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The Running Deltadromeus

June 24, 2013, 7:25 am
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Deltadromeus was a runner. How many videos show a running Deltadromeus? The answer is very few. Dinosaur King has a few battle scenes from the video games that people have recorded and posted online. The dinosaur that is given the name Deltadromeus is a rather nondescript theropod and has very exaggerated orbit ridges above its eyes. It is also portrayed as lightning fast, which is obviously an embellishment of the video game industry, but is also interesting. Deltadromeus also appears in two Dinosaur King episodes. The dinosaur in the cartoon is identical to the one in the video game series. Apparently Deltadromeus really enjoys swimming with princesses in the Ganges:

There are also a few tribute videos, but, as usual, these are still illustrations of a dinosaur set against music. There is one very short clip of an animatronic Deltadromeus, which is about as close as we have to a running dinosaur. The model is fairly good. The speculative orbit ridges are very subtle in this model but the hands remain rather large and the digits are lengthy compared to the palm of the hand. Tail and legs are not shown well in the clip well and are therefore it cannot be said whether or not they are accurately portrayed. They appear rather average, as in what we see in any theropod model available; in other words, fairly interchangeable between models.

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Deltadromeus Learns to Type

June 25, 2013, 10:29 am
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Deltadromeus is mentioned in quite a few books on African dinosaurs and is, as seen on Sunday, the titular dinosaur in at least one of those books. The naming paper for Deltadromeus is also available for reading thanks to a link through The Theropod Archives and the hosting of the paper by Dr. Jeffrey Wilson at the University of Michigan. The paper not only details the discovery and differentiation of Deltadromeus from other dinosaurs of the Sahara, but also details the discovery of other material discovered in the Sahara's Kem Kem region of Morocco. It is a good paper on a very successful expedition into the desert and well worth the read. The illustrations of the Carcharodontosaurus skull that was uncovered are wonderful, though off topic for the week. The image of Deltadromeus remains from the paper are impressive though.
Deltadromeus remains recovered as depicted in Sereno et al 1996
Today's paper:
Sereno, P. C., Dutheil, D. B., Iarochene, M., Larsson, H. С., Lyon, G. H., Magwene, P. M., Sidor, C. A., Varricchio, D. J., & Wilson, J. A. (1996) Predatory Dinosaurs from the Sahara and Late Cretaceous Faunal Differentiation. Science, 272(5264), 986-991.
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How Do We Hunt?

June 26, 2013, 7:14 am
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©Dmitry Bogdanov
At an estimated 26.2 ft (8 m) long Deltadromeus was a fairly long ceratosaur. Majungasaurus, one of the largest ceratosaurs in body size, was only about 23 ft (7 m) from tip to tail and Ceratosaurus was even shorter at 20 ft (6 m) long. Despite its larger size Deltadromeus appears to have maintained a rather sleek figure; its muscle mass and body mass have been estimated to be average for a theropod of its size but minimal enough that the body appears to have been fairly agile, hence the specific epithet agilis. Such a physique also influenced the name Deltadromeus, meaning "Delta Runner", as the agile yet powerful hindlimbs seem to have been specially adapted for speed. Given what appear to be weak hands, in terms of grasping, it makes sense that speed rather than grappling with the hands would be an important predatory trait of this dinosaur. However, we are missing the skull and many clues could potentially lie in the structure of the cranium. Taking cues from other members of the ceratosauria, we may assume that the jaws of this animal were not its strongest feature; the long and slender teeth found in many ceratosaurs indicate weaker bite force potential. We may also make the assumption that Deltadromeus may have had small family units or mate pairs that hunted together, as this idea has been put forth with regard to Ceratosaurus hunting techniques. However, since we do not have either the hand claws or teeth of Deltadromeus, and we also lack evidence of pairing, we cannot for certain say whether it would have sliced at prey with hands or teeth and that mystery creates a large void in what we know of the biology of Deltadromeus. Hopefully, as with all fossil animals, there will be future expeditions and discoveries so that we have more definitive proof how Deltadromeus hunted.
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Fossil for Sale

