Episode 230 is all about Jeholosaurus, a cute little ornithopod from northeastern China.
Big thanks to all our patrons! Your support means so much to us and keeps us going! If you’re a dinosaur enthusiast, join our growing community on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/iknowdino.
You can listen to our free podcast, with all our episodes, on Apple Podcasts at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-know-dino/id960976813?mt=2
In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- Amazing skin detail was preserved in one inch long theropod tracks in South Korea source
- A new study shows that Dinosaurs didn’t evolve thick eggs until the Middle or Late Jurassic source
- A new paper declares that Bienosaurus is a nomen dubium source
- The Field Museum in Chicago recreated the night sky of the Cretaceous period to accompany Sue source
- The University of Michigan Museum of Natural History is a new museum that has a Majungasaurus on display source
- In Texas, there’s a traveling museum that has gone to thousands of schools, called Dinosaur George source
- Robert Young, a 9-year-old created a website Dinology, dedicated to dinosaurs source
- The Jurassic Park trilogy is now on Netflix, in the UK and Ireland, but not the US source
The dinosaur of the day: Jeholosaurus
- Ornithischian that lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now China (Yixian Formation in the Jehol Biota)
- Body similar to other ornithopods
- Bipedal and small
- Holotype is of a compressed skull and partial skeleton, and is 28 in (71.1 cm) long, with a 14 in (35.6 cm) long tail
- Second specimen found, has small skull and some neck vertebrae
- Both specimens are either juveniles or subadults
- Skulls are incomplete, but had a short snout and large eyes
- May have been an omnivore
- Back teeth and maxillary teeth are fan shaped, like herbivores
- Premaxillary teeth are longer and more narrow, like carnivores
- Found in 2000 in Liaoning Province and described in 2000 by Xu Xing, Wang Xioalin, and You Hailu
- Type species is Jeholosaurus shangyuanensis
- Name means “lizard from Jehol” (an old geographical name for western Liaoning and northern Hebei)
- Species name refers to the geographical area of Shangyuan where the fossils were found
- Small ornithopods are rare in East Asia. More work needs to be done to further establish the phylogeny of Jeholosaurus
Fun Fact: The term Konservat-Lagerstätte is used for amazing paleontological sites that capture more detail than a typical site.
Share your thoughts