: Gallimimus

Species: G. bullatus


Binomial name

Gallimimus bullatus
Osmólska, Roniewics & Barsbold, 1972

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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Nov 12, 2007, 12:10am

Hypacrosaurus

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This image is from my model toy collection. ;D


Hypacrosaurus (meaning "very high lizard", referring to the tall neural spines on its vertebrae) was a genus of duckbill dinosaur similar in appearance to Corythosaurus. Like Corythosaurus, it had a tall, hollow rounded crest, although not as large and straight. It is known from the remains of two species from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada, and Montana, USA, and is the latest hollow-crested duckbill known from good remains in North America. It was an obscure genus until the description of nests, eggs, and hatchlings belonging to H. stebingeri in the 1990s.

Description

Hypacrosaurus is most easily distinguished from other hollow-crested duckbills (lambeosaurines) by its tall neural spines and the form of its crest. The neural spines, which project from the top of the vertebrae, are 5 to 7 times the height of the body of their respective vertebrae in the back, which would have given it a tall back in profile. The skull's hollow crest is like that of Corythosaurus, but is more pointed along its top, not as tall, wider side to side, and has a small bony point at the rear. Unlike other lambeosaurines, the passages for the airways do not form an S-curve in the crest (at least not in H. altispinus). The animal is estimated to have been around 9.1 meters long (30 feet). As with most duckbills, its skeleton is otherwise not particularly remarkable, although some pelvic details are distinctive. Like other duckbills, it was a bipedal/quadrupedal herbivore. The two known species, H. altispinus and H. stebingeri, are not differentiated in the typical method, of unique characteristics, as H. stebingeri was described as transitional between the earlier Lambeosaurus and later Hypacrosaurus. Photographs of an adult H. stebingeri skull show an animal that looks very similar to H. altispinus.

Classification

Hypacrosaurus was a lambeosaurinae hadrosaurid, and has been recognized as such since the description of its skull. Within the Lambeosaurinae, it is closest to Lambeosaurus and Corythosaurus, with Jack Horner and Phil Currie (1994) suggesting that H. stebingeri is transitional between Lambeosaurus and H. altispinus, and Michael K. Brett-Surman (1989) suggesting that Hypacrosaurus and Corythosaurus are the same genus. These genera, particularly Corythosaurus and Hypacrosaurus, are regarded as the "helmeted" or "hooded" branch of the lambeosaurines, and the clade they form is sometimes informally designated Lambeosaurini.

Discovery and history

The type remains of Hypacrosaurus remains were collected in 1910 by Barnum Brown for the American Museum of Natural History. The remains, a partial postcranial skeleton consisting of several vertebrae and a partial pelvis (AMNH 5204), came from along the Red Deer River near Tolman Ferry, Alberta, Canada, from rocks of what is now known as the Horseshoe Canyon Formation (early Maastrichtian, Upper Cretaceous). Brown described these remains, in combination with other postcranial bones, in 1913 as a new genus that he considered to be like Saurolophus. No skull was known at this time, but two skulls were soon discovered and described.

During this period, the remains of small hollow-crested duckbills were described as their own genera and species. The first of these that figure into the history of Hypacrosaurus was Cheneosaurus tolmanensis, based on a skull and assorted limb bones, vertebrae, and pelvic bones from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation. Shortly thereafter, William Diller Matthew identified an American Museum of Natural History skeleton (AMNH 5340) as Procheneosaurus, from the Two Medicine Formation of Montana. These and other taxa were accepted as valid genera until the 1970s, when Peter Dodson showed that it was more likely that the "cheneosaurs" were the juveniles of established lambeosaurines. Although he was mostly concerned with the earlier, Dinosaur Park Formation genera Corythosaurus and Lambeosaurus, he suggested that Cheneosaurus would turn out to be composed of juvenile individuals of the contemporaneous Hypacrosaurus altispinus. This idea has become accepted, although not formally tested. Matthew's ProchFalse Doctrineaurus, meanwhile, was not quite like the other Procheneosaurus specimens studied by Dodson, and for good reason: it was much more like a species that would not be named until 1994, H. stebingeri.

"H. stebingeri"

The new species Hypacrosaurus stebingeri was named for a variety of remains, including hatchlings with associated eggs and nests, found near the top of the late Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) Two Medicine Formation in Glacier Creek, Montana, and across the border in Alberta. These represent "the largest collection of baby skeletal material of any single species of hadrosaur known".


Species

H. altispinus, the type species, is known from 5 to 10 articulated skulls with some associated skeletal remains, from juvenile to adult individuals. H. stebingeri is known from an unknown but substantial number of individuals, with an age range of embryos to adults. The hypothesis that H. altispinus and H. stebingeri form a natural group excluding other known hadrosaur species may be incorrect, as noted in Suzuki et al.'s 2004 redescription of Nipponosaurus; their phylogenetic analysis found that Nipposaurus was more closely related to H. altispinus than H. stebingeri was to H. altispinus.

Paleobiology

As a hadrosaurid, Hypacrosaurus would have been a bipedal/quadrupedal herbivore, eating a variety of plants. Its skull permitted a grinding motion analogous to chewing, and its teeth were continually replacing and packed into dental batteries that contained hundreds of teeth, only a relative handful of which were in use at any time. Plant material would have been cropped by its broad beak, and held in the jaws by a cheek-like organ. Its feeding range would have extended from the ground to ~4 m (13 ft) above.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Nov 12, 2007, 10:39pm

Ammonite

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Image Copyright © 2007 The Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation



ammonite (ăm'ənīt) , one of a type of extinct marine cephalopod mollusk, related to the nautilus and resembling it in having an elaborately coiled and chambered shell. Unlike the interiors of nautilus shells, the chambers of ammonite shells display intricately shaped septa and sutures. The type included numerous species, which were widely distributed during the Mesozoic era, about 200 million years ago. Ammonites are classified in the phylum Mollusca, class Cephalopoda, subclass Ammonoidea.
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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Nov 12, 2007, 10:40pm

Anchiceratops

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Image Copyright © Jurassic Park Institute


Anchiceratops (ANG-ki-SER-a-tops; meaning "near horned face", derived from the Greek "anchi" "near", "cerat" "horn", "ops" "face") is a genus of chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of western North America. Like other ceratopsids, it was a quadrupedal herbivore with three horns on its face, a parrot-like beak, and a long frill extending from the back of its head. The two horns above the eyes were longer than the single horn on its snout, as in other chasmosaurines. Anchiceratops approached 20 feet (6 meters) in length.

Discoveries and species


American paleontologist Barnum Brown named Anchiceratops in 1914, as he believed Anchiceratops was a transitional form closely related to both Monoclonius and Triceratops and intermediate between them. There is one valid species known today (A. ornatus), whose name refers to the ornate margin of its frill. A second species was named A. longirostris by Charles M. Sternberg in 1929, but this species is widely considered a junior synonym of A. ornatus today.

The first remains of Anchiceratops were discovered along the Red Deer River in the Canadian province of Alberta in 1912. The holotype is the back half of a skull, including the long frill, and several other partial skulls were found at the same time, which are now stored in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. A complete skull was discovered by C.M. Sternberg in 1924, and described as A. longirostris five years later. Another specimen, collected by Sternberg in 1925, lacks the skull but is otherwise the most complete skeleton known from any ceratopsid, preserving a complete spinal column down to the last tail vertebra. Sternberg's material is now housed in the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Other material has been found since, including one or two bonebed deposits in Alberta, but very little Anchiceratops material has been described (Dodson, 1996).

Anchiceratops frills are very distinctive. Rectangular in shape, the frill is edged by large epoccipitals (triangular bony projections), and has smaller fenestrae (window-like openings) than those seen in other chasmosaurines like Pentaceratops and Torosaurus. Another characteristic feature is the pair of bony knobs located on either side of the midline, towards the end of the frill.

Most Anchiceratops fossils have been discovered in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, which belongs to the early part of the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period (74-70 million years ago). Frill fragments found in the early Maastrichtian Almond Formation of Wyoming in the United States resemble Anchiceratops (Farke, 2004). However, pieces of a frill have been found from two localities in the older Dinosaur Park Formation (late Campanian, 78-74 million years ago) with the characteristic pattern of points seen in Anchiceratops frills. This may represent an early record of A. ornatus or possibly a second, related species (Langston, 1959).

Paleobiology

Anchiceratops is rare compared to other ceratopsians in the area, and usually found near marine sediments, in both the Horseshoe Canyon and Dinosaur Park Formations. This indicates that Anchiceratops may have lived in estuaries where other ceratopsids did not live. Flowering plants were increasingly common but still rare compared to the conifers, cycads and ferns which probably made up the majority of ceratopsian diets.

Sexual dimorphism

C.M. Sternberg originally designated a smaller skull as the new species Anchiceratops longirostris, because of its size, and also its proportionally longer snout and much shorter horns that point forwards instead of upwards. However, modern paleontologists find that the size and form of this skull falls within the range of variation seen in A. ornatus and so it is probably a member of that species.


It has been proposed that Anchiceratops is a sexually dimorphic species, where the skull of A. longirostris actually represents a female. Other Anchiceratops skulls are larger and show shorter, more robust snouts, as well as much longer horns that point more vertically. This form is thought to represent the male. Sexual dimorphism is also seen in most other chasmosaurine genera, very strongly in some (Triceratops, Torosaurus, Pentaceratops), and more weakly in others (Chasmosaurus). The basal ceratopsian Protoceratops also exhibits strong sexual dimorphism (Lehman, 1990).


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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Nov 12, 2007, 10:41pm

Argentavis

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Image Credit: (C) Stanton F. Fink


Argentavis magnificens (literally "Magnificent Silver Bird") is the largest flying bird ever discovered.

Sometimes called the Giant Teratorn, is an extinct species known from (as of 2006) three sites from the late Miocene (12-5 million years before present) of Central and Northwestern Argentina, South America, where a good sample of fossils has been obtained.

Physical characteristics

Currently accepted estimates:

• Wingspan: 5.7 to 8.3 m (19 - 28 ft)
• Wing area: nearly 7 square m (75 square ft)
• Wing loading: c. 11,5 kg/square m
• Length: 3.5 m
• Height: 1.8 to 2 m
• Weight: 65-100 kg


For comparison, the living bird with the largest wingspan is the Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans, 3.5 m). Since A. magnificens is known to have been a land bird, another good point of comparison is the Andean Condor, Vultur gryphus, which is not too distantly related to Argentavis. This bird is among the largest landbirds altogether, with a wingspan of about 3 m and weighing up to 12 kg.

The heaviest extant flying bird is not heavier than 20 kg (several contenders, among which are the European Great Bustard Otis tarda and the African Kori Bustard Ardeotis kori). The Sarus Crane is the tallest flying bird known, standing nearly as high as Argentavis due to its long legs.

