Episode 116 is all about Miragaia, a stegosaurid with a long neck.

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In this episode, we discuss:

• The dinosaur of the day: Miragaia
• Stegosaurid that lived in the Jurassic in what is now Portugal
• Named after the area where the fossils were found
• Name is also in reference to mira, which means wonderful in Latin, and Gaia, the earth goddess
• Name means “wonderful goddess of the Earth”
• Found after a road was built between the villages Miragaia and Sobral
• Found the anterior half and partial skull (other half possibly destroyed during construction
• Described in 2009 by Octávio Mateus, Susannah Maidment and Nicolai Christiansen
• Miragaia is the first recognized stegosaur skull found in Europe (before, only bits and pieces had been found)
• Alberto Cobos and others in 2010 suggested Miragaia was a junior synonym of Dacentrurus (which lived in England)
• Type species is Miragaia longicollum
• Species name means “long neck”
• About 18-20 ft (5.5-6 m) long, though Gregory Paul estimated it was 6.5 m long and weighed 2 tons
• Had a very long neck (at least 17 vertebrae), which is part of a trend of longer necks in stegosaurs
• Miragaia is part of the clade Thyreophora, whose older members had 9 vertebrae. Then later ones, Stegosaurus and Hesperosaurus, had 12-13 vertebrae
• Had the longest neck of any stegosaur, and more cervical vertebrae than many sauropods
• Neck vertebrae were longer than vertebrae in other stegosaurs
• Longer neck is convergent evolution with sauropod necks lengthening
• Neck elongation may occur three ways: incorporating dorsal vertebrae into the neck (backbones moved forward and became part of the neck), adding new cervical elements to the vertebral column, and lengthening of individual cervical vertebrae
• Scientists think all three of these things led to sauropods having long necks
• Because of its long neck, Miragaia may have been able to eat foods other herbivores couldn’t reach. The neck may also have helped to attract mates (though it’s not clear exactly why it had such a long neck)
• Giraffes are the only living mammals with long necks, and scientists think it was because long necks attracted mates (same as with sauropods)
• Had long forelimbs
• Had a toothless beak, like Stegosaurus
• Had a notch in the snout tip that was shaped like a W (in Stegosaurus that notch is U-shaped)
• Had ornamentation on the supper part of the nasal bone
• Had 16 teeth in the maxilla
• May have used its rear legs to rear up and reach high branches, but not known for sure since those bones are missing
• Had spikes and plates, with eight paired plates
• Had a long, narrow spike that was thought to be a shoulder spine, but now is thought to be part of the tail
• Tail is unknown
• Can see a reconstruction of Miragaia at the Museum of Lourinha in Portual (mix of real fossil and casts)
• Part of the clade Dacentrurinae, within Stegosauridae (sister group to Stegosaurus), and includes Dacentrurus
• Stegosauridae is a family of thyreophoran dinosaurs
• Includes stegosaurs more closely related to Stegosaurus than Huayangosaurus
• Lived into the late Cretaceous
• Had rows or osteoderms along their neck, trunk, and tail (plates and spikes, used for display, thermoregulation, and defense)
• Had front legs shorter than rear legs, (powerful but slow)
• Could shear small branches
• Skulls are shallower than early stegosaurs
• Two subfamilies: Dacentrurinae and Stegosaurinae
• Stegosaurinae are larger
• Fun fact: When excavating dinosaur bones, paleontologists often don’t have the luxury of collecting everything. That can be due to: transportation limits (in the middle of nowhere), time restrictions on excavating, or collection space limitations where there just isn’t space for boxes and boxes of microfossils. So instead paleontologists often have to select the most significant fossils to remove, and leave others.

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