July 1969
There are a number of events turning 50 this year. Paleontology is not left out of 50 year old events. One of the most important, in my opinion, is Bulletin 30 of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural...
View ArticleModern Dinosaurs
Since the description of Deinonychus by John Ostrom in 1969 the "dinosaur renaissance" that was kicked off by this paper and the hypotheses it generated, in part, has radically changed how we imagine...
View ArticleMore from 1969
More paleontological discoveries were made in 1969 than just Deinonychus, though that is certainly one of the most famous of dinosaurs. A supposed basal was also described during 1969 that turned out...
View ArticleNon-crocodilian Face
Holotype as depicted in von Baczko and Desojo, 2016The holotype skull of Riojasuchus is very non-crocodilian to the casual observer. Having previously been associated with a number of people interested...
View ArticleFossil Squirrels?
Good morning! What a wonderful morning it is! Punxsutawney Phil came out and told us all that spring is right around the corner, which is a very big deal. This is a North American "tradition" that was...
View ArticleTalk to me on Twitter!
Hello all!You're stuck at home. You're loved ones are stuck at home. I'm stuck at home. I'll be working on lectures and moving my class (and helping colleagues move online) all week. However, if you,...
View ArticleLong Distance Hugs
We could probably all use some kind of interaction from outside our family these days. While we cannot really pat one another on the back and continue social distancing, there are animals that could...
View ArticlePenguins Part I
Waimanu manneringi©Nobu TamuraWe know a lot about fossil penguins. Partly, this is because we have a fairly large number of fossils from penguins, which is a rarity for birds as a group in general....
View ArticlePenguins Part II
Inkayacu, was approximately the same size as Palaeeudyptes Fossil penguins were not always penguin "shaped", as we saw with Waimanu, but they became more distinctively penguin-like over time, as we...
View ArticleAn Exciting Opportunity
From the Facebook page of Julius Csotonyi:A twist! On Sunday, join me in a drawing lesson on a rare modern-day survivor of the last ice age: the arctic ground squirrel or ᓯᒃᓯᒃ (pronounced "siksik")...
View ArticleVegetarian Hammerheads
We typically write about dinosaurs here. We then branched into mammals at different points. We sometimes even talked about birds, small reptiles, varied reptiles (turtles, snakes, etc.), and amphibians...
View ArticleA Short Video for your Sunday
1) Minor correction, I had a typo in the name of Atopodentatus yesterday, it has been fixed though!2) Now, please enjoy some background info on the world of Atopodentatus and then some more on the...
View ArticleTwo New Faces
Two Atopodentatus restorations, both by Nobu Tamura. The first was produced shortly after the initial description was published and is, admittedly, quite terrifying in many ways. It turns out that this...
View ArticleOne More Head Post
In Luoping County in the Yunnan province of China in 2016 the newest fossil of Atopodentatus was discovered. That fossil, as we have seen, offered a very different perspective of the way that the jaws...
View ArticleHammerhead Body
The body of Atopodentatus is fairly unremarkable in reconstructions. Other than the hammerhead face of the animal, its body is something we would consider rather typical for a swimming marine reptile....
View ArticleDawn of Sharks
Regarded as the first genus of shark, Cladoselache is a group of 8 recognized species, all from North America. These sharks are commonly called "scaleless sharks". They retain many ancestral...
View ArticleThe Gilded Age of Hexanchus
The Devonian Era saw sharks developing and diversifying under the "rule" of larger armored fish like Dunkleosteus. Sharks diverged from their cousins, the Chimaeriformes, somewhere around the time of...
View ArticleCrushing it in the Cretaceous
Yesterday we went over a bit of the development of sharks and discussed an early group of sharks that has persisted since the dawn of recognizable sharks and their jaw arrangements. Today we are going...
View ArticleThe Cretaceous Sharp Nose
During the Cretaceous, when the crushing Ptychodus sharks were breaking open shells, sharks were often not the greatest predators in the neighborhood. They competed with plesiosaurs, tylosaurs, and...
View ArticleFreshwater Sharks
Growing up we often kept Rainbow sharks in aquaria. These streamlined pets were fast when they wanted to be and were fairly aggressive. They often jumped from out of the tanks as well. We stopped...
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