Flightlessness is not a simple question of weight, except in extreme cases. Site and structure of the wing must also be taken into account. As a rule-of-thumb, a wing loading of 25 kg/square m is considered the de facto limit for avian flight (Meunier, 1951).

The humerus (upper arm bone) of Argentavis is somewhat damaged. It allows a fairly accurate estimate of its length in life, which was a bit shorter than an entire human arm (Campbell & Tonni, 1983). The species apparently had stout, strong legs and large feet which enabled it to walk with ease. The bill was large, rather slender, had a hooked tip and a wide gape.

Ecology

As with all extinct species not much can be known about the Giant Teratorn's behaviour. From the size and structure of its wings it is inferred that A. magnificens flew mainly by soaring, using flapping flight only during short periods. It is probable that it used thermal currents and the prevailing westerly winds that swept across the region (there were no sizable mountains in South America at the time). It has been estimated that the minimal velocity for the wing of A. magnificens is about 11 m/s or 40 km/h (Vizcaíno et al., 2000). Especially for takeoff, they would have depended on the wind, as although their legs were strong enough to provide them with a running or jumping start, the wings were simply too long to flap effectively until the bird was some meters off the ground (Campbell & Tonni, 1983).

This species seems not as well-suited for predation aerodynamically as its relatives. It probably preferred to scavenge for carrion, and it is likely that it habitually chased marsupial carnivores such as Thylacosmilidae from their kills. Unlike extant condors and vultures, the other species of teratorns also generally had long, eagle-like beaks and they are believed to have been active predators, being less ponderous than Argentavis. When hunting actively, A. magnificens would probably have swooped from high above onto their prey, which they usually would have been able to grab, kill, and swallow without landing.

Argentavis' territories measured probably more than 500 square km, which the birds screened for food, possibly utilizing a generally north-south direction to avoid being slowed by adverse winds. Comparison with extant birds suggest it laid one or two eggs with a mass of somewhat over 1 kg - somewhat smaller than an ostrich egg - every two years. Climate considerations make it likely that the birds incubated over the winter months, mates exchanging duties of incubating and procuring food every few days, and that the young were independent after some 16 months, but not fully mature until aged about a dozen years. Mortality must have been very low, with an estimated 2% of birds dying per year being close to the maximum possible while maintaining a viable population, but Argentavis suffered hardly any predation, thus mortality was mainly from old age, accidents and diseases (Palmqvist & Vizcaíno, 2003).

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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Nov 12, 2007, 11:30pm

Diplodocus

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Image Copyright © Jurassic Park Institute


Diplodocus (pronounced - dɪˈplɒdəkəs) is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur whose fossilised skeleton was first discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a Neo-Latin term derived from Greek (diploos) "double" and (dokos) "beam", in reference to its double-beamed chevron bones located in the underside of the tail. These bones were initially believed to be unique to Diplodocus; however, they have since then been discovered in other members of the diplodocid family and in non-diplodocid sauropods such as Mamenchisaurus.It lived in what is now western North America at the end of the Jurassic Period. Diplodocus is one of the more common dinosaur fossils found in the Upper Morrison Formation, a sequence of shallow marine and alluvial sediments deposited about 150 to 147 million years ago, in what is now termed the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian stages. The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs such as Camarasaurus, Barosaurus, Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus.

Diplodocus is among the most easily identifiable dinosaurs, with its classic dinosaur shape, long neck and tail and four sturdy legs. For many years, it was the longest dinosaur known. Its great size may have been a deterrent to the predators Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus: their remains have been found in the same strata, which suggests they coexisted with Diplodocus.

Description

One of the best-known sauropods, Diplodocus was a very large long-necked quadrupedal animal, with a long, whip-like tail. Its forelimbs were slightly shorter than its hind limbs, resulting in a largely horizontal posture.

The long-necked, long-tailed animal with four sturdy legs has been mechanically compared with a suspension bridge. In fact, Diplodocus is the longest dinosaur known from a complete skeleton. While dinosaurs such as Supersaurus were probably longer, fossil remains of these animals are only fragmentary.

The skull of Diplodocus was very small, compared with the size of the animal, which could reach up to 27 metres (90 feet), of which 6 metres (20 ft) was neck. Diplodocus had small, 'peg'-like teeth that pointed forward and were only present in the anterior sections of the jaws. Its braincase was small. The neck was composed of at least fifteen vertebrae and is now believed to have been generally held parallel to the ground and unable to have been elevated much past horizontal. Modern mass estimates have tended to be in the 10 to 16 tonne (11–17.6 ton) range: 10 tonnes (11 tons); 11.5 tonnes (12.7 tons); 12.7 tonnes (14 tons); and 16 tonnes (17.6 tons).

Diplodocus had an extremely long tail, composed of about 80 caudal vertebrae, which is almost double the number some of the earlier sauropods had in their tails (such as Shunosaurus with 43), and far more than contemporaneous macronarians had (such as Camarasaurus with 53). There has been speculation as to whether it may have had a defensive or noisemaking function. The tail may have served as a counterbalance for the neck. The middle part of the tail had 'double beams' (oddly-shaped bones on the underside, which gave Diplodocus its name). They may have provided support for the vertebrae, or perhaps prevented the blood vessels from being crushed if the animal's heavy tail pressed against the ground. These 'double beams' are also seen in some related dinosaurs.

Discovery and species

Several species of Diplodocus were described between 1878 and 1924. The first skeleton was found at Como Bluff, Wyoming by Benjamin Mudge and Samuel Wendell Williston in 1878, and was named Diplodocus longus ('long double-beam'), by paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878. Diplodocus remains have since been found in the Morrison Formation of the western U.S. States of Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. Fossils of this animal are common, except for the skull, which is often missing from otherwise complete skeletons. Although not the type species, D. carnegiei is the most completely known and most famous due to the large number of casts of its skeleton in museums around the world.

The two Morrison Formation sauropod genera Diplodocus and Barosaurus had very similar limb bones. In the past, many isolated limb bones were automatically attributed to Diplodocus but may, in fact, have belonged to Barosaurus.



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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by orbiter on Nov 13, 2007, 11:38am

Hi Barry
My, what a terrific picture of Proto #lotsalol# Thanks for showing all how handsome we
are #angel#.
Excellent work, thank you for the detailed work.
Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by mackenzie on Dec 3, 2007, 7:18pm

#lotsalol# #rofl# #silly# [image]
Quote:
Compsognathus


[image]
Image from Jurassic Park Institute


Compsognathus /kɒmp'sɒg.næ.θʊs/ (Greek kompsos/ "elegant", "refined" or "dainty", and gnathos/ "jaw") was a small, bipedal, carnivorous theropod dinosaur. The animal was the size of a chicken and lived around 150 million years ago, the early Tithonian stage of the late Jurassic Period, in what is now Europe. Paleontologists have found two well-preserved fossils, one in Germany in the 1850s and the second in France more than a century later. Compsognathus is one of the few dinosaurs for which the diet is known with certainty: the remains of small, agile lizards are preserved in the bellies of both specimens. Teeth discovered in Portugal may be further fossil remains of the genus.

Although not recognized as such at the time of its discovery, Compsognathus is the first dinosaur known from a reasonably complete skeleton. Today, C. longipes is the only recognized species, although the larger specimen discovered in France in the 1970s was once thought to belong to a separate species, C. corallestris. Until the 1980s and 1990s, Compsognathus was the smallest known dinosaur and the closest supposed relative of the early bird Archaeopteryx. Thus, the genus is one of the few dinosaur genera to be well known outside of paleontological circles.

Description


For decades, Compsognathus was famed as the smallest dinosaur known; the specimens collected were around 1 meter (3 ft) in length. However, dinosaurs discovered later, such as Caenagnathasia, Microraptor and Parvicursor, were even smaller. Compsognathus is estimated to have weighed around 3 kg (6.5 lb).

Compsognathus was a small, bipedal animal with long hind legs and a longer tail, which it used for balance during locomotion. The forelimbs were smaller than the hindlimbs and featured three digits equipped with solid claws suited for grasping prey. Its delicate skull was narrow and long, with a tapered snout. The skull had five pairs of fenestrae (skull openings), the largest of which was for the orbit (eye socket). The eyes were large in proportion to the rest of the skull.

The lower jaw was slender and had no mandibular fenestra, a hole in the lower jawbone commonly seen in archosaurs. The teeth were small but sharp, suited for its diet of small vertebrates and possibly other small animals, such as insects. Its frontmost teeth (those on the premaxilla) were unserrated, unlike those further back in the jaw. Scientists have used these dental characteristics to identify Compsognathus and its closest relatives.

Discovery and species


Compsognathus is known from two nearly complete skeletons, one from Germany that is 89 cm long (35 in) and another from France that is 125 cm (49 in). The physician and fossil collector Joseph Oberndorfer discovered the German specimen (BSP AS I 563) in the Solnhofen lithographic limestone deposits in the Riedenburg-Kelheim region of Bavaria during the 1850s. The limestone of the Solnhofen area has also yielded such well-preserved fossils as Archaeopteryx with feather impressions and some pterosaurs with imprints of their wing membranes that are dated to the lower Tithonian age. Johann A. Wagner described the specimen briefly in 1859 and in more detail in 1861, when he coined the name Compsognathus longipes. In early 1868, Thomas Huxley hypothesized that the specimen was closely related to the dinosaurs, and in 1896, Othniel Marsh recognized the fossil as a true member of that group. John Ostrom thoroughly redescribed the species in 1978, making it one of the best-known small theropods at that time. The German specimen is on display at the Bayerische Staatsammlung für Paläontologie und historische Geologie (Bavarian State Institute for Paleontology and Historical Geology) in Munich, Germany.The larger French specimen (MNHN CNJ 79) was discovered in 1972 in the Portlandian lithographic limestone of Canjuers near Nice in southeastern France. It dates to the lower Tithonian. Although Bidar originally described the specimen as a separate species called Compsognathus corallestris, Michard and others have since relabeled it as another example of Compsognathus longipes. Quimby identifed the smaller German specimen as a juvenile of the same species. In 1983, the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris acquired the French Compsognathus fossil; Michard thoroughly studied it there. Scientists originally identified a partial foot, also from Solnhofen, as belonging to a Compsognathus, but later research has disproved this. Skeletons of related compsognathids indicate a size range from 70–140 cm (28–55 in). Zinke has assigned teeth from the Kimmeridgian Guimarota formation of Portugal to the genus.




