Wasn't expecting Muttaburrasaurus of all dinosaurs to be taking shots at T. rex's titles of both biggest biped and best sniffer among the dinosaurs. Authors mention a postcranial re-description is also in the works, so more surprises are likely to come.
They also took scans of the skull and show a possible location for a salt gland in the nose, suggesting it had a need to remove excess salt. The olfactory bulbs are also insanely large: the largest of any dinosaur, suggesting it had a powerful sense of smell acuity exceeding even tyrannosaurs.
Re-description of the skull of Muttaburasaurus. And, uh, it's a lot weirder. Very thescelosaur/early ornithischian-like on a large animal. And I mean large: the authors estimate the biggest specimen is around 8.8 tons, making it among the largest terrestrial bipeds known.
peerj.com/articles/207...
Lawrence O'Donnell said what everyone’s thinking after Trump’s profanity-filled Easter outburst — promising war crimes.
Someone lost their #Dinosaur quiz in the Walkers Squares. Spotted at a convenience store a block from the #MuseumofManchester.
Letter to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology advocating that their annual meeting have an online option in addition to the in person meeting in Cleveland. Unfortunately, alt text cannot have all of the letter text but the reasoning involves threatof violence to at risk groups in the US as well as issues related to contracting dangerous diseases and other safety threats.
Continuation of letter. Please read previous alt text for summary.
Today, for the safety of all SVP members, I request with this open letter that the @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social provides an online option for this year's annual meeting. Myself and many others no longer feel it is safe to travel to and within the USA. Please share the letter everywhere you can!
People with the technical knowhow of making games: feel free to steal this idea.
Also allows dinosaurs to fight Nazis on the right side of history, after what I think have been way too many games and media where dinosaurs are being ridden/controlled by the Nazi party, which I hate. Allows us to take back the science and paleontology symbols to the right side of history.
Could have different unlockable cosmetics based on the various reconstructions of Spinosaurus through time (retro through to modern), and RPG-style tech trees where you specialize into different playstyles based on how we imagine the animal’s ecology.
I have a dream video game where you play as the vengeful spirit of the Spinosaurus holotype destroyed during the bombing of Munich, and inspired by Stromer (who was strongly against the Nazis) goes John Wick against the entire Nazi party, hunting them down at various historical locations.
Neat video showing Lycaon isn't that different from Canis (if you're a dog owner, you know what I mean). Also, that animals of species with some degree of competition for resources can interact calmly enough.
Hat tip to @archelosaurian.bsky.social
Takahe peering past a tree
Today I visited Zealandia and of course asked about the chance of seeing the resident takahē.
Basically no chance, my guide replied. Their habitat is off-limited to visitors right now and they rarely venture beyond it.
Resigned to this, I sat down on bench to watch riflemen...and who peeked out?
In which I provide a few thoughts on the new Spinosaurus species, S. mirabilis.
www.newscientist.com/article/2516...
I also stressed the deep connections between one of the study authors - Nathan Myhrvold - and Geoffrey Epstein to New Scientist. They didn't mention it, neither has anyone else.
Nice theropod but check out the third author on it
Cool head crest? ✅
Tall neural spines? ✅
Deep tail? ✅
Was thought to be aquatic for several years? ✅
Spinosaurus is a hadrosaur.
Speaking as someone studying aquatic adaptations and transitions in tetrapods, I've firmly been in the camp that this animal is not a "specialist pursuit predator in water." Anatomy overall much better matches a wading or terrestrial stalking lifestyle. Aquatic pursuit predation is very hard to do.
Also looks like it has fossae in the diastema, showing that the longest teeth in the lower jaw really do slot into the notch. Everyone expected as much but this is the first direct confirmation of it in a spinosaur fossil afaik.
Most people: "Confirmation that Spinosaurus is not a swimmer!"
Me: "Holy crap, three individuals from the same site. With overlapping material showing variation no less!"
Giant tortoises are ubiquitous around the world between the mid Miocene and late Pleistocene. The Sharktooth Hill collections at LACM has bits and bobs of tortoise shells over a meter and a half long. Here’s a fragment of costal I found in a drawer during my Master’s work. ID is Hesperotestudo.