June 27, 2013, 9:11 am
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The arguments for and against the sale of fossils are all over the map; much like any other debate ranging from guns to religious freedom and beyond. Deltadromeus is one of those dinosaurs that have teeth for sale online. Despite anyone's stance on fossil ownership, that is pretty interesting. The teeth are expensive as well. Considering that a skull has yet to be found it raises a few eyebrows and important questions the most important of which is probably something akin to "How do we know that they belong to Deltadromeus?" Apparently the authenticity paper that comes with the teeth is proof enough for some people, but without a skull I am a bit skeptical. If we did not know what a dachshund's teeth looked like I could pull a retriever's tooth and sell it as a genuine dachshund tooth. Enough of that though, bring on the video game dinosaurs!

Spore creators are some of my favorite people these days. They always have the dinosaur we are talking about. They are not always the best models ever, but they are gallant efforts usually and generally are fairly good representations. Some are off a bit; today I found a Deltadromeus that looked like it had been lifting weights the past 100 million years. There is also the hyperactive version shown on the episode of Dinosaur King shared earlier this week. The same animation appears in the Dinosaur King video game and on the cards used in the "analog" version of the game. Toys and books, video games, fossils for sale; Deltadromeus is actually a very popular African dinosaur though its name is less well known than some other dinosaurs.
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Tidal Giants

June 28, 2013, 10:01 am
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©Dmitry Bogdanov
In the Bahariya Formation of Egypt in the early 1900's Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach was a prolific discoverer of dinosaurs. In 2001 Joshua Smith et al. named a tetrapod, the first discovered in the area since 1935, after Stromer. They named this supersized sauropod Paralititan stromeri (meaning Tidal Giant). The humerus of Paralititan measures approsimately 5.54ft (1.69m) making it the longest sauropod humerus discovered thus far. The total length, based off of the skeletal remains, is about 85ft (26m). Giant humeri and a long body placed body mass estimates at approximately 59 tonnes. This weight places Paralititan into a weight range like that of modern Right Whales. The skeleton was discovered in a tidal mangrove area; fossil mangrove remains were discovered near the remains of the skeleton as well. Mangrove biomes are not typically rife with herbivorous fossil animal remains, making Paralititan one of the few, and perhaps only, herbivores evidenced to have lived in a mangrove shoreline area.

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Planets of Dinosuars

June 29, 2013, 1:18 pm
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Screen capture from Planet Dinosaur
Models of Paralititan and illustrations have been made by many different artists. In all of these images one thing is similar regardless of the artist; Paralititan is a supremely large dinosaur. Large sauropods are fairly uniform in their depiction. Over time things have changed, as with other dinosaurs, such as the removal of sauropods from the swamps and altering the feet on both hindlimb and forelimb. Paralititan, as an illustrated dinosaur, missed a great deal of these incorrect versions since it was only unearthed, described, and named fairly recently. As such, it appears like many other sauropods, particularly the other titanosaurs that it is related to, in illustrations, computer models, and statue representations. One thing that Paralititan does tend to reverse in terms of modern illustration is the habitat in which it lived. The swampy habitats of the past have been generally forgotten and abandoned, but Paralititan, in life, lived in mangrove friendly areas. Essentially, this means that Paralititan lived along shores and, potentially, in swampy estuarine environments.
Illustrator unknown
The trouble and terror of living near a shore is that there are terrible threats not only on land, often in the form of Carcharodontosaurus, but also in the water. The Tethys Ocean at the time of Paralititan's existence was filled with sharks and giant reptiles including, close to shore, large crocodiles.Though large crocodiles probably would not have been able to pick off and drown the largest Paralititan adults, juveniles and sub-adults were probably on the menu. Crocodiles have not picked a new way to hunt or kill in hundreds of millions of years and thus the takedown of something large like a gnu was probably somewhat similar, though obviously scaled down many times over, to the takedown of a Paralititan. This illustration shows that attack being carried out and, scavenging of an already dead Paralititian can be seen in the middle ground on the right side by some feathered friends of the crocodiles.
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Gentle Paralititan