Paleobiology

Manus

The Compsognathus specimen discovered in Germany in the 19th century featured only two digits on each forelimb, leading scientists to conclude that this was how the creature appeared in life. However, the fossil discovered later in France revealed the manus (hands) to have had three digits, similar to other members of compsognathid genera. The fossilization of the German Compsognathus had simply failed to preserve the specimen's forefeet. Bidar supposed that the French specimen had webbed forefeet, which would look like flippers in life. In the 1975 book The Evolution and Ecology of the Dinosaurs, L. B. Halstead depicts the animal as an amphibious dinosaur capable of feeding on aquatic prey and swimming out of reach of larger predators. Ostrom debunked this hypothesis by showing conclusively that the French specimen was nearly identical to the German specimen in every aspect but its size. Peyer confirmed these conclusions.




Diet

The remains of a lizard in the German specimen's thoracic cavity show that Compsognathus preyed on small vertebrates. Marsh, who examined the specimen in 1881, thought that this small skeleton inside Compsognathus belly was an embryo, but in 1903, Franz Nopcsa concluded that it was a lizard. Ostrom identified the remains as belonging to a lizard of the genus Bavarisaurus, which he concluded was a a fast and agile runner due to its long tail and limb proportions. This in turn led to the conclusion that its predator, Compsognathus, must have had sharp vision and the ability to rapidly accelerate and outrun the lizard. The Bavarisaurus is in a single piece, indicating that Compsognathus must have swallowed its prey whole. The French specimen's gastric contents consist of unidentified lizards or sphenodontids.


Habitat

During the late Jurassic, Europe was a dry, tropical archipelago at the edge of the Tethys Sea. The fine limestone in which the skeletons of Compsognathus have been found originated in calcite from the shells of marine organisms. Both the Solnhofen and Canjuers area where Compsognathus has been preserved were lagoons situated between the beaches and coral reefs of the Jurassic European islands in the Tethys Sea. Contemporaries of Compsognathus include the early bird Archaeopteryx and the pterosaurs Rhamphorhynchus and Pterodactylus. The same sediments in which Compsognathus has been preserved also contain fossils of a number of marine animals such as fish, crustaceans, echinoderms and marine mollusks, confirming the coastal habitat of this theropod. No other dinosaur has been found in association with Compsognathus indicating that this little dinosaur might in fact have been the top land predator in these islands.



Possible eggs


Excavators discovered eggs 10 mm in diameter near the fossil remains of the German Compsognathus. In 1901, Friedrich von Huene interpreted them as dermal ossifications. Griffiths redescribed them as immature eggs in 1993. However, later researchers have doubted their assignment to the genus because they were found outside the body cavity of the animal. A well-preserved fossil of Sinosauropteryx, a genus related to Compsognathus, shows two oviducts bearing two unlaid eggs. These proportionally larger and less numerous eggs of Sinosauropteryx cast further doubt on the original identification of the Compsognathus eggs.


Feathers and connection with birds?

For nearly a century, Compsognathus was the only well-known small theropod. This led to comparisons with Archaeopteryx and to suggestions of a relationship with birds. In fact, Compsognathus, rather than Archaeopteryx, piqued Huxley's interest in the origin of birds. The two animals share many similarities in shape, size and proportions, so many in fact that a featherless skeleton of an Archaeopteryx was for many years misidentified as a Compsognathus. Many other dinosaurs, including Deinonychus, Oviraptor and Segnosaurus, are now known to have been more closely related to birds.

No feathers or feather-like covering have been preserved with Compsognathus fossils, in contrast to Archaeopteryx, which was found in the same sediments; many depictions of Compsognathus thus show it without feathers. However, the only feathers found in association with Archaeopteryx are the large ones on the wings and tail; the short ones that likely covered the body have rarely been preserved. Von Huene reported the presence of a fossilized patch of skin in the abdominal region of the German Compsognathus, but Ostrom later disproved this. Relatives of Compsognathus, namely Sinosauropteryx and Sinocalliopteryx, have been preserved with the remains of simple feathers covering the body like fur, indicating that Compsognathus might have been feathered in a similar way. In contrast, a patch of fossilized skin from the tail and hindlimb of another presumed compsognathid genus, Juravenator, only shows scales, with no indication that feathers were present in the preserved areas. This may mean that feather covering was not ubiquitous in this group of dinosaurs, though a 2007 re-evaluation by Butler and Upchurch cast doubt on the assignment of Juravenator to the same family as Compsognathus.
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thak-you 4 posting this it is great 4 my project 4 science thx [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] ;D ;D thank you very much i will get a grate mark
Spinosaurus
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2008, 12:54am

Spinosaurus


[image]

Pic Credit: Arthur Weasley


Spinosaurus (meaning "spine lizard") is a genus of theropod dinosaur which lived in what is now North Africa, from the Albian to early Cenomanian stages of the Cretaceous Period, about 95 to 93 million years ago. This genus was first known from Egyptian remains discovered in the 1910s and described by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer. These original remains were destroyed in World War II, but additional skull material has come to light in recent years. It is unclear whether one or two species are represented in the described fossils. The best known species is S. aegyptiacus from Egypt, although a potential second species, S. marocannus, has been recovered from Morocco.

The distinctive "spines" of Spinosaurus, which were long extensions of the vertebrae, grew up to 2 metres (6.6 ft) long and were likely to have had skin connecting them, forming a sail-like structure, although some authors have suggested that they were covered in muscle and formed a hump or ridge. Multiple functions have been put forward for this structure, including thermoregulation and display. According to recent estimates, Spinosaurus is the largest of all known carnivorous dinosaurs, even larger than Tyrannosaurus rex and Giganotosaurus. These estimates suggest that it was around 16 to 18 meters in length (52.5 to 59.1 ft) and 9 tonnes (9.9 tons) in weight, although these figures have not been universally accepted.

Description

Although Spinosaurus is well-known to dinosaur enthusiasts due to its size, sail, and elongated skull, it is mostly known from remains that have been destroyed, aside from a few more recently discovered teeth and skull elements. Additionally, so far only the skull and backbone have been described in detail, and limb bones have not been found. Jaw and skull material published in 2005 show that it had one of the longest skulls of any carnivorous dinosaur, estimated at about 1.75 meters long (5.75 ft). The skull had a narrow snout filled with straight conical teeth that lacked serrations. There were six or seven teeth on each side of the very front of the upper jaw, in the premaxilla bones, and another twelve in both maxillae behind them. The second and third teeth on each side were noticeably larger than the rest of the teeth in the premaxilla, creating a space between them and the large teeth in the anterior maxilla; large teeth in the lower jaw faced this space. The very tip of the snout holding those few large anterior teeth was expanded, and a small crest was present in front of the eyes.

The sail of Spinosaurus was formed of very tall neural spines growing on the back vertebrae. These spines were seven to eleven times the height of the vertebrae from which they grew. The spines were slightly longer front to back at the base than higher up, and were unlike the thin rods seen in the pelycosaur finbacks Edaphosaurus and Dimetrodon.


Classification

Spinosaurus gives its name to a family of dinosaurs, the Spinosauridae, of which other members include Baryonyx from southern England, Irritator and Angaturama (which is probably synonymous with Irritator) from Brazil, Suchomimus from Niger in central Africa, and possibly Siamosaurus, which is known from fragmentary remains in Thailand. Spinosaurus is closest to Irritator, which shares its unserrated straight teeth, and the two are included in the subfamily Spinosaurinae. In 2003, Oliver Rauhut suggested that Stromer's Spinosaurus holotype was a chimera, composed of back vertebrae from a carcharodontosaurid similar to Acrocanthosaurus and a dentary from a large theropod similar to Baryonyx. This analysis, however, has been rejected in recent papers.


Discovery and species


The first described remains of Spinosaurus were found in the Bahariya Valley of Egypt in 1912, and were named by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer in 1915. Fragmentary additional remains from Bahariya, including vertebrae and hindlimb bones, were designated by Stromer as "Spinosaurus B" in 1934. Stromer considered them different enough to belong to another species, and this has been borne out; with the advantage of more expeditions and material, it appears that they either pertain to Carcharodontosaurus or to Sigilmassasaurus. Some of the Spinosaurus fossils were damaged during transport back to the Deutsches Museum, in Munich, Germany, and the remaining bones were completely lost due to Allied bombing in 1944.
Two species of Spinosaurus have been named: Spinosaurus aegyptiacus (meaning "Egyptian spine lizard") and Spinosaurus marocannus (meaning "Moroccan spine lizard"). S. marocannus was originally described by Dale Russell as a new species based on the length of its neck vertebrae.[8] Later authors have been split on this topic, some considering the length of the vertebrae to be variable from individual to individual and therefore regarding S. marocannus as invalid or a synonym of S. aegyptiacus, and others retaining it as valid.



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Mamenchisaurus
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2008, 1:24am

Mamenchisaurus


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Mamenchisaurus (pronounced mah-MUN-chee-SAW-rus) was a plant-eating four-legged dinosaur, known for its remarkably long neck. Most species lived 145 to 150 million years ago, in the Tithonian age of the late Jurassic Period.
Mamenchisaurus was first discovered in 1952 on a highway construction site in Sichuan, China. The partial skeleton fossil was then studied, and named in 1954, by the renowned Chinese paleontologist Professor C. C. Young.

The first specimen discovered (the type specimen) was 22 meters (72 feet) long and half of that was neck (11 meters, or 36 feet), which made it the longest known neck of any animal at the time. 19 vertebrae were discovered (another record), along with long rods that were found in the neck. It is thought that adults could average up to 82 ft. long.

In 1987, a different species of Mamenchisaurus was discovered (M. hochuanensis) with a neck that might have reached up to 15 meters (49 feet) in length. [citation needed] In 1994, the Sauroposeidon was discovered in the United States, with a neck estimated to be up to 12 meters (39 feet) long, although, since the Sauroposeidon is a brachiosaurid, with very long forelimbs, it is a much taller dinosaur.

In 1993, M. sinocanadorum was described, this species possessed the longest cervical rib of any described sauropod dinosaur measuring 4100 mm. This is longer than the longest Sauroposeidon cervical rib which measures 3420mm.


Naming

Mamenchisaurus means 'Mamenchi lizard', from the Chinese Pinyin ( 'horse') and mén ( 'gate'), while chi is a transliteration ofxī ( 'stream' or 'brook'), combined with the suffix -saurus (from Greek sauros meaning 'lizard').

It was intended to name the reptile after the place where its fossil was first found — a construction site next to the Mǎmíngxī Ferry Crossing by the Jinsha River the westernmost major headwater stream of the Yangtze River), near Yibin in Sichuan Province of China. However, due to an accentual mix-up by Young, the location name Mǎmíngxī ( 'horse-neighing brook') was mistaken as Mǎménxī ( 'horse-gate brook').

The fact that the first Mamenchisaurus fossil was excavated from a construction site led to Young's naming the type species as Mamenchisaurus constructus.

