Episode 229 is all about Rhoetosaurus, a sauropod from Queensland, Australia that has been pieced together over 50+ years.

We also interview Darrin Pagnac, associate professor of geology and geological engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, and the author of a recent paper called Dinosaurs: A Catalyst for Critical Thought

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• A new giant titanosaur, Kaijutitan maui, found with a partial skull source
• The first lambeosaurine (head-crested) hadrosaur bone from Alaska source
• The Triceratops named Headless Henry at the Missouri Institute of Natural Science recently got a head source
• In Calgary, Canada, a clean up company called Just Junk found thousands of fossils when helping a family move source
• You can see a “Skinny” the sauropod at Heathrow Airport in London until June 3, when it will be removed for auction source
• Jurassic World Live Tour announced U.S. tour dates starting in Columbus, Ohio this September source

The dinosaur of the day: Rhoetosaurus

• Sauropod that lived in the Jurassic in what is now eastern Australia
• Estimated to be about 49 ft (15 m) long and weighed about 9 tonnes (saw some estimates range from 12 m to 17 m)
• Lived among a lot of vegetation (cycads, ferns, mosses), in a wet, humid area
• Herbivorous, and probably was a browser
• Had a long neck, and hollow bones
• Had four clawed toes on each foot
• Type species is Rhoetosaurus brownei
• Name means “Rhoetos lizard”
• Named after Rhoetus, a titan in Greek mythology
• Heber Longman, self-taught paleontologist who became director of the Queensland Museum, heard about a large skeleton in 1924 in central Queensland at the Durham Downs Station (a team of men working with horses found it, and they thought it was bones from an elephant that ran away from a circus). Arthur Browne, the station manager, sent parts of the bone to Longman
• Named in 1926 by Heber Longman
• Species is named after Arthur Browne
• Has had some misspellings: Rhaetosaurus (1955, de Lapparent and others) and Rheteosaurus (1979, Yadagiri and others)
• Mary Wade and Alan Bartholomai found more fossil material in 1975, and others found more even later, so there’s been up to 40 vertebrae, part of the sacrum, parts of the pubic bones, and most of the right hind limb, and more that have been found (and more fossil material from the holotype that can still be excavated)
• A study in 2012 by Jay Nair and others focused on the lower hind limb, and found no evidence for being closely related to Jurassic sauropods from Asia (others had speculated it was related to Shunosaurus, because they lived around the same time)
• Can see Rhoetosaurus in the Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure (leaving water and following a herd of other sauropods)

Fun Fact: Alvarezsaurus is named after Don Gregorio Álvarez the historian not one of the Alvarez paleontologists.