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Camptosaurus dispar skeletal by Scott Hartman |
Waxing Paleontological
Friday, April 13, 2018
The Camptosaurus Challenge
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Lesser-Known Running Lizards (minor update at the end)
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by Jaime Headden, from Wikipedia |
This is a small group—only three (but possibly four or five)
genera have been named. They are atypical dromaeosaurs for a number of reasons,
foremost among them the elongate, narrow snout packed with minute teeth which
lack serrations. While most appear to have been small, one of them was one of the largest dromaeosaurs, approaching Achillobater and Utahraptor in terms of overall size.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Nearly Birds
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Adorable Serikornis sungei by Emily Willoughby |
All this has happened in the last twenty years. Heck, nobody
knew about Halszkaraptor until a few
weeks ago.
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Chilesaurus and Avian Arm Folding
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Chilesaurus diegosuarezi by the impeccable Jaime Headden |
Ever since the publication of supreme oddball Chilesaurus (eat your heart out, Halszkaraptor), I’ve been dying for
somebody out there to do a full description of the critter’s unusual skeleton.
As Chilesaurus may hold the key to our
understanding of early ornithischians (or not), this is an animal in dire need
of detailed study. This past Sunday, a paper was published in a journal that I
can’t pronounce—Ameghiniana—and it is
not that description. However, it is very interesting, and since I imagine many
of you don’t have access to, uh, Ameg-HEE-ana (?), I thought I might summarize
the juicy parts here.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
An Aelurodon of My Own
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Aelurodon ferox chasing Neohipparion, by Mauricio Anton |
You know, I never blogged about my SVP 2017 experience, more out of
sloth than anything else. I can wrap up my thoughts with this sentence: it was fun but very lonely. For me, perhaps the most enjoyable part of the conference was the silent auction. I should have stayed for the following “real” auction
because photos posted to social media afterward made it look insane, but I had
a bunch of meds to do and an early start the next morning. I bid on several
items in the silent auction, most of them 3D prints of interesting fossils, but
I was quickly outbid past my own point of comfort for most of them. However, I
was able to secure this nifty specimen:
Friday, October 27, 2017
Peg Teeth
I’m in the
midst of drafting (for the third time) an upcoming post about Drepanosaurus and Avicranium but I doubt they’ll be done by the end of the month.
However, I wanted to get something up on this darn blog because I'd like to
maintain the illusion of being loyal to my seven or eight readers. So I’m going
to briefly discuss something strange about ceratopsians that nobody ever seems to comment on: the weird peg teeth of basal neoceratopsians.
Monday, September 25, 2017
Very Specific Strange Reptiles
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Azendohsaurus madagaskarensis by Matt Celeskey. |
The term "strange reptiles" could apply to just about every animal I've ever written about on this blog, so you'll forgive me for not loving the name Allokotosauria, an up-and-coming group that was formalized in 2015. The name really says nothing about its members, the similarly newly-minted Azendohsauridae
and the longstanding Trilophosauridae. These are archosauromorphs that sit well
outside of the Ornithodira-Crurotarsi divide, and are instead related to such
eclectic animals as rhynchosaurs and protorosaurs. As I suspect my readers have at least heard of Trilophosaurus, I'll start this essay by discussing Azendohsaurus.
Monday, August 14, 2017
And Then There Were None
Today, we add an addendum to what’s turned out to be one of
my favorite blog posts: Hopeful Dinosaurs. In that essay, I introduced you all
to a group of near-dinosaur dinosauriforms called silesaurids. These small,
quadrupedal, herbivorous critters all hail from the Late Triassic, but were
impressively cosmopolitan, being found in the United States, South America,
Africa, and Poland.
Monday, July 17, 2017
The Saurosphargid That Wasn't
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Saurosphargid by Ethan Kocak |
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
The Long, Complicated History of Appalachian Ceratopsians
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North America during the Campanian |
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