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Orthoceras
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2008, 1:40am

Orthoceras


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Pic Credit: Jon Zander


Orthoceras ("straight horn") is a genus of extinct cephalopod. This genus is sometimes called Orthoceratites. Note it is sometimes misspelled as Orthocera or Orthocerus (Sweet 1964:K222).Fossils are common and have a global distribution.

These are slender, elongate shells with the middle of the body chamber transversely constricted, and a subcentral orthochoanitic siphuncle. The surface is ornamented by a network of fine lirae (Sweet 1964:K224). Many other very similar species are included under the genus Michelinoceras.

Monospecific assemblages

These orthocone cephalopods are conspicuous in the fossil record for their occasional but persistent appearances in monospecific assemblages dense enough to be rock-forming.

Based on studies of size distributions of the orthocone shells, some scientists have concluded that these assemblages likely represent post-mating mass deaths, as are common among modern cephalopods (though not modern nautiloids) and indeed among many semelparous species. However, such studies have not been entirely convincing and do leave the door open for alternate interpretations. These assemblages, are known mostly from Ordovician rocks but do occur later as well, at least into the Devonian. Well-known examples occur in Morocco, Scandinavia, the Alps, and Iowa (USA).

One often finds on eBay highly polished and beautiful-looking fossils from Morocco that are called Orthoceras, almost all of which have been touched up in some way. While these specimens (or rather the original, untouched versions) are indeed members of the order Orthocerida, none can be said to belong to the genus Orthoceras.

The Baltic island of Öland off the southern coast of Sweden has many quarries that yield orthocone nautiloids of great beauty. For centuries Öland has supplied greater Europe with material for floors, stairs and grave stones. This hard limestone is durable and the fossil inclusions make it very desirable. Occasionally the chambers of the fossil shells are colored differently. The ground water minerals that percolated the strata during diagenesis determines the color. Greens and browns are most common.


History of the name

Originally Orthoceras referred to all nautiloids with a straight-shell , called an ("orthocone") (Fenton & Fenton 1958:40). But later research on their internal structures, such siphuncle, cameral deposits and others, showed that these actually belong to a number of groups, even different orders.

In the authoritative Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, the name Orthoceras is now only used to refer to the type species O. regulare (Schlotheim 1820) from the Middle Ordovician of Estonia, Lithuania, Sweden and parts of the former Soviet Union such as Ukraine and Belarus. The genus might include a few related species.







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Phacops
Post by dwaggie on Jan 8, 2008, 1:55am

Phacops



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illustration by Sharon Carter


Phacops ("Lens-face") is a genus of trilobite in the order Phacopida, suborder Phacopina, superfamily Phacopoidea. They have a very widespread distribution, being found in Morocco, Europe, Australia and North America. They lived during the Devonian and are great index fossils. Often confused/combined with Paciphacops, Kainops, Reedops, Eldredgeops, Chotecops, Viaphacops, Drotops, Eophacops and the superfamily Acastoidea.

Some known species and locations:

►Phacops rana
►Phacops rana rana, New York.
►Phacops rana crassituberculata, Indiana and Ohio.
►Phacops rana norwoodensis, Iowa.
►Phacops cristata bombifrons, Ohio.
►Phacops schlotheimi, Germany.
►Phacops speculator, Morocco.
►Phacops recurvus, Gotland.
►Phacops latifrons, France.
►Phacops brocki, Australia.


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Woolly Rhinoceros
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2008, 5:40pm

Woolly Rhinoceros


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This image is in the public domain, the copyright expired.

The Woolly Rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) is an extinct species of rhinoceros that lived during the Pleistocene epoch, but survived the last ice age. The woolly rhinoceros are members of the Pleistocene megafauna. It lived on the northern steppes of Eurasia, where its relative the Giant Unicorn (Elasmotherium) had a more southern range. It had a flat horn that enabled it to push aside snow in order to graze. The Woolly Rhino also had thick fur and a layer of thick fat to keep it warm from the cold conditions it endured.

Physiology

This plant-eater was about 3.5 m (11 feet) long. It had two horns on its snout, the anterior one larger than the one between its eyes about 1 m (3 feet) long; both were made of matted hair. It had long hair, small ears, short, thick legs, and a stocky body. Cave paintings suggest a wide dark band between the front and hind legs, but it is not universal and identification of rhino as woolly rhinoceros is uncertain. The Woolly Rhinoceros used its horns to sweep snow away from vegetation so it could eat in the winter.

As the last and most derived member of the Pleistocene rhinoceros lineage, the woolly rhino was supremely well adapted to its environment. Stocky limbs and thick woolly pelage made it well suited to the steppe-tundra environment prevalent across the Palaearctic during the Pleistocene glaciations. Its geographical range expanded and contracted with the alternating cold and warm cycles, forcing populations to migrate or perish as the glaciers receded. Like the vast majority of rhinoceri both living and extinct, the body plan of the woolly rhino adhered to the conservative morphology displayed in the most primitive rhinoceroses, first seen in the late Eocene.

Diet


Controversy has long surrounded the precise dietary preference of Coelodonta as past investigations have found both grazing and browsing modes of life to be plausible. The palaeodiet of the woolly rhinoceros has been reconstructed using several lines of evidence. Climatic reconstructions indicate the preferred environment to have been cold and arid steppe-tundra, with large herbivores forming an important part of the feedback cycle. Pollen analysis shows a prevalence of grasses and sedges within a more complicated vegetation mosaic.

A strain vector biomechanical investigation of the skull, mandible and teeth of a well-preserved last cold stage individual recovered from Whitemoor Haye, Staffordshire, revealed musculature and dental characteristics that support a grazing feeding preference. In particular, the enlargement of the temporalis and neck muscles is consistent with that required to resist the large tugging forces generated when taking large mouthfuls of fodder from the ground. The presence of a large diastema supports this theory.


Comparisons with extant perissodactyls confirm that Coelodonta was a hindgut fermentor with a single stomach, and as such would have grazed upon cellulose-rich protein-poor fodder. This method of digestion would have required a large throughput of food and thus links the large mouthful size to the low nutritive content of the chosen grasses and sedges.

Extinction


It was hunted by early humans, who may have caused its extinction. Its shape was known only from prehistoric cave drawings until a completely preserved specimen (missing only the fur and hooves) was discovered in a tar pit in Starunia, Poland. The specimen, an adult female, is now on display in the Polish Academy of Sciences' Museum of Natural History in Kraków. The Woolly Rhino roamed much of Northern Europe and was common in the then cold, arid desert that is southern England and the North Sea today. During Greenland Stadial 2 (Last Glacial Maximum) the North Sea did not exist as sea levels were up to 125 metres lower than today.

The Woolly Rhino co-existed with Woolly Mammoth and several other now extinct larger mammals. No specimens have been dated in the U.K. after 15,000 14C years B.P.


Recent carbon dating has shown that populations survived as recently as 8,000 B.C. in Western Siberia.

● It must be noted that 8,000 B.C. is equivalent to 10,000 - 11,000 years B.P. (Before Present) and the accuracy of this date is uncertain as several radiocarbon plateaux exist around this time. The extinction doesn't coincide with the end of the last ice age but does coincide however, with a minor yet severe climatic reversal that lasted for ~1,000- 1,250 years, the Younger Dryas (GS1 - Greenland Stadial 1), characterised by glacial readvances and severe cooling globally, a brief interude in the continuing warming subsequent to the termination of the last major ice age (GS2), thought to have been due to a shutdown of the ocean conveyorbelt system due to huge influxes of cold, fresh water from the preceding sustained glacial melting during the warmer Interstadial (GI1 - Greenland Interstadial 1 - ca.16,000 - 11,450 14c years B.P.).


A close relative, the Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), still survives in Southeast Asia, but is highly endangered.




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Giant Elk or Irish Elk {Megaloceros giganteus}
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2008, 6:13pm

Giant Elk or Irish Elk {Megaloceros giganteus}

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This image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.


The Irish Elk or Giant Elk, Megaloceros giganteus (see Lister 1987, Geist 1998) was the largest deer that ever lived. It lived in Eurasia, from Ireland to east of Lake Baikal, during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene. The latest known remains of the species have been carbon dated to about 5,700 BC, or about 7,700 years ago (Stuart et al. 2004)


Its old common name is misleading: although large numbers of skeleton have been found in Irish bogs, the animal was not exclusively Irish, and neither was it closely related to either of the living species currently called elk; for this reason, the name "Giant Elk" is preferred in more recent publications (e.g. Lister et al. 2004, Hughes et al. 2006), following Gould (1974).

The Giant Elk is famous for its formidable size (about 2.1 meters or 7 feet tall at the shoulders), and in particular for having the largest antlers of any known cervid (a maximum of 3.65 meters/12 feet from tip to tip and weighing up to 90 pounds).


The present species evolved around the Eemian interglacial, possibly from M. antecedens. The earlier taxon - sometimes considered a paleosubspecies M. giganteus antecedens - is altogether similar but had more compact antlers.


A significant collection of M. giganteus skeletons can be found at the Natural History Museum in Dublin.


Evolution of antler size

The size of Irish Elk antlers is remarkable, and several theories have arisen as to their evolution. One theory was that their antlers, under constant and strong sexual selection, increased in size because males were using them in combat for access to females; it was also suggested that they eventually became so unwieldy that the Irish Elk could not carry on the normal business of life and so became extinct. However, it was not until Stephen Jay Gould's important 1974 essay on Megaloceros that this theory was tested rigorously.

Gould demonstrated that for deer in general, species with larger body size have antlers that are more than proportionately larger, a consequence of allometry, or differential growth rate of body size and antler size during development. In fact, Irish Elk had antlers of just the size one would predict from their body size. Note this does not mean that sexual selection played no part in maintaining large antler size, only that the antlers of the species' ancestors were already large to begin with. Indeed, Gould concluded that the large antler size and their position on the skull was very much maintained by sexual selection: They were morphologically ill-suited for combat between males, but their position was ideal to present them to intimidate rivals or impress females. Unlike other deer, M. giganteus did not even have to turn its head to present the antlers to best effect, but could accomplish this by simply looking straight ahead.

Extinction

Discussion of the cause of their extinction has still focused on the antlers (rather than on their overall body size), which may be due more to their impact on the observer than any actual property. Some have suggested hunting by man was a contributing factor in the demise of the Irish Elk as it was with many prehistoric megafauna, even assuming that the large antler size restricted the movement of males through forested regions or that it was by some other means a "maladaptation" (see Gould 1974). But evidence for overhunting is equivocal, and as a continental species, it would have co-evolved with humans throughout its existence and presumably have adapted to their presence.


