Episode 146 is all about Lusotitan, a brachiosaurid that lived in the Late Jurassic in what is now Portugal.
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- Talks and posters from the 2nd day of SVP abstracts can be found here
- The Field Museum in Chicago is moving Sue the T. rex to a new home to make way for a Patagotitan replica like the one in AMNH
- The Triceratops skull recently found in Thornton, Colorado, has already gone on display at the Denver Science Museum
- After 4 months of preparation, The National Museum of Australia in Canberra is getting a Muttaburrasaurus
- Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin has an undergraduate Paleontology Track
- John Lewis has removed gender labels from clothes including dinosaur clothes previously labeled for boys
- A new Jurassic Park builder game, Jurassic World Evolution, will be released after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom next year
Review:
The Bone Wars card game.
Please use our Amazon affiliate link here if you’re interested in purchasing it
The dinosaur of the day: Lusotitan
- Sauropod that lived in the Late Jurassic in what is now Portugal
- Name means “Lusitania titan”
- Name Luso refers to an inhabitant of Lusitania, “an ancient region that partly corresponds to Portugal”
- Type species is Lusotitan atalaiensis
- Species name refers to the site where it was found, Atalaia
- Found in the Lourinhã Formation in 1947. Manuel de Matos, who was part of the Geological Survey of Portugal, found large sauropod fossils there. Then in 1957 Albert-Félix de Lapparent and Georges Zbyszewski named those fossils Brachiosaurus atalaiensis
- Synonym to Brachiosaurus atalaiensis
- Lusotitan is considered to be a brachiosaurid (because of its low neural spines, elongated humerus, long forelimbs, and other features), though the skull is not known (but probably similar to other brachiosaurid skulls)
- In 2003 Octávio Mateus and Miguel Telles Antunes renamed it as a separate genus, Lusotitan
- De Lapparent did not assign a holotype, so in 2003 Mateus chose the skeleton as the lectotype
- They chose the most complete individual to be the lectotype
- Mannion and others redescribed the Lusotitan lectotype in 2013
- Fossils found include a partial skeleton (no skull) and individual vertebrae found in a few locations
- The Lourinhã Formation was a coastal region, with similar plants and animals as the Morrison Formation in the U.S., and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania
- Lusotitan is the largest known dinosaur from its habitat
- About 82 ft (25 m) long
- Other dinosaurs that lived in the area include theropods Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Lourinhanosaurus, Torvosaurus, ankylosaur Dracopelta, diplodocid sauropods Supersaurus, Lourinhasaurus, Zby, and stegosaurs Dacentrurus, Miragaia
Fun Fact:
Unlike Cope & Marsh who died when they were 50s & 60s, Charles Sternberg lived until his 90s.
He also discovered a “mummy” hadrosaur with all 3 of his living sons (who all pursued vertebrate paleontology)
