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Children and Dwarf Dinosaurs

July 14, 2013, 5:00 am
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Science for Kids has a pretty good fact page going for Zalmoxes. It is a bit short, but it gets the important information out there quick and in an easily readable way. Additionally, I found a pretty sweet puzzle site that is any age friendly. You can make the pieces any size you want from a 12x12 puzzle down to a 2x2 puzzle. That means you, or your child/nephew/niece/sibling, can customize the puzzle to fit yours, or their, skill abilities. Pretty nifty if you ask me. Seeing as how you can create your own puzzles on that site, be prepared for more Sunday kid friendly posts with dinosaur puzzles! This will help a lot for dinosaurs that are not as popular. Also, when you are done with your puzzles and reading your facts, here are a couple of coloring pages worth all kinds of time and fun to color and detail!


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No One in Motion

July 15, 2013, 5:00 am
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Zalmoxes does not appear in motion pictures, short or full length, animated or computer graphics. There is an alphabet video that mentions Zalmoxes in the Z slot of the alphabet; there really are not too many dinosaur choices in the Z slots of the alphabet. Dinosaur Train's A to Z episode does not use Zalmoxes, sadly for us; I know everyone wants to see the Dinosaur Train song again and again. Zalmoxes, and the other Transylvanian island dinosaurs that have been discovered, truly do deserve their own documentary. Some day this will certainly happen. It has not so far and thus I have nothing to share in terms of video today, unfortunately.
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Papers of the Zalmoxes

July 16, 2013, 5:00 am
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Zalmoxes, the poor unfortunate "unusual Euornithopod" has had some osteological and phylogenetic study done on it. That 2003 study by Weishampel, Jianu, Csiki, and Norman was the landmark paper that renamed Rhabdodon robustus as Zalmoxes robustus and identified a second species as Zalmoxes shqiperorum. Thankfully Dr. Weishampel is nice enough to host his own papers so we can read the entire paper, all 59 pages, of the in depth anatomical description of Zalmoxes and how it differs, and is thus officially distanced, from Rhabdodon. The matrices and characters are included, which is always nice to have, so that the systematists amongst us can really look at the characters that were analyzed. The osteology of newer specimens has also been discussed, this time only for Z. shqiperorum though. The 2009 paper discusses a new fossil site in Transylvania, Romania and the specimens of Z. shqiperorum that had been unearthed from that location.
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The Island Life

July 17, 2013, 1:08 pm
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Depending on the specific species, the size of the Zalmoxes differs greatly. Z. shqiperorum was the largest species and could grow up to four and a half meters long. However, the smallest, Z. robustus, would only grow up to three meters long. Z. robustus was thought to be so much smaller than the Z. shqiperorum because of insular dwarfism. Insular dwarfism was the theory that large animals evolved by decreasing in size when the food sources are limited due to lack of land mass. Since Zalmoxes lived on islands, they were said to evolve over generations by decreasing in size so they would not need to eat as much plant matter. This allowed for Zalmoxes to continue to populate and also have lots of available food.

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What A Strange Little Dinosaur

July 18, 2013, 10:45 am
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Zalmoxes lacks a lot of popular culture references we have seen on the internet. It did feature in some news stories back when it was renamed and a little afterwards. Zalmoxes has warranted enough looks that it has been detailed by the Natural Museum of History in London on a fact page also. However, as we have seen, it did not manage to ascend to documentary dinosaur status as yet and has also not been portrayed as a model or toy dinosaur to my knowledge at this date. Zalmoxes has made its name in World of Warcraft as an item, as have many other dinosaurs. Apparently it is represented by a robe that players can acquire on a once previously mentioned landscape within the game. Sadly, that is where that popularity ends for Zalmoxes. A greater number of dwarfed dinosaurs from Transylvania are being discovered these days and that will pique interest in someone soon enough I am sure to warrant the creation of a documentary or toys or something else that gets the name out there more.
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From Colorado to Portugal

July 19, 2013, 7:56 am
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©Davide Bonadonna
First and foremost, many thanks to my sister Anna for taking over last week while I was in the field helping a colleague trap mice and avoid rattlesnakes. If you did not notice a difference, that means she did a fantastic job, right? Kudos to the author and artist to be!