June 30, 2013, 7:32 am
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Sauropods are typically depicted as gentle giants. They were probably as aggressive as any modern animal toward a threat, but like many modern herbivores they were probably a little calmer than their predators. The depictions of certain dinosaurs as gentle giants goes a long way toward making them more kid friendly animals. That friendly image goes a long way, as can be evidenced by the number of kid friendly information pages. These pages range from public institutions to "citizen science" entries (like what we do here technically) to education dedicated sites; some of these are dinosaur centered sites. Regardless of the type of site there is a wealth of information out there to be found on Paralititan; some of it is duplicated between sites, but that is not a big deal. In terms of something to color for today there is nothing official to be used. Today would be a good day to play outside with some toys though. Playing in my limestone driveway when I was little was what really got me into fossils as there were bits of shell and other items in the rocks of my driveway all the time. Why not send the kids out to play in the wonderful weather, and if you do not have a fossil laden driveway, take some toys out!
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Paralititan Planet

July 1, 2013, 11:15 am
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I suppose we cannot really say they owned the planet, though they did take a pretty big space in it, considering that they were rather enormous dinosaurs. Paralititan is a somewhat minor character in Planet Dinosaur's episode "New Giants". Due to this and the fact that the BBC regulates what can be seen in America online (certain countries are denied the ability to view clips on the BBC's website), it is pretty hard to find a quality clip from the show to share here today. There are some substandard clips (recorded from the television, not recorded on television) out there as well as tribute videos. There are wireframe models out there available for purchase that are shown in videos, but they are not that great overall. If you happen to catch any re-airings of Planet Dinosaur or live in a country where clips are allowed by the BBC check that out, if not, you may just have to make due with the second hand recording of Paralititan to see it on video.
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The Mangrove Swamp

July 2, 2013, 7:02 am
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Stromer collected a lot of vertebrates in the early part of the 20th century in North Africa's Bahariya Formation. Included in these totals were fish and turtles, plesiosaurs, Spinosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Bahariyasaurus, Aegyptosaurus, and a number of crocodiles. Sadly, it is popularly known that Stromer's collections were mostly destroyed in Munich during World War II. That probably made comparison between Aegyptosaurus and the newly discovered Paralititan difficult if not impossible; the extent of the casts and any other remains of Aegyptosaurus are unknown to myself and the description of Paralititan does not expressly describe Aegyptosaurus in comparison. That said, the describing article (hosted at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History website) announcing Paralititan is rather short at 3 total pages including references and images (one page of text without images approximately), and does not include the character states coded for on the first page. Paralititan, regardless, is missing a large number of characters, but the remains also contain a respectable amount of characters as well; enough to assuredly assign Paralititan to the titanosaurids. National Geographic, which has written many stories pertaining to African dinosaurs within the last 15 years or so, mentioned Paralititan briefly in a 2007 article as well. The neatest part of that issue is the poster I got from it that is now hanging in my school office. The image of Paralititan from that poster is pictured here.

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Kafka Distractions

July 3, 2013, 9:27 am
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You know you want a hug too.
When I went to search for things to talk about this morning here I got distracted by Kafka's doodle on Google. I thought I should share that I love that doodle. Anyhow, what about Paralititan's minimalist remains is exciting? The most stunning bit of anatomy is, of course, the rather significant humerus that has been discovered. The humerus was about 5.54 feet tall; if you know me personally imagine the "upper arm" of a dinosaur that is the same height as me. Assuming nearly equal distance of the lower forelimb and throwing in a healthy estimate of height (top to bottom) of the relaxed foot, we are looking at a dinosaur that possibly had a shoulder that was nearing 13 feet in height; those estimations are my own and not highly scientific so please do not quote me in an argument with your friends over dinosaur size. The other thing that is most interesting about Paralititan is that, as much as people the past twenty years and more have been fighting the popular image of dinosaurs in swamps with more and more evidence, this is a dinosaur that lived in mangrove territory. Mangroves are a fairly swampy, or at least estuarine, group of trees. That makes Paralititan a swampy dinosaur. At least for times during its life anyhow.
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In the Know

July 4, 2013, 8:58 am
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Paralititan is famous friends. So it would appear anyhow. Paralititan shows up as Spore creations, toys, video game bits, in documentaries (a pretty good synopsis here of the Planet Dinosaur episode), and in many other artistic ventures (one of my favorites: Paleo-King's illustration). Some of the best Paralititan videos are shown below:

Paralititan as a Spore creature. Well done overall, however the butt is way up in the air, which is a rather strange orientation any dinosaur, though a hadrosaur walking as a quadruped approaches this level of butt-in-air.

