Episode 223 is all about Nodosaurus, the original member of Nodosauridae: The clade of ankylosaurs without tail clubs.

Interview with Thomas Hopp, scientist, inventor, lecturer, and author. He’s written a number of short stories and novels, including the science fiction series Dinosaur Wars.

He has also proposed that dinosaurs evolved feathers on their hindlimbs to warm their nests. Here are PDFs of his feather paper and his poster from SVP.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• A new American Tyrannosauroid, Moros intrepidus, was about 30 million years younger than T. rex and 1% its size source
• The Irish coast guard were called to recover some T. rex bones which turned out to be a hoax source
• Matt Lamanna, will present “Diving for Dinosaurs: Cretaceous fossils from Croatia” at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History source
• Pismo Beach, California, had a grand re-opening recently for Dinosaur Caves Park source
• In the UK, you can now buy Easter-themed chocolate dinosaurs at both Aldi and Marks & Spencer source
• Metahub posted a list of the best and worst dinosaurs in Jurassic World Alive source

The dinosaur of the day: Nodosaurus

• Ankylosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now North America
• Herbivorous
• Estimated to be about 13 to 20 ft (4 to 6 m) long
• Had bony plates on the top of its body, and may have had spikes on the side of its body
• Bony plates were like bands, alternating between narrow and wide bands over the ribs
• The wider bands were also covered in bony knobs
• Had a short neck and a long, stiff tail (no club)
• Had a small, narrow head, pointed snout, small teeth, and powerful jaws
• Had five toes on each foot
• Had powerful forelimbs
• Named in 1889 by Othniel Charles Marsh (very brief description)
• Richard Swan Lull gave a more detailed description in 1921
• Lull also described flat scutes, spines, and plates, though he did not illustrate them
• Carpenter and Kirkland revisited the description in 1998
• In 2015, a 4-year-old boy, Wylie Brys found what’s thought to be a Nodosaurus fossil in Mansfield, Texas. He and his father Tim were looking around behind a shopping center. At first they thought it was s turtle fossil. They reached out to Southern Methodist University and worked with them to excavate the area
• Type species is Nodosaurus textilis
• Name means “knobbed lizard”
• Species name refers to the texture near the head (small ossifications in quadrangular form, arranged in rows. Marsh said “The external surface is perculiarly marked by a texture that appears interwoven, like a coarse cloth. This has suggested the species name.”
• Nodosaurus is the type genus for the nodosaurid group
• Two groups in Ankylosauria: nodosaurids and ankylosaurids
• Nodosaurids are usually more primitive, and they don’t have tail clubs, and generally skulls are not as short or broad as ankylosaurids, and the skulls were not covered in scutes
• Can see Nodosaurus in the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs (a.k.a. Normanpedia), illustrated by John Sibbick in 1889
• Can also see Nodosaurus in the Land Before Time series (appears in the 3rd movie, as a character named Nod)
• Can also see Nodosaurus in the game Jurassic World Evoution (unlock via the Hammond Foundation when you complete the Science Division’s mission on Isla Tacaño. Model is based on Borealopelta

Fun Fact: For the tyrannosaur linneage to evolve from Moros interpidus size to T. rex size they would have needed to grow about 4 grams per generation.S