This week I have a monster of a dinosaur for us. Obviously, in sticking with my typical rotation, we are going to look at a predator this week, and not just any predator, but one that has been discovered in both Colorado and Portugal in varying stages of life including as an egg and is a fearsome predator of the late Jurassic. Larger than most of its contemporaries, including most Allosaurus individuals, Torvosaurus tanneri was a forced to be reckoned with. Three clawed hands and massive jaws were supported by a robust torso and well muscled and strong legs in this megalosaur. This "savage lizard" was between 30 and 26ft (9 and 11m) long and probably weighed nearly 2.2 tons (2 metric tons). The Portuguese specimen is the largest discovered meaning that the eastern counterparts of the Colorado specimens were either slightly larger overall or that the Colorado specimen may be a younger individual than the Portugal specimen. The Portuguese Torvosaurus rivals T. rex's skull and is much larger than any other Jurassic age predator while the Colorado material is slightly smaller than Allosaurus/Saurophaganax and another animal known as Edmarka (which may be synonymous with Torvosaurus).
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Key Features of Torvosaurus

July 20, 2013, 9:27 am
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The natural conclusion to yesterday's art by Davide Bonadonna
Torvosaurus differs from many other North American and European giants in a number of ways. Obviously the European material from Portugal did not undergo the adaptations witnessed in other European dinosaurs that are the results of insular dwarfism (as so recently discussed both last week and in the discussion of Balar bondoc). In North America the material gathered in Colorado and elsewhere, including potential material from Wyoming and Utah, was slightly smaller than or equal to the largest predators found in the west as contemporaries of Torvosaurus; "savage lizard" sounds a little more fearsome than "different lizard" (Allosaurus) but a little less fearsome than "lizard-eating master" (Saurophaganax) and so is nestled in both size and fantastic nature of name nicely in the middle of its contemporaries. Physically there were also many differences between this megalosaurid and its allosaurid contemporaries preserved in the fossil remains; no good "mummifications" exist for all of these contemporaries to my knowledge that would allow for extensive soft anatomy comparison.

Skeleton at the North American Museum of Ancient Life (Thanksgiving Point, Lehi, UT), photo courtesy of user Ninjatacoshell
The teeth of Torvosaurus are impressive, though not completely definitive of the genus or the family. Some of the skeletal markers that make it different from its contemporaries include the length of its ilia and pubic bones as well as lack of ornamentations on specific areas of the skull such as the lacrimal ridges (a bone of the "face" near the antorbital fenestra and nasal bones). Allosaurus, especially in the past few years, has been depicted with rather prominent nasal, orbital, and lacrimal ridges of bone and soft tissue, particularly the latter. Megalosaurids, such as Torvosaurus, show no evidence of ornamentation along these bones and it is assumed that the lack of ornamentation in the bone was a precursor for a lack of ornamentation of soft tissue in those areas. The skulls of the two dinosaurs are also different in overall size and length with Torvosaurus possessing a longer nasal bone that creates more solid bone area between the nares and antorbital fenstra than is found in the more rounded off and shortened muzzle of Allosaurus. Fore and hindlimbs of Torvosaurus are somewhat like those of Allosaurus; both have three clawed hands as well as feet. The claws of Torvosaurus appear slightly larger and stronger, but I have not seen a documented study to support this at the current time.
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Torvosaurus Educates, Does Not Eat, Children

July 21, 2013, 9:52 am
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We know if Torvosaurus were alive today it would not differentiate between adults and children in its diet, but we can assume that today it will only educate children rather than eat them. Doing so are the nice webmasters of Educated Learning in both abbreviated and detailed fact pages, the well written blog of Brian Switek, and a page on Dinosaur Jungle. Additionally, there is a rather fun educational video from HooplaKidz TV, which we have used before here, that depicts an animated Torvosaurus describing herself and just generally being entertaining. In terms of actual coloring pages today, there are none for Torvosaurus; our first missing link, so to speak, of the day. There are quality images that would make good coloring sheets, but they are the property of their artists and are not meant for coloring, so if anyone out there wants to color them in they need to be sure to ask the permission of the artists before using their works.
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Torvosaurus on the Little Screen

July 22, 2013, 8:41 am
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Torvosaurus is one of those dinosaurs that was chosen to appear in the short series Dinosaur Revolution. The reviews on Dinosaur Revolution are mixed, but I feel that an educated mind can see both the fantasy of Hollywood as well as the science and take things with a grain of salt while doing their own research to double check the facts; though I know that the majority of the world does not double check facts of television shows and I am perhaps a little idealistic when it comes to assuming that people watching documentaries further research that which they see on television. As is sometimes done with television, the Torvosaurus and an Allosaurus in the episode are given immensely constructed and complex back stories, somewhat anthropomorphizing the dinosaurs. The Torvosaurus is portrayed as the more evil or bad of the two and sympathy is created for the Allosaurus and, in the way of many documentaries and shows with animals that are characterized in human ways, the "bad guy" ends up being run off or dies; like I stated before, there is a grain of salt approach to watching shows like this. Regardless, there are two relevant clips for today from the episode that show a model of Torvosaurus in action. The first is above and depicts the supposed battle between a Torvosaurus and an Allosaurus. The second is sort of a montage of Torvosaurus hunting sauropods called Dinheirosaurus.