A small short made with video game models and some clever steering of the camera. Not bad given what was available to the creator of this short video. It does get a little choppy at times.


The last video is simply a review of dinosaur models. Camera work is a bit everywhere, but YouTube has kind of made everyone a potential director so some of the video makers forget to be cameramen before directors. The fact that this kid is this into dinosaurs makes everything okay with me though.
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The Mountains of Jura

July 5, 2013, 7:09 am
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The Jura Mountains of Germany yielded one of the smallest dinosaurs we know. Thought to be a juvenile due to its miniscule size, Juravenator starki, is a 75 cm long coelurosaurian theropod dating to approximately 150-152 million years ago. Remember that naming new species from juveniles is not generally advised considering the growth series and life histories of many dinosaurs have altered many species' positions as well as names in years past. However, sometimes all we have to go on originally is a juvenile specimen and sometimes it is different enough to justify a new species. Additionally, this could just be a very small dinosaur; without other specimens at this time it is harder to assert the age of the animal. I kind of hope it is a full grown animal because it would be like the lap dog of dinosaurs (though I do not like lapdogs a lapdog dinosaur would be fantastic). Jurassic Bavaria, along with the rest of the European continent, was a much more tropical environment with many more miles of coastline than are now present on the continent; mostly due to the fact that many of the landmasses that would become Europe were underwater and a lot of islands dotted the Tethys Ocean. Juravenator was a coastal predator and scavenger. Covered in very primitive feather-like structures and extensively scaled (evidence for these assertions are found on impressions around the tail), Juravenator appears to exhibit a very basal position in terms of dinosaur feathering witnessed in other compsognathids. Juravenator is also thought to be a nocturnal animal, as detailed in comparisons of the sclerotic rings to those of living birds have shown.

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What Does a Tiny Hunter Look Like?

July 6, 2013, 11:46 am
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As I mentioned yesterday, Juravenator is thought to be a juvenile specimen, indicating that the miniscule size of the specimen is not the full adult size of the animal. I still happen to think that this a very sad thing because a teeny dinosaur like this would be pretty fantastic. At barely half a meter from tip to tail having a Juravenator for a pet would be a pretty good reality (and given the exotic nature of some pets a high probability scenario) if they were still alive and the juvenile turned out to be an adult. The problem with not having an adult of course is that it may turn out that this juvenile might be freshly hatched and only 1/5 or maybe even 1/10 the size of an adult, perhaps less even. What would something this size, regardless of adult or juvenile status, living on the coast of the Tethys Ocean eat? One obvious answer, for any carnivorous or omnivorous animal living on a shoreline is fish, whether hunted or scavenged. Scavenging for a coastal predator means nearly anything that washes up in a state that is edible becomes fair game for dinner and competition amongst the predators that find it. Additionally, other scavengers, mammals, young from many other types of animals (or their own kind perhaps), and perhaps even vegetation may have been on the menu as well.

The skull of Juravenator, though a little crushed, preserved a lateral view of the mouth quite well. All indications by the teeth concerning diet point to a pretty voracious little carnivore. The teeth are fairly thin front to back and a fair number of the larger teeth curve backwards, a design that we know aids in retention of prey items as well as in slicing material. Those teeth that are not curved backwards appear to point straight down and have nearly the same front to back thickness as those that are curved backwards. These different teeth may be due to preservational issues or they may have been used in a different manner; however, preservational bias seems to be the more accurate answer as some of these differently shaped teeth also appear to be slightly damaged. If, however, they were used for a different purpose, it appears that that purpose would be to anchor the jaw, as though for gripping, rather than slicing or holding down onto live prey. That sort of mechanism would only be really useful to a predator that was using its hands or feet to tear at meat and more than likely it would rather use hands and feet together; this is why deformation of the teeth in preservation seems a more likely explanation.
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Juravenator, Kid Sized Dinosaur

