In our 181st episode, we got to chat with Ansley about her great dinosaur sculptures. You can see her work on her Instagram accounts ArtbyAnz and mcdansley or on Facebook at ArtbyAnz

Episode 181 is also about Archaeornithomimus an ornithomimosaur from Inner Mongolia that was mentioned in Jurassic World

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• A new spinosaur bone from Brazil shows evidence of aquatic behavior earlier than previously known (video link here)
• The skull of Ichthyornis was recreated from 3-D scans of several skulls from the 1870s and earlier
• Tumbler Ridge in British Columbia, Canada has closed after funding problems
• Dr. Mary Schweitzer is getting an award of excellence in paleontology from the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre
• In Utah, at Red Fleet State Park, visitors have been throwing pieces of dinosaur tracks into a nearby lake
• A fire broke out at a closed dinosaur theme park in Bangkok
• Following their recent fire the Royal Gorge Experience is unveiling a new Stegosaurus display
• Pangaea Land of Dinosaurs in Arizona is hosting a “Jurassic Fight Night,” we have no idea what that means…
• Smithsonian made a list of 10 Chinese museums where you can see fossils up close
• Ariel Marcy has a new DIY version of her board game, Go Extinct!
• Colin Trevorrow says there won’t be any hybrid dinosaurs in Jurassic World 3 and that it will be a “science thriller in the same way that Jurassic Park was.”

The dinosaur of the day: Archaeornithomimus

• Archaeornithomimus
• Claire mentions Archaeornithomimus to Owen in Jurassic World
• Ornithomimosaur that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now Inner Mongolia (Iren Dabasu Formation)
• Found in 1923 during an American Museum of Natural History expedition, led by Roy Chapman Andrews (found theropod remains in three quarries)
• Found several individuals, though not much of the skull
• Described in 1933 by Charles Whitney Gilmore, as a new Ornithomimus species, Ornithomimus asiaticus
• In 1972, Dale Russell renamed it Archaeornithomimus
• Name means “ancient bird mimic”
• Named ancient because Dale Russell thought it was 95 million years old (only about 70 million years old), which made it one of the oldest ornithomimids known at the time
• Type species is Archaeornithomimus asiaticus (and only valid species)
• Othniel Charles Marsh found foot bones in Maryland that he referred to Allosaurus medius. In 1911 those bones were named a new species of Dryptosaurus, Dryptosaurus grandis, and in 1920 Gilmore renamed them as a new species of Ornithomimus. Since Ornithomimus grandis was already named, he named it Ornithomimus affinis. Then in 1972 Russell renamed those bones as Archaeornithomimus affinis. However, in 1990 Smith and Galton found that those bones were not an ornithomimosaur, and were some other type of theropod
• Lev Nesov named a third species of Archaeornithomimus in 1995, Archaeornithomimus bissektensis, based on a juvenile’s thighbone found in the Bissekty Formation in Uzbekistan. Though now, not everyone thinks this is actually a species of Archaeornithomimus
• Gilmore did not assign a holotype specimen, so in 1990 David Smith and Peter Galton published a complete description of the fossils and named a lectotype
• Skull not known, but probably was toothless and had a beak
• May have been an omnivore (unclear because not enough known about the skull), which means it could have eaten small mammals, plants, fruit, eggs, and maybe hatchlings
• About 11 ft (3.3 m) long and weighed up to 110 lb (50 kg)
• Had long legs, and was fast, and had a long tail to help with balance
• Other dinosaurs that lived at the same time and place include the tyrannosaur Alectrosaurus, maniraptorian Avimimus, oviraptorid Gigantoraptor, and dromaeosaurid Velociraptor

Fun Fact:

Despite the wide variety of ceratopsian ornamentation, “at no point were horns or frills completely lost in any ceratopsian lineage once established.”

According to Knapp, et al.

This episode was brought to you by:

TRX Dinosaurs, which makes beautiful and realistic dinosaur sculptures, puppets, and exhibits. You can see some amazing examples and works in progress on Instagram @trxdinosaurs.

Enter to win a TRX Dinosaurs-made 1:1 scale Velociraptor sculpture. It’s open to anyone in the US or Canada (except Quebec) ages 18 and older to win. Complete rules are at https://iknowdino.com/velociraptor-sculpture-sweepstakes-official-rules

This week’s link to enter is http://bit.ly/MyDino181