Episode 385: Sauropods with goosebumps. Jason Schein and Jason Poole join us to share their work finding, excavating, preparing, and illustrating dinosaurs. We also discuss their new educational coloring book Dinosaurs Behaving Badly.

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News:

• A new Early Jurassic thyreophoran, Yuxisaurus, looks like ankylosaurs from the Cretaceous source
• Scientists rediscovered an ankylosaur skull and fossils that had been found in Queensland, Australia source
• Researchers identified a new type of hadrosaur scale from skin impressions source
• Scientists re-examined Haestasaurus skin and found scales and structures that looked somewhat like goosebumps source
• A team of researchers found a Gryposaurus bonebed in the Oldman Formation in Alberta, Canada source
• Sir David Attenborough’s latest documentary series, Prehistoric Planet, debuts on Apple Plus on May 23 source
• David Attenborough also has a BBC documentary, Dinosaurs: The Final Day, airing April 15 source
• BBC has another documentary, called Fantastic Beasts: A Natural History, that’s out now source

Sponsors:

To thank all of our patrons, we’re doing a Patreon Question and Answer episode! Make sure to get your questions in before April 19th. You can post your questions in the announcements channel on our Discord server, or comment them on patreon.com/iknowdino

Interview:

Jason Schein is the author and Jason Poole is the illustrator of Dinosaurs Behaving Badly,  a coloring book that is also full of the latest information about  dinosaur behavior. Jason Schein is also the founder of the nonprofit Bighorn Basin Paleontological Institute, and Jason Poole is a paleoartist whose work has been featured in National Geographic, scientific publications, and museums.

The dinosaur of the day: Dystrophaeus

• Sauropod that lived in the Late Jurassic in what is now Utah, U.S. (Morrison Formation)
• Looked like other sauropods, walked on all fours, had a long neck and long tail
• Estimated to weigh 12 tonnes
• Type species is Dystrophaeus viaemalae
• Described in 1877 by Edward Cope
• Genus name means “coarse joint”
• Refers to the pitted joint surfaces on the limb bones that attached cartilage
• Species name means “of the bad road,” and refers to how hard it was to reach and excavate the fossils
• Partial skeleton found, including a humerus, scapula, part of the radius, and some metacarpals
• Fossils found in 1859 by John Strong Newberry
• First sauropod described from North America
• In 1877 Cope said it was a Triassic dinosaur, but no other details
• In 1882 Henri-Émile Sauvage said it was a sauropod
• Marsh in 1895 said it was a stegosaur
• In 1904 Friedrich von Huene thought it was an herbivorous theropod, and then in 1908 reclassified it as a sauropod
• Herbivorous
• Another estimate found it to weigh about the same as an elephant (which can weigh about 13,000 lb or 5900 kg)
• Fossils found on a steep canyon hillside, in hard rock, by Newberry, who made sketches
• Newberry was a geologist on the Engineer Exploring Expedition, under Captain McComb from the U.S. Army, doing a survey around the Colorado and Green rivers
• At first thought the fossils were from an ichthyosaur
• Couldn’t properly excavate, so left most of the bones for a future geologist (excavated a few)
• Had to scale the steep cliff and then hike to the fossils
• Fossils were found “in close proximity, the bones of the limb in nearly normal relation,” according to Cope
• Some paleontologists think Dystrophaeus may be a nomen dubium, but not everyone agrees (fossils too indeterminate)
• Quarry site was lost for a while, then in the 1970s, Fran Barnes went looking for it, and in 1988 found a site that fit the description (turned out to be the original Dystrophaeus quarry site)
• In 2014, Dystrophaeus Project was launched to find more fossils (collaboration between Museum of Moab, Natural History Museum of Utah, and the Bureau of Land Management)
• Excavated more fossils in 2017
• Cast of a forelimb on display at the Museum of Moab

Fun Fact:

A combination of volcanic activity and climate change led to the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic, which led to the rise of dinosaurs.

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