First, I want to be very clear that I am not speaking in any official capacity for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) with this post. I’ll be speaking of the society of course, but this is not an organizational official statement. I’m also not going to speak super directly to the details of the Epstein Files revelations that erupted over the weekend and still continue. I believe the stories I’ve heard from numerous female SVP members about other behaviors, words and actions by accused individuals and many other men. There should be a robust Ethics Committee investigation that includes the possibility of bannings and revocations as potential consequences for a totality of offenses both recent and otherwise. This goes for any SVP member, not just those with outsized influence or media presence. Communications Committee (which I am co-chair of) was not involved in crafting the statement released by SVP earlier this week. We are discussing how to better integrate relevant committees in future situations that require precise, expeditious official commentary from SVP. While the technical legalistic language in that statement is correct, IMO it severely missed the mark on understanding and acknowledging the hurt and anger amongst membership. The community response appeared to be in part driven by decades of women in membership feeling their real experiences with harassment, objectification, and assault continue to be minimized and ignored. Due to structural inequities, legal fears and power imbalances we especially see influential repeat-offenders relegated to whisper-network warnings rather than face any true professional or personal consequences. As anyone with a shred of empathy can understand, this has over time led to intense and even angry frustration, members quitting the society, and others avoiding membership altogether.
Despite robust cultural and operational changes within SVP over the past 20+ years, the outcomes we are experiencing are still deeply problematic. If the outcomes are chronically proven inadequate, that means the systems producing those outcomes are inadequate, and should be fixed where appropriate or thrown out in favor of a complete rebuild. I have not arrived at these conclusions lightly. I have been in private conversation with current and former SVP members (mostly women) nearly constantly since this past Sunday. Everyone from students who only joined very recently, early careers expressing dismay at the silence of more senior figures, established mid-career members, and those who have left membership in frustration. The act of leadership relies most on listening, and I’ve been doing my best to do that where I can this week. In light of this assessment, and with the help of extensive dialogue which I am immensely grateful for, I have submitted the following action items to SVP leadership to be included in discussion at an upcoming followup town hall meeting: 1) Strongly consider an overhaul to our Code of Conduct rules regarding interpersonal behavior, ethics reporting, and ethics violation policies within the bounds of technical legal protections required for all parties. This includes but is not limited to banning from meetings, banning from society membership, and revocation of Society awards as official potential consequences. If our current systems for dealing with abusive or unprofessional behavior are not getting the job done, we should fix them. 2) Assemble comprehensive, expansive strategies that SVP leadership can implement with the goal of addressing the underlying unprofessional actions and attitudes that lead to misconduct behaviors propagating in our community. In function, the goal is to educationally inoculate against toxic and unprofessional behaviors.
3) SVP will produce a media series that guides members through the full start-to-finish ethics violation reporting and administrative action processes. We believe empowering membership with this information will help us all hold each other accountable and make SVP as safe and welcoming as possible to those wishing to contribute to the betterment of our professional community. (This one is more directly under my control and thus I can speak more assertively about it.) 4) SVP should provide quarterly progress updates on initiatives to address member safety as well as violation accountability procedures. This *would not* mean a change in policy for public disclosures on the details of ongoing ethics violation investigations. It will mean providing members with updates on process overhauls and finding new ways to provide allowable transparency to membership without creating legal vulnerabilities. We are a society of incredibly smart, talented, generous and hardworking people. Circumstantial excuses do not protect our community members. These chronic problems are fixable if we have the collective will to do so. Thanks for your time if you made it all the way through. I look forward to working with anyone with good-faith interest in making the changes our organization clearly still needs.
Regarding events of last week in SVP and the wider vertebrate paleontology community.
Feel free to pick apart my argument. This is far from my field of expertise, and Gallagher is definitely more immersed in the literature of dinosaur epidermal anatomy than I am.
So Haolong might not have true “feathers,” but it does have very bird-like integument. I think this whole discussion is becoming more of a matter of what a “feather” is. It would probably be beneficial to properly describe all sorts of avian integument to help place fossil epidermal structures.
These structures grow directly from the skin, not a follicle, and have a “pulp” of living cells inside of them to facilitate constant growth. Again, this is just like Haolong, as well as Psittacosaurus quills. Data however is lacking on what the developmental origin of these structures are.
This is not the only option though. These structures also have strong similarities to bird monofilaments that are not “feathers” (which yes, those exist too). Various gamebirds have display monofilaments that are developmentally not considered feathers, such Anhima and turkeys.
This is also an animal that split from the bird lineage >110 my prior to its death. The actual bird lineage developed vaned flight plumes in that same time, and they’re not like the ideal ancestral feather either. We don’t know what the evolutionary stages to get to this point were for Haolong.
Further along in development birds have a pin feather phase where the integument is spiky and sparse, again, quite similar to what we’re seeing in Haolong. By this stage they have started development of the follicle, but the feathers remain blood-filled vascular structures into full development.
Maybe I’m just used to playing devil’s advocate, but I’m not quite convinced that these cannot be feathers. They’re not like mature feathers yes, but feathers do start out as vascular blood-filled structures that are part of the epidermis, just like in Haolong.
