Episode 425: Microraptor ate mammals. Plus a new titanosaur, a new Dryptosaurus find, Sabrina connects dinosaurs to princess seams, and much more
News:
- There’s a new titanosaur: Caieira allocaudata source
- A new Dryptosaurus find may include medullary bone—showing another possibly female tyrannosauroid source
- A mammal’s foot was found inside a Microraptor’s ribcage showing that the mammal was eaten by the dinosaur source
- Dippy has a three-year residency at Coventry’s Herbert Art Gallery and Museum source
- A new dinosaur film, 65, comes out in March source
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The dinosaur of the day: Isanosaurus
- Sauropodomorph that lived in the Late Triassic or Late Jurassic in what is now Thailand (Nam Phong Formation)
- Estimated to be about 21 ft (6.5 m) long based on the thigh bone
- But, parts of the holotype skeleton were not fused, so the holotype may not have been fully grown
- Had high neural spines
- Type and only species is Isanosaurus attavipachi
- Named in 2000 by Éric Buffetaut and others
- Genus name means “north-eastern Thailand lizard” (Isan lizard)
- Isan is the local name for northeastern Thailand
- Species name is in honor of P. Attavipach, former Director General of the Thai Department of Mineral Resources and a supporter of paleontological research
- Fossils found in 1998
- Found by a hunter looking for nocturnal flying squirrels who spotted the fossils in the moonlight
- Fossils were in dark red sandstone, and most of the bones had eroded by the time they were found
- Holotype includes a neck vertebra, back vertebra, parts of the tail, fragmentary ribs, part of the shoulder and thigh
- At the time, was the earliest known sauropod dinosaur
- Originally thought to have lived about 210 million years ago
- But in 2009, Racey and Goodall dated Isanosaurus from the Early Jurassic
- One of the earliest sauropodomorphs to walk on all fours (obligate quadrupedal)
- Had a robust femur, “with a sauropod-like straight, craniocaudally flattened shaft” (had a robust, straight thigh bone)
- Means it had column-like legs, and walked on all fours
- In bipedal sauropodomorphs, the leg bone is curved
- Had sauropod features but also primitive features that “seem to illustrate an early stage in the evolution of characters more fully developed in later, more advanced sauropods”
- Looked like a typical sauropod, with a bulky body, long neck, long tail, walked on four legs (but lived pretty early)
Fun Fact:
There are only five US states that don’t have state fossils. Iowa, New Hampshire, Hawaii, & Rhode Island. No one has claimed Tyrannosaurus rex yet.
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