July 7, 2013, 6:50 am
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The image at the top of the Natural History Museum of London's fact page makes for a fairly good coloring page, though it is quite small and blowing it up may blur some of the lines. Not much else has been created solely for children in regards to Juravenator. That is sad news. The fact about this dinosaur is that it is small and though well known from the specimen that has been recovered from the ground, is not very popular. A life size replica would be little more than a toy, so most model companies that make dinosaurs have not made a replica of the little dinosaur, which rules out statues. Toy manufacturers may simply not be aware of the small animal or may have decided that there was no demand for such an unrecognized dinosaur in their toy market. Regardless of the reasons, Juravenator makes up a very tiny amount of child-friendly knowledge of dinosaurs.
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Comprehensive Views

July 8, 2013, 9:36 am
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This video shows a rather comprehensive series of shots of the preserved skeleton and also shows some illustrations. Some of the labels are a little odd and there is no explanation at all of what each part of the animal is, does, or why it is important that it has been preserved. Additionally, some elements are zoomed in on without any mention of anatomical position, making their purpose, without the details of purpose written out, cryptic at best for the uninformed. Why start with such a video? Because it is extensive in what it looks at on the preserved specimen of Juravenator and it is not a cartoon or computer graphic but focused shots of the actual skeleton. It is also being highlighted today because there are no other videos, not even tribute videos.
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Nothing for Free

July 9, 2013, 8:16 am
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©Nobu Tamura
There is never a free article when you want it. In fact, free articles are rare unless they are old enough that they have made it into the world of free press (i.e. out of copyright and online) or JSTOR happens to have the article available and that journal's contents have been purchased by someone or some institution that one has access to. Technically this article on Juravenator's phylogenetic relationships is free to me and many others, but only because we have paid the dues to be a part of the SVP. Abstracts for the description of the anatomy of Juravenator and the naming of the species and a more cursory look at the anatomy including interesting integument structures are available as well. The in depth anatomy paper is probably quite interesting for anyone with an anatomical leaning or preference. I am going to try to get a hold of it somehow, because I like reading about anatomy.
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Toes in Sand

July 10, 2013, 8:58 am
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The toes of Juravenator are dinosaur toes for certain. Are they adapted to a life on a coastal shore and treading in the sand and mud? We cannot tell for certain because we do not have clear imprints of the integument surrounding those toes. The claws at the ends of the toes, however, are not exactly beachwear that would facilitate long walks or even short jaunts and sprints. The tail is where the feather/scale argument is centered. The integument traces preserved here indicate scale presence as well as the presence of some protofeather-like traces. The overall indications of the posterior half of the body of Juravenator indicate that it was not extremely well adapted to a sandy shore and that it was at the basal end of the feather scale if it indeed possessed any true feathering. Due to the lower adaptivity to the sand it probably visited the sand, but did not spend the majority of its time exactly at the shoreline.
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Happy to Visit

July 11, 2013, 10:12 am
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Juravenator, while not the most popular dinosaur, has made its presence known in video games, which is something of a marvel these days. I have never personally heard of this game until today, somehow, but it looks as though it would be pretty nifty and dinosaur-iffic. The only drawback I really see is that it looks a little slow paced, but that could just be the way it was being played. Juravenator also appears in a few dinosaur books, such as the Princeton Field Guide by Paul, where fishing is indicated as part of diet (we never mentioned that this week!), and Feathered Dinosaurs: The Origin of Birds by John Long. A very nifty illustration of Juravenator is also present in Martyniuk's Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and Other Winged Dinosaurs; though there is not an entry on Juravenator itself, this wonderful piece appears in the opening chapter of text. I do not think I have mentioned that book much, but as a bird and dinosaur lover I have to say I really enjoy the "field guide-ness" of the book and that his style of illustration is pretty refreshing compared to many other illustrators out there that seem to emulate each other here and there.
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Dinosaurs that Start with the Letter Z