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Torvosaurus Gets Inked

July 23, 2013, 11:59 am
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©Dmitry Bogdanov
Torvosaurus has been mentioned in a few studies. Obviously the paper naming the dinosaur describes Torvosaurus; that should be understood without having to be said.What does exist additionally, though, is very nice in the way of research and additional materials to learn more about Torvosaurus. The Portuguese find of Torvosaurus is well documented as is its attribution to the genus Torvosaurus; at a page and a half it is also concise and gets quickly and directly to the point of comparing the Portuguese tibia to other dinosaurs discovered in Portugal as well as the Colorado material of Torvosaurus. James Jensen, one of the original authors, further described Torvosaurus and the contemporary fauna in a paper on Uncompaghre dinosaur fauna (Uncompaghre is the 6th tallest peak  in Colorado and the formation refers to plateau area around the peak as well). Jensen's paper on the fauna of the formation is short but concise and, as such, is not heavily detailed but does provide a good overview of Torvosaurus' neighbors and landscape. Additionally, Jensen raises the family Torvosauridae in this paper.
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Welcome to Wednesday

July 24, 2013, 11:58 am
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Nathan Eldon Tanner probably never expected to have a dinosaur named after him. He did, however, and it just happened to be one of the largest predators of the Jurassic that happens to have had material located on two continents. Torvosaurustanneri is a pretty interesting dinosaur for reasons other than its linked history via its name with the Church of Latter Day Saints. The Portuguese material attributed to Torvosaurus consists of a single tibia; that is some pretty distinctive bone matter to be able to be attributed to a species from another continent based entirely on that sole fragment of an entire living being. Colorado material is slightly more substantial, obviously, given that the animal was described and possesses enough characters to not only definitively differentiate from other North American Jurassic predators but also to warrant a proposal to elevate its status to that of a principal family. Torvosaurus was, as the flora and fauna discovered in and around the area in which Torvosaurus was discovered in Colorado, a predator that lived near rivers, wetlands, and an alkaline lake (Portuguese data of the habitat of Torvosaurus is not known in full at this time). All kinds of animals and plants were discovered in the Dry Mesa Quarry of Montrose County Colorado (along the border of Colorado and Utah). Studies of the channel flow velocity and deposition of bones in the dry Mesa Quarry have been done, but at the moment I do not have the data that shows where within the channel Torvosaurus material was discovered. It appears that predator remains are concentrated in the lower velocity areas of the channel flow, according to the study.
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The Saddest Day

July 25, 2013, 7:32 am
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Taken from dinosaurjim.com, which was taken from elsewhere. If anyone knows the original illustrator please let me know. It may be based off of Scott Hartman's skeleton, but it is not the one he has posted on his site.
In one of the most miserable turns of popularity for a dinosaur, Torvosaurus was reignited in the public imagination recently when a Torvosaurus nest was announced as having been discovered in Portugal in 2005. The nest and the scientific importance of such a find aside, it was a sad discovery as well. Not only were their crushed eggs in the nest but there were also embryonic/hatchling bones in the mix. The discovery did paint an amazing portrait of the evolutionary position of Torvosaurus as a primitive theropod though. The Torvosaurus eggs were protected by a single layer of shell material whereas other dinosaurs create up double layer shells and birds typically lay eggs with three layers of shell. We have seen, though, that Torvosaurus was somewhat famous prior to this announcement; it did appear in a very key role in an episode of Dinosaur Revolution after all. It also appeared in cartoon form in Dinosaur King (4KidsTV did not post this episode but it is on YouTube anyway in a series of videos). The Dinosaur King card game has a fairly impressive assortment of Torvosaurus cards also. Toys exist as well, of course, as we expect with a well known dinosaur.
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Slide on Over Scelidosaurus