More recent research pointed out that high amounts of calcium and phosphate compounds are required to form antlers, and therefore large quantities of these minerals are required for the massive structures of the Irish Elk. The males (and male deer in general) met this requirement partly from their bones, replenishing them from foodplants after the antlers were grown or reclaiming the nutrients from discarded antlers (as has been observed in extant deer). Thus, in the antler growth phase, male deer from Ireland were suffering from a condition similar to osteoporosis.(Moen et al. 1999)



When the climate changed at the end of the last Ice Age, the vegetation in the animal's habitat also changed towards species that presumably could not deliver sufficient amounts of the required minerals, at least in the western part of its range. The most recent specimen of M. giganteus in northern Siberia, dated to 7,700 years ago - well after the end of the last Ice Age -, shows no sign of nutrient stress. This is actually quite unsurprising, as they come from a region with continental climate where the proposed vegetation changes had not (yet) occurred (Stuart et al. 2004).



In conclusion, it is easy to advance a number of hypotheses regarding the disappearance of the more localized populations of this species. The situation is less clear regarding the final demise of the Giant Deer in continental Eurasia east of the Urals however. Stuart et al. (2004) tentatively suggest that a combination of human presence along rivers and slow decrease in habitat quality in upland presented the last Giant Elk with the choice of good habitat but considerable hunting pressure, or general absence of humans in suboptimal habitat.

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Long-necked Camel/Aepycamelus
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2008, 6:27pm

Long-necked Camel/Aepycamelus


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Aepycamelus is an extinct species of camelid, formerly called Alticamelus in scientific literature. Its name is derived from the Homeric Greek "high and steep" and "camel"; thus, "high camel"; alticamelus in Latin.

Aepycamelus lived during the Miocene period on the prairies of North America. It had a long and s-shaped neck, which it used to feed on plants.

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Bison
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2008, 6:45pm

Bison {Western Bison}



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Bison, The name for two species of the Bovidae in the mammalian order Artiodactyla, found in North America and Europe. The European bison (Bison bonasus) is commonly known as the wisent. The American species (B. bison), shown in the illustration, is often called buffalo but should not be confused with the African buffalo.

The European bison was originally abundant in the forested areas of Europe during the late Cenozoic Era. The wisent is a browsing, woodland animal which congregates in relatively small herds. It is almost extinct in its natural range and, although a few herds exist, it is known mainly from a few hundred specimens preserved in zoological gardens and zoos.

An intensive effort has been made to preserve the species by breeding and maintaining this animal in captivity.

Although there are differences, the wisent is closely allied to the American species. The wisent has a small head carried in a high position and a short mane, and is more graceful and less massive than the North American species. The hump is less noticeable, the legs are longer, the horns are more slender, and the body is not so shaggy.


Enormous herds of the American bison existed on the Plains area of North America in western Canada and the western United States during the 19th century. It is estimated that there are still about 20,000 bison in Canada and the United States on preserves and national parks. These bovines are massive, with the males attaining a length of 9 ft (2.7 m), a height of 6 ft (1.8 m) at the shoulder, and weight up to 3000 lb (1350 kg). They are herbivorous, and migrated originally when the grass or forage became scarce. The large head is held in a low position, and behind the neck region is a characteristic hump. The forequarters are shaggy with the hair more pronounced in the male than the female. The senses of smell and hearing are well developed, while vision is poor. Both the male and female have horns which are small and set far apart. See also Artiodactyla; Buffalo; Mammalia.

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Camelops hesternus
Post by dwaggie on Jan 11, 2008, 7:23pm

Camelops hesternus

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Image Credit: Arthur Weasley


Camelops is an extinct genus of camels that once roamed western North America, where it disappeared at the end of the pleistocene about 10,000 years ago. Its name is derived from the Greek (camel) + (face), thus "camel-face."

Camelops first appeared during the Late Pliocene period and became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene. The reason for its extinction is poorly understood but was part of a larger North American die-off in which native horses, camelids and mastodons also died out. Because soft tissues are generally not preserved in the fossil record, it is not certain if camelops possessed a hump, like modern camels, or lacked one, like its modern llama relatives. Camelops hesternus was seven feet (slightly over two meters) at the shoulder, making it slightly taller than modern bactrian camels. Plant remains found in its teeth exhibit little grass, suggesting that the camel was an opportunistic herbivore; that is, it ate any plants that were available, as do modern camels.






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Mastodon
Post by dwaggie on Jan 29, 2008, 11:19pm

Mastodon

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illustration from the former "Early Image" site - public domain images


Mastodons or Mastodonts (meaning "nipple-teeth") are members of the extinct genus Mammut of the order Proboscidea and form the family Mammutidae; they resembled, but were distinct from, the woolly mammoth which belongs to the family Elephantidae. Mastodons were browsers and mammoths were grazers.

Habitat

Mastodons are thought to have first appeared almost four million years ago. They were native to both Eurasia and North America, but died out in Eurasia approximately three million years ago. They disappeared from North America about 10,000 years ago, at the same time as most other Pleistocene megafauna.

Though their habitat spanned a large territory, mastodons were most common in the Ice age spruce forests of the eastern United States, as well as in warmer lowland environments. Their remains have been found as far as 300 kilometers offshore in the northeastern United States, in areas that were dry land during the low sea level stand of the last ice age. Mastodon fossils have been found in South America, on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, USA, in Kentucky (particularly noteworthy are early finds in what is now Big Bone Lick State Park), in Stewiack, Nova Scotia, Canada, and north of Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA.


Description

While mastodons were furry like woolly mammoths, and similar in height at roughly three meters at the shoulder, the resemblance was superficial. They differed from mammoths primarily in the blunt, conical shape of their teeth , which were more suited to chewing leaves than the high-crowned teeth mammoths used for grazing; the name mastodon (or mastodont) means mastoid teeth (Greek and "nipple tooth"), and is also an obsolete name for their genus. Their skulls were larger and flatter than those of mammoths, while their skeleton was stockier and more robust. Mastodons also seem to have lacked the undercoat characteristic of mammoths.

The tusks of the mastodon sometimes exceeded five meters in length, and were nearly horizontal, in contrast with the more curved mammoth tusks. Young males had vestigial lower tusks that were lost in adulthood. However it has been proven that female mastodons had lower pairs of tusks. The tusks were probably used to break branches and twigs although some evidence suggests males may have used them in mating challenges; one tusk is often shorter than the other, suggesting that, like humans, mastodons may have had laterality. Examination of fossilized tusks revealed a series of regularly spaced shallow pits on the underside of the tusks. Microscopic examination showed damage to the dentin under the pits. It is theorized that the damage was caused when the males were fighting over mating rights. The curved shape of the tusks would have forced them downward with each blow, causing damage to the newly forming ivory at the base of the tusk. The regularity of the damage in the growth patterns of the tusks indicates that this was an annual occurrence, probably occurring during the spring and early summer.

Extinction

The meat of mastodons was a food source for early humans. Paleontologists are still trying to determine what role, if any, the early human settlers of North America played in the extinction of the mastodon.

Recent studies by scientists in Ohio and New York concluded that tuberculosis may have been partly responsible for the extinction of the Mastodon 10,000 years ago.

In September 2007, Mark Holley, an underwater archeologist with the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve Council who teaches at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan, said that they might have discovered a boulder (3.5 to 4 feet high x 5 feet long) with a prehistoric carving in the Grand Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan. The granite rock has markings that resemble a mastodon with a spear in its side. Confirmation that the markings are an ancient petroglyph will require more evidence.

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Stegoceras
Post by dwaggie on Jan 30, 2008, 12:06am

Stegoceras

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Pic by M Shiraishi


Stegoceras ('horned roof' - Greek stego- meaning 'roof' and ceras- meaning 'horn') was a plant-eating ornithischian pachycephalosaurid dinosaur that lived in what is now North America during the Late Cretaceous Period. It had an estimated length of up to 2 metres (6.5 feet). It was named by Lawrence Lambe, in 1902.

It has served as a model for other pachycephalosaurs, due to the completeness of the excavated remains. When discovered, it was believed to be related to Troodon. This theory was, however, dispelled upon discovery of the domed skull.


Anatomy

Stegoceras sported a three inch-thick skull. It was initially proposed that male Stegoceras (and individuals of other pachycephalosaurid species) would ram each other headlong, not unlike contemporary bighorn sheep or musk oxen. It was later suggested that they engaged in flank-butting rather than ramming, a widely evidenced theory. Foremost, the rounded shape of the skull roof would lessen the contacted surface area during head-butting, resulting in glancing blows. Second, pachycephalosaurs could not align their head, neck, and body perfectly horizontally straight (which would be needed to transmit stress) -- it was more likely that they carried their neck in an "S"- or "U"-shaped curve (Stegoceras seemed to carry their spine in a less extreme curve, due to their thick neck muscles). Lastly, the relatively wide width of most pachycephalosaurs would have served to protect vital organs from harm during flank-butting.



When a partial skeleton of Stegoceras was first discovered, it was thought to have gastralia, or belly ribs, not typically found in other ornithischian dinosaurs. They were subsequently found to be ossified tendons.

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Kentrosaurus
Post by dwaggie on Jan 30, 2008, 12:07am

Kentrosaurus

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Pic by Arthur Weasley


Kentrosaurus meaning 'pointed lizard' (pronounced: KEN-troh-Saw-rus)(from the Greek kentron/ meaning 'point' or 'prickle' and sauros/ meaning 'lizard') was a Jurassic genus of dinosaur closely related to the better-known Stegosaurus. Kentrosaurs were African cousins of the North American Stegosaurus. They differed in size, in the shape of their armour plating and in their bodily flexibility, however.The ceratopsid dinosaur Centrosaurus from the late Cretaceous period derives its name from the same Ancient Greek words, but the initial letter has changed to a 'C' and is pronounced as a soft C to avoid confusion.



Discovery and species


The 1909–1912 German expedition to East Africa resulted in the discovery of several new dinosaur species, of which Kentrosaurus was one of the most important, for the reason outlined above — it implied a former proximity of Tanzania to the Morrison Formation, in the eastern part of the Rocky Mountains. Of the three paleontologists on this expedition, it was Edwin Hennig who first described Kentrosaurus, in 1915. An almost-complete skeleton was at one time recovered and mounted in the Humboldt Museum, of the University of Berlin but the museum was bombed during World War II and most of the bones were lost.



Paleobiology

Kentrosaurus was smaller than Stegosaurus. Kentrosaurus was just 16 feet (4.9 metres) long and had a much lower weight (although no accurate estimates can yet be made) It was certainly small for a stegosaur

Armour

Kentrosaurus armour is also rather different from that of Stegosaurus. Kentrosaurus had small dorsal plates along its neck and shoulders. Along the rest of the back and down the tail were several — typically six — spectacular pairs of imposing caudal spikes, each up to a foot in length (see also: Thagomizer). Like other stegosaurs, such as the European Lexovisaurus, it had another pair of spikes jutting backwards from the hips (or possibly the shoulders). Unlike Stegosaurus, which may have used its plates for thermoregulation, the spines of Kentrosaurus could only have served one purpose: armour for self-defence.

