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Episode 245 is all about Vulcanodon, a Jurassic sauropod that lived in an African desert surrounded by volcanoes.

We also interview Scott A Bradley, the host of the Hellbent for Horror Podcast, and author of the book, Screaming for Pleasure: How Horror Makes You Happy and Healthy. He is also a guest blogger on Lit Reactor and contributing writer to magazines like Evilspeak and Medium Chill. Follow him on twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• A microraptor was found with a complete lizard in its stomach that it ate face first source
• A shiny new dinosaur, Hesperornithoides, was found in amber with one especially long fuzzy toe source
• Makoshika State Park in Montana has a new dinosaur/paleontology tour source
• Dinosaur Isle Museum, in the UK, has a new juvenile T. rex replica skeleton source
• Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy is being held on the Isle of Wight in September source
• The Grand Rapids Children’s Museum in Michigan has a new traveling exhibit called Amazing Dinosaurs source
• Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Colin Trevorrow, and Blue attended the grand opening of Jurassic World the Ride source
• A mobile game called Tap! Dig! My Museum! Is available on Android and iOS source

The dinosaur of the day: Vulcanodon

• Sauropod that lived in the Jurassic in what is now southern Africa
• Quadrupedal, with column-like legs, long neck, long tail
• Based on skeletal remains, at least 21 ft (6.5 m) long
• Gregory Paul estimated it to be 35 ft (11 m) long
• Estimated to weigh 3.5 tonnes
• Early, basal sauropod
• Not much known about the skull or neck
• Forelimbs were more similar to later sauropods, about 3/4 the length of hindlimbs (proportionately long)
• Had a large claw on the first toe of each foot
• Claws and second and third toes were broad and nail-like (similar to Tazoudasaurus, a close relative sauropod found in Morocco, but not other sauropods)
• Had spoon-shaped teeth
• Only one species: Vulcanodon karibaensis
• Found in 1969 in Zimbabwe
• Found on an island in Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe (used to be Rhodesia). Lake Kariba is the largest man-made lake in the world
• Found in 1969 by B.A. Gibson, a team collected the fossils between October 1969 and May 1970
• Described in a brief note at a symposium in Cape Town in 1972 by Michael Raath
• Genus name means “volcano tooth”
• Skeleton was found in sandstone, on Island 126/127 (no official name), in the “Vulcanodon beds”, sediment in the Batoka Formation with flood basalts. At the time Vulcanodon lived, there was a lot of volcanism and lava flows.
• Genus name refers to the Roman god of fire, Vulcanus, combined with the Greek word “odon” for tooth
• Species name refers to Lake Kariba
• One of the first dinosaurs found in Zimbabwe
• Found a fragmentary skeleton (pelvis, sacrum, most of the hind limb and foot, right forearm, right thigh bone, and tail vertebrae). No skull found
• Geoffrey Bond and Michael Cooper found more fossils later, including a shoulder blade and part of a neck vertebra
• Originally thought to be a prosauropod (found knife-shaped teeth near the fossils, and prosauropods may have been omnivorous). But those teeth are actually from a theropod that may have scavenged the Vulcanodon carcass
• Raath thought at first Vulcanodon was an advanced prosauropod, then in 1975 Arthur Cruickshank showed it was a sauropod (Vulcanodon’s 5th toe is the same length as 5th toes on sauropods)
• For a long time scientists thought Vulcanodon lived in the Early Jurassic or the Triassic-Jurassic boundary and thought to be the earliest known sauropod, but Adam Yates in 2004 found Vulcanodon was much younger, from the Late Jurassic
• In 2000, scientists described the sauropod Isanosaurus from Thailand, which lived in the Triassic (well before Vulcanodon)
• Probably lived in a desert like environment
• Vulcanodon fossils are stored in Bulawayo, in the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe

Fun Fact: Some dinosaurs may not have digested their food fully, and opted to spit out parts of undigested food like owls do today.