Episode 404: Common Dinosaur Misconceptions. We correct a lot of the common dinosaurs mistakes in movies, TV shows, toys, games, and art.

You can listen to our free podcast, with all our episodes, on Apple Podcasts at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-know-dino/id960976813?mt=2

Links we mentioned in this episode:

• The Natural History Museum in London takes on some dinosaur inaccuracies source
• BBC take on why movie dinosaurs are often inaccurate source
• Alex Hasting’s research on dinosaurs in comic books source
• 32 dinosaur movies, documentaries, and TV shows we’ve watched recently (they’re not all winners) source
• The Doodling Dino reimagines a more realistic version of Arlo from The Good Dinosaur source
• An index of paleoartists by Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs source

Sponsors:

This episode is brought to you by our patrons. Their generous contributions make our podcast possible! You can now save 10% by paying annually. Go to Patreon.com/iknowdino to sign up and help us keep creating I Know Dino every week.

The dinosaur of the day: Chirostenotes

• Oviraptorosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Alberta, Canada
• Looked similar to Oviraptor, walked on two legs, had a long neck and tail, and a crest on the head
• Estimated to be around 8.2 to 8.5 ft (2.5 to 2.6 m) long
• Gregory Paul estimated it weighed 220 lb (100 kg)
• Molina-Pérez and Larramendi estimated it weighed 88 lb (40 kg)
• Had a beak
• Probably an omnivore or herbivore
• Had long, powerful legs and slender toes
• Chirostenotes had long arms, slender, relatively straight claws
• May have gone for soft-bodied prey and impaled and hook them with the second claw, which was unusually straight (grub, amphibians, reptiles, mammals)
• But, if Chirostenotes had large feathers on the finger, which has been found in other oviraptorosaurs, it wouldn’t be able to use it to impale
• Type species is Chirostenotes pergracilis
• First fossils found in 1914 by George Sternberg (pair of hands)
• Lawrence Lambe studied the fossils but died before naming them
• Charles Whitney Gilmore named Chirostenotes in 1924 (name came from Lambe’s notes)
• Genus name means “narrow handed”
• Species name means “throughout gracile”
• Another specimen found, that includes a set of jaws with teeth, but later was renamed to Richardoestesia (a dromaeosaur)
• Chirostenotes did not have teeth
• Other fossils found that were later referred to Chirostenotes (includes feet found, that were originally thought to be Macrophalangia, lower jaws thought to be Caenagnathus)
• Edwin Colbert and Dale Russell suggested in 1969 that Chirostenotes and Macrophalangia were synonymous
• Caenagnathus was found to be an oviraptorosaur (originally thought to be a bird), after the oviraptorid Elmisaurus was described by Osmólska in 1981 (found in Mongolia)
• In 1988, Phil Currie and Dale Russell studied a specimen found in storage in 1923, which helped link all the fossils found. They were all considered to be Chirostenotes
• In 1971, Joël Cracraft named a second species of Caenagnathus (still thought it was a bird)
• Russell and Currie suggested this species was a more gracile, smaller species, and named it a second species of Elmisaurus, as Elmisaurus elegans
• Hans-Dieter Sues renamed Elmisaurus elegans to Chirostenotes elegans in 1997, but then it became Leptorhynchos in 2013
• But later studies found Chirostenotes and Caenagnathus to be distinct from each other
• Other dinosaurs that used to be considered to be Chirostenotes include Epichirostenotes and Anzu
• Funston and Currie in 2019 described newly found Chirostenotes fossils, including jaws, vertebrae, and parts of the hindlimb
• Bruce Rothschild and others in 2001 studied stress fractures in theropods and found that out of 17 Chirostenotes foot bones, only one had stress fractures
• Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include ankylosaurs, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, theropods
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place include amphibians, crocodilians, lizards, fish, plesiosaurs, mammals

Fun Fact:

After the novel Jurassic Park was released in 1990, a flood of dinosaur movies started that still continues over 30 years later.

Thank you Patrons!

Your support means so much to us and keeps us going! If you’re a dinosaur enthusiast, join our growing community on Patreon at patreon.com/iknowdino