In our 137th episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Victoria Arbour, who, with David Evans, described and named the new ankylosaur Zuul crurivastator. You can learn more about Victoria’s work by following her on Twitter, @VictoriaArbour.

Zuul fossil

Zuul cast

Episode 137 is also about Olorotitan, the “Russian swan” of hadrosaurs.

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Olorotitan

In this episode, we discuss:

In dinosaur news:

• A sauropod was discovered with gut contents near Winton, Australia and will be put on display at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in about 5 years according to SMH
• Sensory organs on spinosaurid snouts may not be definitive evidence of aquatic behavior according to Nature’s Scientific Reports
• The Triassic-Jurassic extinction is marked with a million years of mercury deposits consistent with massive volcanic activity according to PNAS
• Nearly 200 new dinosaur prints including a possible running ornithischian from Morocco were described in SGE
• New Deinonychosaurian footprints have been found in China and Iran
• 5 partial vertebrae from the youngest known Barosaurus were published in the Annals of Carnegie Museum
• Lida Xing and his work documenting dinosaur footprints and amber was featured in an article in Science Mag
• Drumheller, Canada, where the Royal Tyrrell Museum is, is considering renaming some of its streets after dinosaurs according to Calgary Herald
• Dinosaur Park in Laurel, Maryland is open to students and visitors according to Extinct Monsters
• The new conference Future Con had a feature on Antarctic dinosaurs according to Live Science
• MOAB field office has free “Jurassic Walks” and talks every weekend until September according to Deseret News
• Leonardo, the mummified hadrosaur housed in the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum now has a plesiosaur roomate according to KTVQ
• The dinosaurs at the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin are getting an upgrade according to the Journal Sentinel
• The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences has a Parasaurolophus exhibit and posted its recreated sounds on their tumblr page
• Phil Currie gave a lecture to celebrate Friends of the Royal Alberta Museum Society’s 35th anniversary according to Edmonton Examiner
• The American Museum of Natural History celebrated the 70th anniversary of its Coelophysis
• The Royal Tyrrell Museum posted an article about a collision between palynologists and dinosaur paleontologists for excavation priority
• The musical Triassic Parq has permiered in New Orleans featuring female dinosaurs spontaneously turning male like in Jurassic Park according to Nola.com
• Political candidate Jon Ossoff got support from a gang of T. rex clad voters according to Elite Daily
• The new book, What the Dinosaurs Did at School, features dinosaur toys wreaking havoc on a school according to Kirkus Reviews
• A new dinosaur coloring book including facts and comics has been released according to Crossroads Today

The dinosaur of the day: Olorotitan

• Lambeosaurine hadrosaur that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now Far Eastern Russia (found in the Tsagayan Formation)
• Known as the “Russian swan” of hadrosaurs, and it has a long neck and a battle axe shaped crest
• Name means “gigantic swan”
• Only one species: Olorotitan arharensis
• The species name arharensis refers to where the fossils were found, in Arhara County
• Described in 2003 by Pascal Godefroit, Yuri Bolotsky, and Vladimir Alifanov
• Holotype consists of a nearly complete skeleton
• Most complete lameosaurine found outside of western North America, and one of the most complete dinosaurs found in Russia
• Missing hands and feet, possibly because scavengers ate them before Olorotitan was buried
• At the end of the Mesozoic, lambeosaurines were numerous and diverse in Asia (but not in North America)
• This suggests that the climates in Asian and North America were different at the time
• Had a long neck (18 vertebrae). The longest hadrosaur neck found before it had 15 vertebrae
• Its battle axe or hatchet shaped crest points backward, and is different from other hadrosaurs with crests
• Crest may have been used for attracting mates, or to let others know they were the same species
• Crest had a hollow structure, which may have been able to make low frequency calls (crest expands from the nasal bones). If this is true, it would be similar to what scientists think Parasaurolophus could do. However, parts of the crest found were fragmentary or crushed, so it’s unclear what route the nasal passage took (would need to find another skull to know for sure)
• Had a stiff tail, though it’s unclear if all Olorotitan had stiff tails or if this one had a pathology (need more specimens to know for sure)
• Large, may have grown up to 26 ft (8 m) long
• Bipedal and quadrupedal
• Herbivore that could grind its food with its hundreds of teeth that were continuously replaced
• Found to be most closely related to Corythosaurus and Hypacrosaurus
• Other animals that lived in the same time and place were the lambeosaurines Charonosaurus and Amurosaurus, the hadrosaurine Kerberosaurus, theropods, nodosaurids, turtles, crocodilians

Fun fact:

“The Great Dying” wiped out most vertebrates on earth during the Permian-Triassic boundary ~252MYA. Afterwards, Lystrosaurus accounted for about 90% of terrestrial vertebrates in the early Triassic. Lystrosaurus is a therapsid which just like all modern mammals although it looks superficially like a dinosaur. It wasn’t until the Triassic-Jurassic extinction that dinosaurs became the dominant terrestrial group.

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Interview:

Transcript coming soon…