Dino Paper
Zanno and Makovicky's 2013 Nature paper Neovenatorid theropods are apex predators in the Late Cretaceous of North America is pretty much the only paper that has been published on Siats meekerorum....
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What You're Made Of
Reading the description paper or watching the interview with Pete Makovicky allowed one to look at what fossil remains Siats is composed of. In terms of fossil discoveries, from Utah, Montana, China,...
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Adult or Juvenile Size?
Instead of a wonderful work of art this week, we will end this week with a size comparison of Siats and Siats. The fossil remains of Siats that have been discovered and analyzed indicate an animal...
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Same Hemisphere, Different Continent
©Nobu TamuraThe western hemisphere is not the only side of Earth where we find giants, but we do find a lot of them. Many of these giants come from the tropical Cretaceous of Patagonia, an era and land...
View ArticleOne Worthy Video
Perhaps because Futalognkosaurus is difficult to say, the titanosaurid sauropod has not appeared in any official film media. There are plenty of amateur images of displays from museums and other things...
View ArticleAnatomy of a Titan
When Calvo, et al. (2007) described the titanosaur Futalognkosaurus they knew that their animal was one of the most immense animals that ever lived and that it was big for a sauropod, which we can all...
View ArticleQuietly Documented
The turnaround time from fossil recovery to description for Futalognkosaurus is actually fairly standard. Discovered and recovered in 200 and described in 2007, Futalognkosaurus was only unknown to the...
View ArticleGiant Skeletons
One of the best skeletal reconstructions I have ever seen is that of Futalognkosaurus as illustrated by Nima Sassani. The image is enormous and I am going to link it here rather than describe the image...
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The Oldest Sea Turtle
©Jorge BlancoDesmatochelys is the oldest sea turtle known to science. Consisting of two species, D. lowii Williston 1894 and D. padillai Cadena and Parham, 2015, Desmatochelys is known mostly from...
View ArticleTurtle Facts
Desmatochelys is a somewhat popular turtle. Being the oldest known fossil sea turtle most likely only enhances the popularity of the fossil. However, the fossil has few fact pages and videos online....
View ArticleThe Turtle Papers
The history of Desmatochelys is a very well-documented one, with many of the fossils described and analyzed a variety of ways. Some of these descriptions of course include Williston 1894 and Cadena and...
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Turtle Bits Everywhere
The 2007 Colombian skeletons that were described by Cadena and Parham 2015 consisted of at least four individuals; four skulls that are either entirely or nearly entirely complete were among these...
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A Turtley Picture
A lot of images online are non-descript turtles; sometimes freshwater turtles manage to sneak into the search results for Desmatochelys. A number of unidentified, both artist and subject, turtles also...
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Gigantic Murderer
The Permian landscape was filled with enormous therapsids. As we have discussed in past entries (see Moschops), the therapsids are the group of synapsids that includes mammals and their descendants....
View ArticleThe Ancient Earth
I would like to start off today by admitting that I am an absolute sucker for documentaries about animals, not specifically fossil animals either, but animals in general. That is why, despite a large...
View ArticleTitanophoneus Written in Ink
Possessing teeth and bodies that were grotesque and enormous, by Permian standards at least, Titanophoneus has been the center of a few hypotheses (alongside Gorgonops) of how dinocephalians hunted and...
View ArticleSmug Titan
Titanophoneus was a dinocephalian therapsid. A group, as we have discussed, well on its way to possessing characteristics that we identify exclusively with mammals. It is interesting, then, that most...
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Return to the Favorites
JuraPark in Solec Kujawski, Poland. Image credit: CLI / CC BY-SA 3.0Because I have decided I want to, and because I am writing these entries, I have decided that this month is going to be a bit retro...
View ArticleHorns and Videos
The sheer number of videos that Triceratops has been featured in is absolutely astronomical; but I did warn yesterday that Triceratops is a huge fan favorite so this should certainly not be a surprise....
View ArticleTwo Papers Only?
The number of papers concerning Triceratops (and by proxy of synonymy, Torosaurus) is far beyond anything that could be shared here. The first posts on this site originated in the year following the...
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