July 26, 2013, 6:46 am
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©Nobu Tamura
Armored dinosaurs are always fun to talk about. Lightly armored dinosaurs are sometimes even more interesting as they tend to possess a lot of intermediate and basal characteristics; not that fully armored dinosaurs do not sometimes exhibit such characteristics. The "limb lizard" Scelidosaurus (one species, Scelidosaurus harrisonii) is one such dinosaur from the Jurassic of England. Scelidosaurus is the titular animal of the family Scelidosauridae and is a basal member of the Thyreophora; this means that the family Scelidosauridae is on a lower branch than either the Ankylosauridae and Nodosauridae (collectively Ankylosauria) or the Stegosauridae. Scelidosaurus is one of the most basal and primitive Thyreophorans. At about 13 feet (4m) long it is also a very short and stocky animal, though not stocky enough to be considered "big" in terms of dinosaurs; its estimated weight is given in kilograms rather than tons as with most stocky and well built dinosaurs. The armor on this dinosaur is extremely primitive in terms of later members of its group as well, but it is somewhat protected for an early dinosaur of the Thyreophora. The hindlimbs are longer than the forelimbs also, giving it a very Stegosaur look and possibly the opportunity to rear up to graze above its quadrupedal height while on those longer hindlimbs.
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Scelidiosaurs Slide Show

July 27, 2013, 1:57 pm
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Nobu Tamura's updated Scelidosaurus
Yesterday I posted an image of a Scelidosaurus illustrated by Nobu Tamura and today is another version of Scelidosaurus by the same illustrator. He has changed the posture slightly, shortening the forelimbs a little and making the hindlimb to forelimb angle slightly deeper. With a slightly smaller head and plates of any kind on its back Scelidosaurus would certainly look very much like a typical stegosaur in the updated posture. The tail is lacking any form of spikes, but it does have smaller dermal nodules all along the tail along the top and two stripes down the side as well as a chevron-like ridge on the ventral side of the tail. While not much of a weapon, the tail could be used to deter predators if it had any moment gaining abilities. Its position and the structure of the skeleton do indicate some ability to move the tail with a little bit of speed and power, much like its descendants in both the Stegosauria and Ankylosauria.

Lyme Regis Museum, Dorset, England
The oldest posture models of Scelidosaurus, going back to O.C. Marsh, were much like many other dinosaurs of the past. Tail dragging and a splayed out posture were the expected and the normal postures of dinosaurs, including Scelidosaurus. The neck was stocky and fattened, but the head stayed nearly the same regardless of the model's origin or time space in time. Overall, as with many of the Crystal Palace and other 19th century statues, Scelidosaurus appeared to be an Iguana at the extremely odd end of the Iguana plastic toy spectrum. Notice that the hindlimb structure and the forelimb are slightly splayed and at nearly the exact some shoulder/hip level.
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Scelidosaurus May Confuse Younger Viewers

July 28, 2013, 6:35 am
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A reason that younger readers/viewers may get confused is that Scelidosaurus is a basal member of the group and therefore looks a bit like a stegosaur and a bit like an ankylosaur without being either. That said, there is no reason that the children of the world should not get acquainted with KidsDinos and Enchanted Learning. Additionally, they can color online or print out a copy of coloring pages on this site or the image shown below is also available.
Via Arthur's dinosaur clipart

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Moving Scelidosaurs

July 29, 2013, 8:51 am
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Scelidosaurus is not in any documentaries nor does it have any great influence in cartoons or many other forms of media. It does appear in one game, an educational game known as Dinosaur Safari (see below), but it does not even figure as a main animal there. There are quite a few animals in the game though, so it is good enough that it made the cut. It may look a little shoddy, but it is a bit older, and as such that is actually a pretty good looking game overall and I will not complain.
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When You're This Old...

July 30, 2013, 10:12 am
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People have written about Scelidosaurus and they have also studied it a lot. The older the dinosaur the more it has been studied would be a nice rule of thumb, but we know that is not the case. Regardless, this dinosaur does pretty well follow that ideal for a variety of reasons including its position as one of the most basal members of its group. Being the first complete dinosaur discovered had its advantages, such as the wonderfully in depth description provided by Owen in his 1863 publication A Monograph of the Fossil Reptilia of the Liassic Formations, Parts 1-3. He starts the discussion by noting that the skeleton available to him is a young Scelidosaurus and not an adult; this constitutes a very important distinction when considering the life histories of specimens. Owen was also using a lot of jumbled material, however, and a little over 100 years later, in 1968, B.H. Newman wrote a paper describing the lectotype of Scelidosaurus, Lydekker 1888 (a right knee joint/complex), as a megalosaur and calling for a new lectotype to be raised. He proposed that the skull and associated skeleton be placed as the lectotype in the place of Lydekker's lectotype. Newer research and discoveries have been conducted as well. In 2003, for instance, soft tissue was discovered and publicized in a Scelidosaurus find. Not as new, but still of great importance to the study of Scelidosaurus is the discovery of Scelidosaurus remains in Arizona in 1989, making Scelidosaurus not only one of the earliest complete dinosaurs discovered, but also one of the many that have been found in what, even during its lifetime, was a great range of lands and habitats.
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Completely Incomplete

