Episode 285 is all about Shunosaurus, a sauropod famous for its club tail.

We also interview Scott Persons and Beth Zaiken, Dr. Scott Persons is a paleontologist and professor at the College of Charleston and the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History, and Beth Zaiken is an artist and illustrator who specializes in natural science communication. Both worked on the upcoming book, Mega Rex: A Tyrannosaurus Named Scotty.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• Massive sauropod tracks were found in a French cave 500m below the surface source
• Here is an article showing a picture of the cave with the prints source
• Dippy’s tour is currently suspended at Rochdale’s Number One Riverside source
• The Natural History Museum in London plans to build a new life-size Dippy sculpture to go in the front gardens source
• Denver Museum of Nature & Science posted a map showing where dinosaur fossils have been found around Denver source
• Flash: Fastest Man Alive #3 has Flash and The Atom teaming up to keep the city safe from dinosaurs source
• Second Extinction is a new shooter game where you have to kill mutated dinosaurs that have taken over the planet source
• Animal Crossing allows you to combine fossils to create “custom dinosaur exhibits” source

The dinosaur of the day: Shunosaurus

• Sauropod that lived in the Middle Jurassic in what is now Sichuan Province, China (Shaximiao Formation)
• Medium sized. Originally estimated to be 36 ft (11 m) long, but later specimens showed it was smaller
• Gregory Paul estimated in 2010 Shunosaurus was 31 ft (9.5 m) long and weighed 3 tons
• Tibia was 2/3 the length of the femur
• Had five metatarsals (foot bones)
• Had a relatively small, narrow brain
• Skulls found are very different, but could be because they were disarticulated. Some were narrow and pointy, some rounded and blunt
• Sauropod skulls often not found because they were light and fragile, and weakly connected to the rest of the skeleton
• Skull was proportionately lighter and smaller than Camarasaurus
• Had a short neck, for a sauropod
• Probably a low browser, that ate tough vegetation
• Dentary was about half the length of the jaw, had at least 25 teeth
• Upper and lower rows of teeth interlocked and could shear past each other
• Lower jaw curved upward and upper tooth row curved downward, and Chatterjee and Zheng wrote in 2002 they acted “like a pair of garden shears”
• Shearing teeth could cut “hard branches, stems, seeds, foliage of contemporary flora such as conifers, ginkgoes, cycads, ferns, and horsetails”
• Had cylindrical and long, spatulate teeth
• No gastroliths found with Shunosaurus so far
• Had a pretty stiff tail
• Had a club tail with spikes (spikes were 2 in or 5 cm long and were cone shaped)
• Tail club was short and wide
• Bony club tail had three of four fused caudal vertebrae (no dermal material, like in ankylosaurs)
• Probably used for defense
• Type species: Shunosaurus lii
• Fossils first found in 1977 by students as part of a Sichuan Provincial Paleontological and Archeological Preservation training class, hosted by the Zigong Museum
• Described and named in 1983 by Dong Zhiming, Zhou Shiwu, Zhang Yihong
• Genus name means “Shu lizard”
• Shu is an ancient name for Sichuan
• Species name is in honor of Bing Li, “the magistrate who governed what is now Sichuan Provice (256-251 BC) for the state of Qin during the Warring States Period. He was particularly celebrated for his flood control measures along the Minjiang River which included the construction of the famed Dujiang dike and irrigation system that are still functioning today,” according to Zhiming, Shiwu, Yihong
• Holotype is a partial skeleton
• Since then about 20 specimens have been found, some complete or nearly complete, some skulls, some juveniles (94% of the Shunosaurus skeleton has been identified, so it’s one of the best known sauropods)
• At least 10 Shunosaurus skeletons have been found at one site, which may mean there was a flash flood or other catastrophe
• Very common in its habitat (about 90% of the fossils found in its formation were Shunosaurus)
• Second species: Shunosaurus ziliujingensis, is in the Zigong museum guide for a smaller, older Shunosaurus, but hasn’t been formally described (nomen nudum)
• Habitat was lush with rivers and shallow lakes, and had lots of conifers, cycads, and ferns
• Lots of soft mud, which led to great fossilization/preservation
• Other dinosaurs that lived in the same time and place included the sauropods Datousaurus, Omeisaurus, Protognathosaurus, the ornithopod Xiaosaurus, the stegosaur Huayangosaurus, the theropod Gasosaurus, ornithopod Yandusaurus
• Also lived among fish, amphibians, reptiles, and early mammals
• Originally the tail club fossils were thought to be the “wrist bones” of stegosaurs, then later thought to be part of Shunosaurus but as the result of an injury, then more fossils were found, and it was confirmed Shunosaurus had a tail club
• Shunosaurus and Omeisaurus were the first sauropods found with tail clubs, and the tail clubs supported Bob Bakker’s idea that sauropods were terrestrial animals (not aquatic or semi-aquatic)
• Considered to be a basal Eusauropoda
• Chatterjee and Zheng also wrote in 2002, “Sauropods were undoubtedly the most spectacular of all dinosaurs and the largest terrestrial animals that have ever lived. They were the most successful clades of herbivorous dinosaurs in terms of diversity, abundance and longevity with a temporal span of 160 million years”
• Can see Shunosaurus at the Zigong Dinosaur Museum in Sichuan Province, and the Tianjin Natural History Museum in Tianjin, China

Fun Fact: We still don’t know if dromaeosaurs (raptors) hunted in packs, but a new paper supports them feeding in groups like Komodo Dragons, not hunting in packs like wolves.