July 12, 2013, 12:08 pm
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©Mariana Ruiz Villareal
Two species of dinosaur, one originally in the genus Mochlodon, belong in a Z genus. Those dinosaurs are Zalmoxes robustus and Zalmoxes shqiperorum (do not ask me how to pronounce that please). The generic name comes from the Dacian city of Zalmoxis. For my human history deficient friends, Dacia was a region in the Carpathian mountains, now part of quite a few countries including Romania and the Ukraine, between the Tisa and Danube rivers inhabited by a people called the Dacians by the Romans who practiced a religion called Zamolxism, which got its name from Zalmoxis the chief god of the religion who had a city named after him. Essentially, then, the name Zalmoxes, is a tribute to a Dacian city and god. The specific epithets, Z. robustus and Z. shqiperorum, carry the meanings "robust" as in the robust build of the skeleton and the Albanian word for Albania (Shqiperia) respectively. The dinosaurs we are looking at are small, squat rhabdodontid iguanodonts; they were somewhere between a buff looking hypsilophodont with a thick powerful jaw and a basal iguanodont. The two species have different adult sizes withZ. robustus measuring in at about 7 to 10ft (2 to 3m) and Z. shqiperorum at 13 to 15ft (4 to 4.5m). The size was of Z. robustus was attributed to the wonderful spectacle of insular dwarfism, which we have discussed previously in this blog.
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Rakes for Hands, Giant Heads

July 13, 2013, 5:00 am
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Cast in Brussels, photo by Ghedo
Some inconceivable reason caused the curators of the Museum of Natural History in Brussels to take a rather nice cast of the rhabdodontid dinosaur Zalmoxes and give it rakes for hands and feet. A great deal of the skeleton of this genus, spread over two Romanian species and, potentially, a third Austrian species, is well known, but this does not include fore and hind feet. Despite this, enough is known of the rhabdodontid iguanodonts that a reasonably educated guess could have been easily made for the casting of this skeleton. Regardless, we can get a sense of the overall dimensions and lay out of the skeleton of these species by looking at this cast. The scapulae are rather slender and long, which is pretty interesting and the skull is a triangle of sturdy thick bones with a fairly nice dental battery found inside the mouth. The skull truly sets Zalmoxes apart from many other dinosaurs and as such, we will definitely be looking at that in a moment.

Attributed to Anky-Man
The skull, if not the skeleton, of Zalmoxes, is quite robust. Muscles would have create a fairly good bite force, but in all likelihood the main manner of getting energy out of its food would have been through a lot of grinding of the dental battery. The mouth, and it is always up in the air when discussing this, may have been enclosed in a flap of cheek to help in chewing plant matter. A cheek is instrumental in holding vegetation in the mouth during mastication; without a cheek your food would mostly end up falling out onto your favorite t-shirt unless you held it in there with your hands. The skull of Zalmoxes is very iguanodontid in overall shape and form, but it is small and, given the size, more robust than seems necessary for this dinosaur. Perhaps, if insular dwarfism is responsible for the small stature of this dinosaur, the head was the last part of the body to begin to "shrink" through successive adaptations. However, maybe there was a significant bonus to possessing a large tough cranium in Zalmoxes environment.

©Vlad Codrea (via MSNBC)
Those big heads must have been used for something, right? Then again, they could have been mistakes or slow to adapt to the island life. Zalmoxes is thought to have "suffered" from something called progenesis. The main thing to understand about progenesis is that it is a developmental acceleration of life. A rhabdodont that took five years to achieve maturity and then lived another 30 years or so may have been perfectly normal but the same animal, under the effects of progenesis, may have matured in a year or less and only lived between five and 10 years total. Progenesis is not a disease so much as it is an adaptive reaction to an external stimulus that, over generations, forces animals to breed faster in order to sustain population and pass on genetic information. Insular lives may have caused just such a thing to occur and the adaptations of dwarfism as well as progenesis together may well have been enough to cause those sturdy crania of Zalmoxes to stand out as much as they do if they did not do so on account of a beneficial adaptation for large crania. Perhaps we will have a definitive answer to this query soon.
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