July 31, 2013, 9:06 am
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Cast of the David Sole specimen.
Despite the 2000 discovery of what is known as the David Sole specimen of Scelidosaurus, there has not not been a modern description of Scelidosaurus. The David Sole specimen was discovered in England (though a cast is only on display in St. George, Utah) and is 7ft (2m) long and represents perhaps either a separate species or sexual dimorphism. This is because there is different dermal armor on the skeleton than has been discovered previously. All of the material previously was, in general, uniform in its coverings and skeleton itself. The soft tissue and Arizona discoveries along with the David Sole specimen cap off, at present, a long history of Scelidosaurus discoveries and research. They also add to an already extremely long and detailed list of knowledge about Scelidosaurus and add to that life history, which is always important to the understanding of any taxon extant or extinct. For instance, we know that Scelidosaurus had leaf shaped teeth capable and ready to crop vegetation and to puncture and crush its food rather than grinding it between teeth. We also know that, like its descendants Ankylosaurs and Stegosaurs, its armor was keeled on the dorsal sides and concave on the ventral sides. These scutes, we also know thanks to the soft tissue preservation in one of the later specimens, were covered by a layer of skin and that the amror was not on the outside of the skin.
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Almost Complete

August 1, 2013, 10:05 am
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Photos by Adam Stuart Smith and Stefan Schröeder, top to bottom
as seen on the Dinosaur Toy Blog
The most complete skeleton discovered in the British Isles is that of Scelidosaurus. It begs the question, then, why is Scelidosaurus not a little bit more popular, at least a little more anyhow? Illustrations have been quite numerous over the 150 years of Scelidosaurus' named existence in the knowledge of human beings, as have statues and other artistic visions (I am counting photographs of aforementioned art as well as models/toys) of the species. We can generalize and state that any really basic (i.e. dollar store) bag of dinosaurs has a small quadruped that we can say with some certainty represents Scelidosaurus; it could be attempting to represent a different but similar dinosaur, but when we are talking extra cheap dinosaur toys it almost does not matter what the model is supposed to be. There are, of course, good toys out there. There is also the one video game reference and there are books that mention Scelidosaurus, including kids books. Scelidosaurus is a fairly famous dinosaur with little popular fame, which is a bit sad when you think about it.

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Coelurus in the Afternoon

August 2, 2013, 11:46 am
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©Nobu Tamura
Some days we just have busy morning. Coelurus does not mind at all. As long as I get to introduce him to everyone I strongly doubt that Coelurus would care. The genus Coelurus consists of one species, Coelurus fragilis, though it does have two synonymous names; C. agilis and Elaphrosaurus agilis. Elaphrosaurus is a rather odd name, though it sounds interesting, and I for one am glad that it was the junior to Coelurus and not the other way around (Coelurus Marsh 1879 versus Elaphrosaurus Marsh 1884). Elaphrosaurus, just to avoid confusion, has been raised since that time (Janensch 1920) as an ceratosaurine genus; more about Elaphrosaurus in the future though. Meaning "hollow tail" Coelurus' description was a product of what has come to be called the "Bone Wars" of the 19th century between Marsh and Cope. As such, it was not given much thought after it was named and described. A full year of quarrying, September 1879 to September 1880, revealed many different aspects of the skeleton of Coelurus, but the passage of time and the disassociated elements lead to confusion and the misidentification of the remains as belonging to more than one species, thus the synonymy that is present now. Cope and Lydekker also named species of Coelurus, only to have them changed later to other genera; Cope redescribing the two Coelurus specimens he had named as belonging to Coelophysis and Lydekker's specimen being transferred to Thecospondylus. Thankfully, however, all of that misinformation and confusion has been cleared today and we recognize, and know, a single species of hollow-tailed fragile dinosaur as Coelurus fragilis.

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