Kentrosaurus would have been preyed upon by theropods similar to Allosaurus. It could have used its tail to ward off attacks by lashing the tail from side to side. Too, the spines along Kentrosaurus' flanks would have helped protect the animal from attacks.

Posture

Kentrosaurus also differed from Stegosaurus in one other key feature — it lacked the pronounced spines on the backbone, near the hip and tail region, that characterise the vertebrae of a Stegosaurus. The length of the thigh bone compared with the rest of the leg indicates that Kentrosaurus was a slow and inactive dinosaur. It may have reared up on its hind legs to reach twigs and leaves, but would normally have been fully quadrupedal.

Environment


The similarities and differences between kentrosaurs and stegosaurs illustrate well the geological principle of continental drift. The similarity between the kentrosaur fossils found in Tendaguru, Tanzania and the stegosaur fossils found in North America are evidence that these two points of the globe, now widely separated, were once very close together and indeed part of a supercontinent, known by geologists as Pangaea and, later, the northern half, known as Laurasia. These two points must also have had very similar climatic conditions, in order to have produced such similar specimens. Meanwhile, the differences between the animals illustrate the changes that their different ancestors underwent divergent evolution as the two groups of animals parted company, because of the subsequent separation of the tectonic plates.


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Harpymimus
Post by dwaggie on Jan 30, 2008, 12:08am

Harpymimus

[image]

Pic © The Natural History Museum, London 2007


Harpymimus was a basal ornithomimosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period of what is now Mongolia. Unlike later, more derived ornithomimosaurs, Harpymimus still possessed teeth, although they appear to have been restricted to the lower jaw (dentary). The holotype specimen (IGM 100/29, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulan Bator, Mongolia) consists of an almost complete skeleton, lacking portions of the pectoral girdle, pelvic girles, and hindlimbs. It was recovered at Dundgovi Aimag (Eastern Gobi Province), from an exposure of the Shinekhudug Formation (Shinekhudukskaya Svita; Hauterivian to Barremian). The etymology of Harpymimus involves a reference to the fearsome Harpy of Greek mythology (Greek harpyiai = "Harpies" + Greek mimos = "mimic"). Only a single species is known for this genus, H. oklandnikovi. Other dinosaurs collected from the Shinekhudug Formation at Dundgov include the ceratopsian Psittacosaurus mongoliensis and the ornithopod Altirhinus kurzanovi.

Diagnosis and Morphology

Kobayashi & Barsbold (2005, p. 100) diagnose Harpymimus as follows: "Eleven dentary teeth, which are anterior in position; transition between anterior and posterior caudal vertebrae at eighteenth caudal; traiangular-shaped depression of dorsal surface of supragelnoid buttress of scapula; low ridge dorsal to depression along posterior edge of scapular blade; small but deep collateral ligament fossa on lateral condyle of metacarpal III." The holotype skull of Harpymimus is virtually complete, but badly crushed laterally, obscuring some anatomical detail. There is evidence of a rhampotheca (beak) covering the upper jaw which, in concert with the dentary teeth, was likely employed for grasping and holding onto prey. It's general appearance was much like that of later ornithomimosaurs (long-necked, long arms with sharp grasping claws, and long legs). The dentition of Harpymimus differs from that of another basal ornithomimosaur, Pelecanimimus polyodon, in that teeth are restricted to the dentary and number between ten and eleven. Pelecanimimus possessed seventy-five dentary teeth, as well as an additional 145 teeth in the maxillae and premaxillae. The small teeth of Harpymimus were probably used only for grabbing and holding prey, unlike those of many other non-avian theropods, which were adapted to cutting or piercing (Kobayashi & Barsbold (2005, p. 119). Of all the known ornithomimosaurs, only Harymimus and Pelecanimimus retain teeth, a trait which is plesiomorphic ("primitive") for the clade Orithomimosauria. The anteroposterior length of the skull is approximaley 262 mm, more than twice its approximate height and less than half the length of the neck (approximately 600 mm).

Phylogeny

Kobayashi & Barsbold (2005, pp. 118-123) have conducted a detailed cladistic analysis of this taxon and have determined that Harpymimus is basal to the clade of Garudimimus brevipes plus Ornithomimidae, yet is more derived than Pelecanimimus polyodon. The conclusions of this analysis support the model that ornithomimosaurs originated in either eastern Asia or in Europe prior to the Barremian (130-125 million years ago), the migrated to North America during or at some time before the Late Cretaceous.

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Re: Barry's Dinosaur Info is back
Post by dwaggie on Mar 30, 2008, 4:36pm

Camptosaurus


[image]

drawn by Frederik Spindler


Camptosaurus (KAMP-to-sawr-us) was a genus of plant-eating, beaked dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous Periods. The name means 'bent lizard', because, when standing on all fours, its body must have been arched (Greek kamptos meaning 'bent' and sauros meaning 'lizard').

Discovery and species

Originally described by O. C. Marsh in 1879 as Camptonotus, or "bent back", it was renamed Camptosaurus in 1885 because the original name was already in use for a cricket. In 1879, Marsh named C. dispar (type species of the genus) and C. amplus for material he received from his collectors at Quarry 13 near Como Bluff, Wyoming. Throughout the 1880-1890s, he continued to receive specimens from Quarry 13 and named two additional species: C. medius and C. nanus based in part on size. Charles W. Gilmore named two additional species, C. browni and C. depressus in his 1909 redescription of the Marsh specimens. Then in 1980, Peter Galton and H.P. Powell in their redescription of C. prestwichi (see following), considered C. nanus, C. medius and C. browni to be different growth stages or different gender of the larger C. dispar, and therefore only C. dispar was the valid species. They also considered the skull referred to C. amplus by Marsh and by Gilmore to belong to C. dispar, as well. Gilmore had used this skull to describe the skull of Camptosaurus, but the specimen was recently shown by Brill and Carpenter not to belong to Camptosaurus and put it into its own genus and species, Theiophytalia kerri.

While Marsh was describing Camptosaurus species in North America, numerous species from Europe were also referred to the genus in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as well: C. inkeyi, C. hoggi, C. leedsi, C. prestwichii, and C. valdensis. C. inkeyi and C. leedsi consist of fragmentary material and species are no longer considered valid (nomen dubium). C. valdensis was moved to Valdosaurus canaliculatus by Galton in 1977. C. hoggi was originally named Iguanodon hoggi by Richard Owen in 1874 and was moved to Camptosaurus by Norman and Barrett in 2002.

The remaining European species Camptosaurus prestwichii was recovered from Chawley Brick Pits, Cumnor Hurst in Oxfordshire in England. The fossil was found when a tramway was driven into the side of a hill. It was described by Hulke in 1880 as Iguanodon prestwichii, then placed in its own genus Cumnoria by Seeley in 1888. It was moved to Camptosaurus by Lydekker in 1889 where it remains today. The holotype skeleton (see picture) remains the best skeleton of Camptosaurus from Europe.

Paleobiology

The largest adult camptosaurs were more than 7.9 m long (26 ft), and 2.0 m tall (6.7 ft) at the hips. They had heavy bodies but, as well as walking on four legs (quadrupedal), they could rear up to walk on two legs (bipedal).

This genus is probably closely related to the ancestor of the later iguanodontid and hadrosaurid dinosaurs. It probably ate cycads with its parrot-like beak.






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Thescelosaurus
Post by dwaggie on Jun 2, 2008, 9:48pm

Thescelosaurus

[image]

Image: ArthurWeasley


Thescelosaurus (from the Greek /thescelo- meaning "godlike", "marvelous", or "wondrous" and /saurus "lizard") was a genus of small ornithopod dinosaur that appeared at the very end of the Late Cretaceous period in North America, and was a member of the last dinosaurian fauna before the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event around 65.5 million years ago. The preservation and completeness of many of its specimens indicate that it may have preferred to live near streams.

This bipedal ornithopod is known from several partial skeletons and skulls that indicate it grew to between 2.5 and 4.0 meters (8.2 to 13.1 feet) in length on average. It had sturdy hind limbs, small wide hands, a head with an elongate pointed snout, and possibly small armor scutes along the midline of the back. This genus of dinosaur is regarded as a specialized hypsilophodont and a herbivore. Several species have been suggested for this genus, but only one, T. neglectus, is currently recognized; the others have been given their own genera, or are believed to be the same as T. neglectus (although there may be more than one species represented by the various fossils classified as Thescelosaurus.)

The genus attracted media attention in 2000, when a specimen unearthed in 1993 in South Dakota was interpreted as including a fossilized heart. There was much discussion over whether the remains were actually of a heart. Many scientists now doubt the identification of the object and the implications of such an identification.

Description

Thescelosaurus was a heavily-built bipedal animal, probably herbivorous, but possibly omnivorous. It would have browsed in the first meter or so from the ground, feeding selectively, with food held in the mouth by cheeks while chewing. Aside from the long narrow beak, the skull also had teeth in the premaxilla, or upper beak (a primitive trait among ornithopods), and long rod-like bones called palpebrals over the eyes, giving it heavy bony eyebrows. Its teeth were of two types: small pointed premaxillary teeth, and leaf-shaped cheek teeth. The exact number of teeth is unknown, as complete jaws have not been described.

It had short, broad, five-fingered hands, four-toed feet with hoof-like toe tips, and a long tail braced by ossified tendons from the middle back to the tip, which would have reduced the flexibility of the tail. The rib cage was broad, giving it a wide back, and the limbs were robust. This animal may have been able to move on all fours, given its fairly long arms and wide hands, but this idea has not been followed up in the scientific literature (although it does appear in popular works).Charles M. Sternberg reconstructed it with the upper arm sticking out almost perpendicular to the body, another idea that has gone by the wayside. Thescelosaurus was probably slower than other hypsilophodonts, because of its heavier build and leg structure. Compared to them, it had unusual hindlimbs, because the upper leg is longer than the shin, the opposite of Hypsilophodon and running animals in general. One specimen is known to have had a bone pathology, with the long bones of the right foot fused at their tops, hindering swift movement.

Large thin flat bony plates similar to those in Talenkauen have been found next to the ribs' sides. Their function is unknown; they may have played a role in respiration. The nature of this species' integument, be it scales or something else, is currently unknown, although potential evidence is known; Charles Gilmore described patches of carbonized material near the shoulders as possible epidermis, with a "punctured" texture but no regular pattern, and William J. Morris suggested that armor was present, in the form of small scutes present at least along the midline of the neck.

