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| ©Robinson Kunz |
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Beautiful Infographics
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About Marshosaurus
Marshosaurus is, as was stated previously, a charismatic dinosaur that has been somewhat neglected in popularity. As such, there are varied level of fact pages that are available. Quickly, though, the fact pages for the day that should be consulted are About, one of the dinosaur wikis, and a dinosaur data site I found today. This is a short entry, but there is a lot of information here and it is well organized, which is nice. In coordination with yesterday's illustration, today's information ir very nice and helpful.
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Movie-less-saurus
Movies are not in the wheelhouse of Marshosaurus as yet. Being a dinosaur that was discovered nearly 40 years ago there is still plenty of time. For the first time in a long time I actually can, and have to if I want to show a movie of it at all, share an illustration compilation set to music. Watch it, enjoy it, mute it if you have to!
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Literature Reviews
Madsen 1976 names and describes Marshosaurus bicentesimus and the location it was taken from in fairly nice detail. The paper also includes some nice photographs and illustrations of the bones being described. While Marshosaurus has been referenced and mentioned in numerous other papers regarding Megalosauroid phylogenetics as well as the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry, this paper is much more informative than those other papers. All of the recorded specimens up to 1976 are detailed in the Madsen paper. Despite being lower in quantity than some specimens, there are still quite a few substantial fossils attributed to Marshosaurus in the initial description. The publication in the journal Utah Geology probably did not help the popularity of the dinosaur, but it put it out there to be discovered by other scientists, which is most of the battle with some papers.
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More Phylogenies
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| Carnegie Museum of Natural History ©John St. James |
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Most Popular Outlet
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Desert Ankylosaur
In 2001 Vickaryous et al. named and described a somewhat small ankylosaur. The dinosaur was called Gobisaurus domoculus (Gobi Lizard, "hidden from view"). The name refers to the desert in which it was found and the specific epithet is a nod to the fact that the dinosaur was left in storage for almost 30 years after the Sino-Russian expeditions of the 1950's. The early 1990s saw the dinosaur come out of hiding as the Chinese and Canadian joint tour of Gobi fossils. The remains went on world tours during the 1990 to 1997 time period prior to the published description. The dinosaur is a somewhat typical ankylosaur, but there will be some information that needs to be mined to understand what makes it different from other ankylosaurs.
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Ankylosaur Head
The only remains that have been seen, for sure and to my knowledge, of Gobisaurus are partial cranial elements. The inferred body shape of Gobisaurus is comparable to the bodies of other early ankylosaurs. That, not too surprisingly, looks rather plain, or as plain as an armored dinosaur can look at any rate.
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| ©Andrey Atuchin |
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Kids Facts in the Desert
Gobisaurus is a dinosaur that has been overlooked for a good amount of time, not counting that first 30 years or so that it was ignored in a museum collection. It does not, therefore, have the best track record of websites either, but it does have a few good quality links that are of use to us. I am going to list them below rather than discussing each because unfortunately I was super busy yesterday all day and did not write this on time to post Sunday (the entry is backdated).
About: http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/herbivorousdinosaurs/fl/Gobisaurus.htm
Prehistoric Wildlife: http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/g/gobisaurus.html
Find the Data: http://dinosaurs.findthedata.com/l/341/Gobisaurus
About: http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/herbivorousdinosaurs/fl/Gobisaurus.htm
Prehistoric Wildlife: http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/g/gobisaurus.html
Find the Data: http://dinosaurs.findthedata.com/l/341/Gobisaurus
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Celluloid Nullified
Gobisaurus like so many other dinosaurs as of late on this blog has no movie. What is worse, it does not even have an illustrated slideshow or a crazy music video. There are hardly any illustrations of Gobisaurus either, to be perfectly honest about the predicament in which we find ourselves now. There will be papers tomorrow, but no movies today! One thing can be said today about Gobisaurus. The dinosaur was an early ankylosaur, but it was a large ankylosaur. The justification of the placement of the dinosaur is based almost entirely on the morphology of the pterygoids in relation to the dinosaur's teeth. I hope to get some good images of this for discussion on Wednesday.
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The Strangest Thing About Science
Quite possibly the worst thing about modern science is the fact that scientists get upset about public interpretations and conceptions of their work and the journals demand that the general public either pay for subscriptions to journals or pay prices like $50.00 per article. There are many different reasons that these things happen including publishing costs and intellectual properties rights, but the simplified version of the story is that people want their research stories told and not everyone can get access to them. Understanding of the science is a completely different topic, but is equally important, unfortunately it is part of bit of a vicious cycle. The point of all of that is that the remains of Gobisaurus that have been discussed as known cranial portion actually consist of a nearly complete skeleton, which has not been shown, photographed, or drawn out anywhere to my knowledge aside from the published description of the dinosaur. This sort of thing is neither unique or new, but it is a little sad that the dinosaur has not been properly shown to the public at any point in time because the images are shelved behind journal copyrights. Those that have access or want to purchase access are free to do so through the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, but sadly I cannot share images from the paper at this time.
