Episode 386: Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus infighting. Plus a new Tyrannosaurus going on display in New Zealand; What covered the neck spines on Amargasaurus; And a lot more sauropod news

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News:

• Researchers found that Big John, the Triceratops horridus, was injured by another ceratopsian source
• A new T. rex specimen was described and is going on display at the Auckland Museum in New Zealand source
• Amargasaurus may have had more of a sail on its neck instead of tall spines source
• Scientists studied a sauropodomorph from the beginning of the Late Triassic and found it was already relatively large source
• Scientists analyzed and redescribed Patagosaurus fariasi source
• Researchers found an air sac system in an adult saltasaurid titanosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Brazil source
• The W.T. Bland Public Library in Mount Dora, Florida has a Nothronychus on display source
• The SODO district of Seattle, Washington now has Dinos Alive Exhibition: An Immersive Experience source
• David Attenborough’s Dinosaurs: The Final Day, is airing in the U.S. on May 11 source
• The casts of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World reflected on Jurassic Park and how Dominion ties in into the franchise source
• A new image shows Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) with a baby Nasutoceratops source
• In Jurassic World: Dominion Giganotosaurus is meant to feel like the Joker from the Dark Knight source

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The dinosaur of the day: Euskelosaurus

• Plateosaurid sauropodomorph that lived in the Late Triassic/Early Jurassic in what is now South Africa and Lesotho (Elliot Formation) and Zimbabwe (Mpandi Formation)
• Looked like other sauropodomorphs, with a long neck and tail, long arms, long claws, a small head, and probably walked on two legs
• Large and robust
• Estimated to be about 33 ft (10 m) long
• Type species is Euskelosaurus brownii
• Fossils found in 1863 by Alfred Brown (limb bones and vertebrae)
• Described in 1866 by Thomas Huxley
• Genus name means “good leg lizard”
• Species name is in honor of Alfred Brown
• Heerden in 1979 suggested Euskelosaurus was more bow legged, based on the way its femur was twisted
• Another specimen with a skull was found in 1994 in the Elliot Formation; published about it in 2000
• Specimen at the time may have been one of the oldest known dinosaurs
• Found Euskelosaurus to be more basal than the sauropodomorph Riojasaurus, one of the earliest sauropodomorphs, because the neck was not quite as long and the braincase was slightly more primitive
• Juvenile Euskelosaurus fossils were found between 1995 and 1997 (published about in 2001) in the Elliot Formation
• Fossils included juveniles and adults
• Fossils were in a bone bed, and thought to have been killed by flash floods
• Based on the size of the juveniles (23 to 49 in or 58 to 125 cm long), they were probably “precocious juveniles [that] could forage with their mothers”
• Some scientists have in the past considered Euskelosaurus to be a waste-basket taxon
• At one point, Plateosauravus was considered to be Euskelosaurus
• Plateosaurus cullingworthi was named in 1924 by Sidney Haughton
• Species name in honor of T.L. Cullingworth, who collected the fossils
• In 1932, Friedrich von Huene renamed it as its own genus, Plateosauravus
• Genus name means “grandfather of Plateosaurus”
• In 1979 Jacques van Heerden reassigned it to Euskelosaurus
• Then Adam Yates later suggested using Plateosauravus
• Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include the sauropodomorphs Blikanasaurus, Plateosauravus, Melanorosaurus, and Meroktenos

Fun Fact:

Titanosaurs may have been such a successful bunch because of their nesting behavior.

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