Overall, the skeletal anatomy of this genus is well-documented (except for the head), and restorations have been published in several papers, including skeletal restorations and models. The skeleton is known well enough that a detailed reconstruction of the hip and hindlimb muscles has been made. The animal's size has been estimated in the 2.5–4.0 m range for length (8.2–13.1 ft) for various specimens, and a weight of 200–300 kilograms (450–660 pounds).[16] As discussed more fully under "Discovery, history, and species", it may have been sexually dimorphic, with one sex larger than the other. Juvenile remains are known from several locations, mostly based on teeth.

Classification

Thescelosaurus has generally been allied to Hypsilophodon and other small ornithopods as a hypsilophodontid, although recognized as being distinct among them for its robust build, unusual hindlimbs, and, more recently, its unusually long skull. Peter Galton in 1974 presented one twist to the classic arrangement, suggesting that because of its hindlimb structure and heavy build (not cursorial, or built for running, by his definition), it should be included in the Iguanodontidae. This has not been followed, with Morris arguing strongly against Galton's classification scheme. At any rate, Galton's Iguanodontidae was not a natural group due to polyphyly, and so would not be recognized under modern cladistic usage.

Although little tested by cladistics, it is currently thought that Bugenasaura and Thescelosaurus are closely related, or that Thescelosaurus belongs in its own family or subfamily, Thescelosauridae or Thescelosaurinae. Two recent studies have found it to be a close relative of Parksosaurus, although neither named a specific clade, and one of the studies (Norman et al., 2004) is difficult to interpret because it did not include Iguanodontia in its diagrams. This area of the dinosaur family tree is complicated by a lack of research, with some papers finding Hypsilophodontidae to be a natural group, and others finding it to be a unnatural family leading into Iguanodontia (paraphyly). The "natural group" hypothesis has been falling out of favor since the mid to late 1990s, and thus a paraphyletic Hypsilophodontidae is shown here. Oddly, Thescelosaurus has been regarded as both very basal and very derived among the hypsilophodonts. One issue specifically concerning Thescelosaurus is that not all of the remains assigned to T. neglectus necessarily belong to it.

Discovery, history, and species

The type specimen of Thescelosaurus (USNM 7757) was discovered in 1891 by paleontologists John Bell Hatcher and William H. Utterback, from beds of the late Maastrichtian-age Upper Cretaceous Lance Formation of Niobrara County, Wyoming, USA. The skeleton, however, remained in its shipping crates for years until Charles W. Gilmore of the Smithsonian Institution' National Museum of Natural History had it prepared and described it in a short paper in 1913, naming it T. neglectus (neglectus: "neglected"). At the time, he thought it was related to Camptosaurus. He provided a detailed monograph in 1915, describing the well-preserved skeleton. The type specimen was found largely in natural articulation and was missing only the head and neck, which were lost due to erosion. The name comes from the surprise Gilmore felt at finding such a good specimen that had been unattended to for so long. He considered it to be a light, agile creature, and assigned it to the Hypsilophodontidae, a family of small bipedal dinosaurs.


Other remains of similar animals were found throughout the late 1800s and 1900s, although they didn't receive much attention. Another well-preserved skeleton from the slightly older Horseshoe Canyon Formation, in Alberta, Canada, was named T. warreni by William Parks in 1926. This skeleton had notable differences from T. neglectus, and so Charles M. Sternberg placed it in a new genus, Parksosaurus, in 1937. Sternberg also named an additional species, T. edmontonensis, based on another articulated skeleton, this time including a partial skull (NMC 8537), and drew attention to the genus' heavy build and thick bones; due to these differences from the regular light hypsilophodont build, he suggested that the genus warranted its own subfamily, Thescelosaurinae. T. edmontonensis has, since Peter Galton's 1974 review, generally been considered a more robust individual (possibly the opposite sex of the type individual) of T. neglectus. The only sticking point has been the ankle of T. edmontonensis, which Galton claimed was damaged and misinterpreted, but which was accepted by William J. Morris (1976) as truly different from T. neglectus.

In his paper, Morris described a partial skull with heavy ridges on the lower jaw and cheek (SDSM 7210) as an unidentified species of Thescelosaurus, from the late Maastrichtian-age Hell Creek Formation of Harding County, South Dakota, USA. This skull was recognized as an unnamed hypsilophodont for many years, until Galton assigned it the name Bugenasaura infernalis. Morris also named a new species, on the basis of vertebrae and limb remains (LACM 33542) from the Hell Creek Formation of Garfield County, Montana, USA: T. garbanii. T. garbanii would have been about 4.5 m long (15 feet), larger than average specimens of T. neglectus. Because Morris believed that the ankles of T. garbanii compared favorably to those of T. edmontonensis, he assigned it to Thescelosaurus. However, the scientific literature has favored Galton's view that T. edmontonensis was not different from T. neglectus (see above). To better accommodate this species, Galton in 1995 suggested that it belonged to his new genus Bugenasaura as B. garbanii (although noting that it could also be a leg of the similarly sized pachycephalosaurid Stygimoloch). As a result, only one valid species of Thescelosaurus is currently recognized: T. neglectus. More study, though, could again split the known material into two or more species.

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Parksosaurus
Post by dwaggie on Jun 2, 2008, 10:05pm

Parksosaurus

[image]

Image: Steveoc 86




Parksosaurus ("William Parks's lizard") was a genus of hypsilophodont ornithopod dinosaur from the early Maastrichtian-age Upper Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, Canada. It is based on most of a partially articulated skeleton and partial skull, showing it to have been a small, bipedal, herbivorous dinosaur. It is one of the few described non-hadrosaurid ornithopods from the end of the Cretaceous in North America, existing around 70 million years ago.

Description

In life, Parksosaurus, as a hypsilophodont, would have been a small, swift bipedal herbivore. It would have had a moderately long neck and small head with a horny beak, short but strong forelimbs, and long powerful hindlimbs.



Explicit estimates of the entire size of the animal have not been done, but William Parks, who described it, found the hindlimb of his T. warreni to be about the same length overall as that of Thescelosaurus neglectus, even though the shin was shorter than the thigh in T. neglectus, the opposite of T. warreni (93.0 centimeters (3.05 ft) versus 95.5 centimeters (3.13 ft)). Thus, the animal would have been comparable to the better-known Thescelosaurus in linear dimensions, despite proportional differences (around 1 meters (3.28 ft) tall at the hips, 2-2.5 meters (6.56-8.2 ft) long; estimations after). The proportional differences probably would have made it lighter, though, as less weight was concentrated near the thigh.



Classification


Parksosaurus has been considered to be a hypsilophodont since its description. Recent reviews have dealt with it without much comment, although Norman et al. (2004), in the framework of a paraphyletic Hypsilophodontidae, found it to be the sister taxon to Thescelosaurus. Like Thescelosaurus, it has a relatively robust hindlimb, and an elongate skull without as much arching compared to other hypsilophodonts. However, basal ornithopod phylogeny is poorly known at this point, albeit under study.



Discovery and history



Paleontologist William Parks described skeleton ROM 804 in 1926 as Thescelosaurus warreni, which had been discovered in what was then called the Edmonton Formation near Rumsey Ferry on the Red Deer River. When found, it consisted of a partial skull (missing the beak region), most of the left pectoral girdle (including a suprascapula, a bone more commonly found in lizards, but which is believed to have been present in cartilage form in some ornithopods due to the roughened ends of their scapulae {see for example Charles W. Gilmore (1915) on Thescelosaurus}), the left arm except the hand, ribs and sternal elements, a damaged left pelvis, right ischium, the left leg except for some toe bones, articulated vertebrae from the back, hip, and tail, and a number of ossified tendons (which sheathed the end of the tail).


The body of the animal had fallen on its left side, and most of the right side had been destroyed before burial; in addition, the head had been separated from the body, and the neck lost. Parks differentiated the new species from T. neglectus by leg proportions; T. warreni had a longer tibia than femur, and longer toes.


Charles M. Sternberg, upon the discovery of the specimen he named Thescelosaurus edmontonensis, revisited T. warreni and found that it warranted its own genus (it was named in an abstract, which is not typical, but the specimen had already been described thoroughly). In 1940, he presented a more thorough comparison and found a number of differences between the two genera throughout the body. He assigned Parksosaurus to the Hypsilophodontinae with Hypsilophodon and Dysalotosaurus, and Thescelosaurus to the Thescelosaurinae.




The genus attracted very little attention until Peter Galton began his revision of hypsilophodonts in the 1970s. Parksosaurus received a redescription in 1973, wherein it was considered to be related to a Hypsilophodon\Laosaurus\L. minimus lineage. After this, it once again returned to obscurity.



George Olshevsky emended the name to P. warrenae in 1992, because the species name honors a woman (Mrs. H. D. Warren), but outside of Internet sites, this has not been generally used.




Paleoecology



Parksosaurus shared the Horseshoe Canyon Formation with flat-headed hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus, spike-crested Saurolophus, and hollow-crested Hypacrosaurus, ankylosaurid Euoplocephalus, nodosaurid Edmontonia, horned dinosaurs Montanoceratops, Anchiceratops, Arrhinoceratops, and Pachyrhinosaurus, pachycephalosaurid Stegoceras, ostrich-mimics Ornithomimus and Struthiomimus, a variety of poorly-known small theropods including troodontids and dromaeosaurids, and the tyrannosaurs Albertosaurus and Daspletosaurus. The dinosaurs from this formation are sometimes known as Edmontonian, after a land mammal age, and are distinct from those in the formations above and below. The Horseshoe Canyon Formation is interpreted as having a significant marine influence, due to an encroaching Western Interior Seaway, the shallow sea that covered the midsection of North America through much of the Cretaceous. Parksosaurus would have had a small herbivore ecological niche.

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Dromiceiomimus
Post by dwaggie on Jun 2, 2008, 10:14pm

Dromiceiomimus

[image]

Image: ArthurWeasley



Dromiceiomimus (meaning "Emu mimic") was a swift bipedal dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period, about 80 to 65 million years ago. It was about 12 feet (3.6 m) long and weighed about 220 to 330 pounds (100 to 150 kg). Its femur (thigh bone) was 468 mm long. This ornithomimid (a bird-like theropod) had very long limbs, a large brain and large eyes. It had a toothless, beaked mouth, and weak jaws; it may have eaten insects, eggs and some meat. Compared to other ornithomimosaurs it had a short back, long slender forearms, very large eye sockets and differently arranged pelvic bones.

Canadian palaeontologist Dale Russell has suggested that the animals were entirely carnivorous, feeding from eggs and small animals dug from nests. This view is still debated; their body shape would also have been suited for a partly herbivorous lifestyle. The large eye sockets suggest a keen visual sense, and also suggest the possibility that they were nocturnal.