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Modified and Borrowed
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Winding Down the Week
Gobisaurus is not the most popular dinosaur. Lost in the museums for a couple of decades and then described and again forgotten, it would seem, Gobisaurus is a very important dinosaur. A lot of the information about Gobisaurus is still not known. The more that we find out about it the more important the position and compiled information will become because it will enhance our knowledge of Chinese, ankylosaurian, and Cretaceous dinosaurs. Gobisaurus is another one of those dinosaurs that does not have a lot of popular outlets.
The popularity of many of the dinosaurs on the page in the last few weeks have been much lower and lacking in links than previous entries. Because of that, we are going to open our doors a little to even more paleo-fauna. This will cause us to rebrand a little bit. It will also force me to do a little bit more learning outside of my comfort zone. I am okay with this. I hope everyone here is okay with branching out from dinosaurs as well.
The popularity of many of the dinosaurs on the page in the last few weeks have been much lower and lacking in links than previous entries. Because of that, we are going to open our doors a little to even more paleo-fauna. This will cause us to rebrand a little bit. It will also force me to do a little bit more learning outside of my comfort zone. I am okay with this. I hope everyone here is okay with branching out from dinosaurs as well.
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First Deviation
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| Ernst Haeckel |
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Thanking Charles Knight
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| ©Charles R. Knight |
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Walking the Ocean Floor
More than likely we have the Walking With... series to thank for the popularity of a lot of non-dinosaur fossil taxa. This is mostly evident in the fact that the vast majority of fact pages, and there are a great many for eurypterids, that are out there refer to the Eurypterida as "sea scorpions". I mentioned on Friday that the term sea scorpion is a misnomer as these large predators were discussed as being distantly related to scorpions at best. The University of California Museum of Paleontology, however, notes that they are very closely related to arachnids (spiders as well as scorpions). The UCMP has a treasure trove of information on the eurypterids and makes a great source. Some other quality sources include a nice gallery of actual fossils on the Fossil Guy's website and BBC Nature's short blurb and two clip page that celebrates the use of the animals in their fossil taxa documentaries and fake nature shows (Nigel Marvin's shows are far more accurate than some other mockumentaries we can mention). There are so many varieties of eurypterids that covering all of them may not be plausible, but we also may not have a choice. Taxa like eurypterids are often, unfortunately, lumped together as an order or family and attempting to tease out genera and species is difficult and sometimes simply impossible. It does tend to give us a large number of images that can be used for entertainment (read: coloring!) such as this one:
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| Drepanopterus sp. |
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From Kokomo to London
The Indiana State Museum has a Eurypterid that has a story. The story starts with the organism, 140 million years ago, and takes a detour that lands it on a porch in Indiana for 30 years before the fossil found its way to the museum. The story is fantastic and interesting.
London, specifically the BBC, also has many stories concerning Eurypterids. We saw clips of them yesterday. There obviously more stories than those short clips. In that vein I encourage readers to find the Walking With... series but I also recommend this short video on Eurypterids that supplements information that can be learned from the BBC. This video, though, is not associated in any way, shape, or form with the BBC; it is actually an Animal Planet produced video.
London, specifically the BBC, also has many stories concerning Eurypterids. We saw clips of them yesterday. There obviously more stories than those short clips. In that vein I encourage readers to find the Walking With... series but I also recommend this short video on Eurypterids that supplements information that can be learned from the BBC. This video, though, is not associated in any way, shape, or form with the BBC; it is actually an Animal Planet produced video.
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Early Papers, Recent Papers
At the turn of the 20th century eurypterids were being described and re-described because they were still quite new to science. Descriptions like this Silurian description of a eurypterid by Malcolm Laurie is preserved as an abstract but shows all the makings of a classical description complete with anecdotal evidence. The actual article is not available online, but the abstract appears to be chock full of 19th century scientific goodness. The lack of that article's full text is compensated for by the vast expanse of articles available on the subject. The topics range from Ordovician evidence of book-lungs to paleoecology and moulting of carapaces. Ocean-going animals are more capable than many other taxa, save those traveling through mud, to leave behind trackways as ichnofossils. These have, of course, been studied in some detail when they have been found. How one species of sea scorpion trackway can be differentiated from another is a question for Braddy and Almond who studied the fossils in South Africa. One of the most interesting studies is one that centers on functional morphology. Braddy and Dunlop explore the mating of sea scorpions in the Silurian seas. Mating is always a topic of interest in science and inferences that can be made about mating in eurypterids, as with any ancient taxa, are an awesome topic simply waiting to be uncovered.
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What Is That Body?
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| Jaekelopterus rhenaniae |
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The Most Famous Fossils
Eurypterids, despite being a group and not a single organism, have been a fun set of discussions this week. We could easily venture into each species over a great length of time, and perhaps we can revisit some of them in the coming years. Until then though, enjoy the riches of eurypterida that has flowed out into the world thanks to their massive biomass in the fossil record and the Walking With series... probably moreso the second than the first. Regardless of where you turn, whether it is books, television, or the internet, everyone that loves eurypterids should own one of these:
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