Discovery




The first fossil remains of this genus were discovered in the 1920s, and originally named Struthiomimus brevitertius and S. samueli. It was renamed by Russell in 1972 to D. brevitertius after an extensive review of North American ornithomimosaurs, which he reclassified into three genera: Dromiceiomimus, Ornithomimus, and Struthiomimus. Fossils of adults and juveniles have been found in Horeshoe Canyon and Alberta, Canada's Judith River Formation. The top speed of this dinosaur is believed to be 40 mph.


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Dryptosaurus
Post by dwaggie on Jun 2, 2008, 10:30pm

Dryptosaurus

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Image: Unknown Taken from http://www.dinosauromorpha.de/pal_therop/gal_therop.htm



Dryptosaurus (meaning "tearing lizard") was a genus of primitive tyrannosaur that lived in Eastern North America during the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous period. A famous painting of the genus by Charles R. Knight has made it one of the more widely-known dinosaurs, in spite of its poor fossil record.


Morphology




Dryptosaurus was 6.5 m long, 1.8 m high at the hips, and weighed about 1.2 tons. Before the discovery of "Appalachiosaurus", it was tossed around various carnivore families, sometimes a coelurosaur, sometimes a megalosaur, sometimes given a group of its own. However after Appalachiosaurus was discovered, Dryptosaurus was found to be a primitive tyrannosaur, probably not unlike Dilong and Eotyrannus. Like its relative Eotyrannus, it had relatively long arms with three clawed fingers. Though not yet for certain, Dryptosaurus may have had other traits like the basal tyrannosaurs, including their thinner skull and feathery coat.



Discovery



In 1866, an incomplete skeleton was found in New Jersey by E.D. Cope, who named it "Laelaps" ("storm wind", after the dog in Greek mythology that never failed to catch what it was hunting). "Laelaps" became one of the first dinosaurs found in North America, (following Hadrosaurus, Aublysodon and "Trachodon".). Subsequently, it was discovered that the name "Laelaps" had already been given to a species of mite, and O.C. Marsh changed the name in 1877 to Dryptosaurus.



Dryptosaurus was reviewed by Ken Carpenter in 1997 in light of the many different theropods discovered since Cope's day. He felt that due to some unusual features it couldn't be placed in any existing family and warranted placement in its own family, Dryptosauridae. Dryptosaurus was the only large carnivore known in eastern North America before the discovery of "Appalachiosaurus".

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Arrhinoceratops
Post by dwaggie on Jun 2, 2008, 10:43pm

Arrhinoceratops

[image]

Image: ArthurWeasley





Arrhinoceratops, "no nose-horn face" , derived from the Ancient Greek "a" "no", "rhino" "nose" "cerat" "horn", "ops" "face") is the name given to a genus of ceratopsian dinosaur. The name was coined as its original describer concluded it had no nose-horn, however further analysis revealed this not to be the case. It lived during the Late Cretaceous, though predates its famous relative Triceratops by a few million years, being found in the early Maastrichtian period. Its remains have been found in Canada.




Discoveries and species



Described by W. A. Parks in 1925, Arrhinoceratops is known from a partially crushed, slightly distorted skull collected from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of the Red Deer Valley in Alberta in 1923.

Only one species is described, A. brachyops. Other material from Utah, named by Gilmore in 1946, was originally known as A. utahensis, thence transferred to Torosaurus.




Classification



Arrhinoceratops belonged to the Ceratopsinae (previously known as Chasmosaurinae) within the Ceratopsia (the name is Ancient Greek for "horned face"), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in North America and Asia during the Cretaceous Period, which ended roughly 65 million years ago. It appears to be closely related to Torosaurus.



Physical Description



Since this dinosaur is known only from its skull, scientists know little about its over-all anatomy. The skull features a broad neck frill with two oval shaped openings. Its brow horns were moderately long, but its nose horn was shorter and blunter than most Ceratopsians. Its body is assumed to be typical of the Ceratopsians, and based on the skull it is estimated to be 6 meters (20 feet) long when fully grown.



Diet



Arrhinoceratops, like all Ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", and so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp Ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles


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Avaceratops
Post by dwaggie on Aug 19, 2008, 10:37am

Avaceratops


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This image has been released into the public domain by its author, LadyofHats. This applies worldwide. copyright expires.


Avaceratops was a small Ceratopsian dinosaur which lived during the late Campanian during the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now the Northwest United States.

Discoveries and species

Its fossils were found in Montana, in the early 1980s, by Eddie Cole and named in 1986, by Peter Dodson. It was named after Ava, Eddie's wife. The specific name honours the Lammers family, who owned the land where the holotype fossil was found.

Classification

Avaceratops belonged to the family Ceratopsidae within the Ceratopsia (both names being derived from Ancient Greek for 'horned face'), a group of herbivorous dinosaurs with parrot-like beaks which thrived in what are now North America and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period. Its exact position is uncertain within this group. It is a smallish Ceratopsian with a solid frill (i.e. lacking fenestrae which are typical of many other genera except Triceratops), thus it may be somehow ancestral to Triceratops or occupy a position between the two subfamilies Centrosaurinae and Ceratopsinae. This latter opinion was the one reached by Penkalski and Dodson in 1999.

Diet

Avaceratops, like all Ceratopsians, was a herbivore. During the Cretaceous, flowering plants were "geographically limited on the landscape", so it is likely that this dinosaur fed on the predominant plants of the era: ferns, cycads and conifers. It would have used its sharp Ceratopsian beak to bite off the leaves or needles.



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Bactrosaurus
Post by dwaggie on Oct 16, 2008, 3:16am

Bactrosaurus


[image]

Image: Hong Kong Science Museum


Bactrosaurus (IPA: /ˌbæktrəˈsɔrəs/) meaning "staff lizard" because it was the staff, or beginning, of a new line of dinosaurs (Greek baktron = staff + sauros = lizard)) was a herbivorous dinosaur that lived in east Asia in the late Cretaceous, 97 - 85 mya, making it one of the earliest known hadrosaurs.


Like many hadrosaurs, it could switch between bipedal and quadrupedal stances, but unusually it had large spines protruding from the vertebrae. It is also unusual within Lambeosaurinae for its absence of a cranial crest. A typical Bactrosaurus would have been 6 m (20 ft) long and 2 m (7 ft) high when in the quadrupedal stance, and weighed 1100 - 1500 kg (2400 - 3300 lb), with an 80 cm (31 in) femur.


Six partial skeletons of B. johnsoni have been recovered from Mongolia and China, the first of which was found in the same horizon as Archaeornithomimus. It was an early relative of Lambeosaurus, and shows a number of iguanodont-like features, including three stacked teeth for each visible tooth, small maxillary teeth, and an unusually powerful build for a hadrosaur.







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Plateosaurus
Post by dwaggie on Oct 16, 2008, 3:18am

Plateosaurus


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Image: Tim Bekaert


Plateosaurus (meaning 'flat lizard') is a genus of plateosaurid prosauropod dinosaur that lived during the Norian and Rhaetian stages of the Late Triassic period, around 216 to 199 million years ago in what is now Europe. There are two actually recognized species, P. engelhardti and P. longiceps, although others have been assigned in the past.

Discovered in 1834 and described three years later, Plateosaurus was one of the first dinosaurs formally named, although not one of the three genera originally used to define Dinosauria, because at the time was poorly known and impossible to identify as one. Plateosaurus were bulky bipedal herbivores which had a small skull on a long neck, sharp plant-crushing teeth, powerful limbs, and a large thumb spike on each 'hand' probably used for defense and feeding.




Description

The skull of Plateosaurus was deeper than that of Coelophysis - i.e. a stronger, deeper head than most prosauropods, although still small and narrow compared to the size of its body. It had four sets of fenestrae (skull openings); these openings were for the naris and orbit as well as an infratemporal fenestra at the back of the skull and an antorbital fenestra between the eye and nose. It had a long snout and many small, leaf-shaped, socketed teeth and the low-slung hinge of its lower jaw (to give the muscles greater leverage), suggest that it fed exclusively on plants. Its eyes were directed to the sides, rather than the front, providing all-round vision to watch for predators. Some fossil skeletons have preserved sclerotic rings.

Plateosaurus had numerous small teeth in both the upper and lower jaw, five to six on the premaxilla, twenty four to thirty on the maxilla, and twenty one to twenty eight on the dentary. These teeth had serrated, leaf-shaped crowns suitable for digestion of plant material. It is thought Plateosaurus had narrow cheek pouches which kept food from spilling out when it ate.

Plateosaurus was the largest known dinosaur of its time, reaching 6 to 10 m in length and up to an estimated 700 kg in mass. A member of the group of early herbivores known as prosauropods, it was more powerfully built than that of similar animals such as Anchisaurus. Plateosaurus had a long neck, composed of around nine cervical vertebrae, a stocky body and a pear-shaped torso. It had a long tail composed of at least forty caudal vertebrae which served to counterbalance the front-heavy body and long neck.








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Preondactylus
Post by dwaggie on Oct 16, 2008, 3:21am

Preondactylus


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Image: Mike Hanson


Preondactylus was a Triassic long-tailed pterosaur that inhabited what is now Italy. It was discovered by Nando Buffarini in 1982 near Udine in the Preone valley of the Italian Alps.

When it was first discovered, the slab of rock containing the fossil Preondactylus was broken into various pieces while being extracted. After reassembly the rock was washed and the marl and bone was washed away and lost, leaving a negative imprint on the stone. The rock type found in which Preondactylus was found was bituminous, dolomitic limestone. A second, disarticulated specimen, which measured 45 cm in length, was found in 1984 about 150-200 meters below the surface. It was most likely a meal for a predator 220 million years ago.

Preondactylus had single cusp teeth, meaning they had one point on each tooth. Its diet either consisted of fish, insects or both, but there is still debate going on as the tooth structure could indicate either diet (or both). They had short wings and long legs. This species is considered primitive by pterosaur standards, though it was a fully developed flier.






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Hadrosaur
Post by dwaggie on Oct 16, 2008, 3:22am

Hadrosaur



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Image: Heinrich Harder (1858-1935)




Hadrosaurids or duck-billed dinosaurs are members of the family Hadrosauridae, and include ornithopods such as Edmontosaurus and Parasaurolophus. They were common herbivores in the Upper Cretaceous Period of what are now Asia, Europe and North America. They are descendants of the Upper Jurassic/Lower Cretaceous iguanodontian dinosaurs and had similar body layout. They were ornithischians.

Hadrosaurids are divided into two subfamilies. The lambeosaurines (Lambeosaurinae) have large cranial crests or tubes, and are less bulky. The hadrosaurines (Hadrosaurinae) lack the cranial crests or tubes and are larger.