Episode 295 is all about Cryptosaurus, an ankylosaur that was misidentified for over 100 years.
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- The gut contents of Borealopelta have been officially described source
- A new early Jurassic sauropodomorph, Irisosaurus / Iridosaurus, was named in China source
- the Field, Royal Saskatchewan, and London Natural History museums are reopening with mask requirements source
- Field Station: Dinosaurs in New Jersey is teaching kids about social distancing and wearing masks source
- Over 50 animatronic dinosaurs in Langley, British Columbia will be auctioned on August 6th source
- The Hulu movie Palm Springs features a few unexplained sauropods in the background of a couple scenes source
- Dr. Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm will have large, not cameo, roles in Jurassic World: Dominion source
- A new survival horror dinosaur game named Deathground is scheduled for an early release in 2021 source
- The Guardian shared a Spanish burnt Basque cheesecake recipe, decorated with dinosaur cookies source
The dinosaur of the day: Cryptosaurus
- Ankylosaur that lived in the Late Jurassic in what is now England (Ampthill Clay Formation, in Cambridgeshire)
- Dubious genus, because only known from a partial femur
- Femur is thick / stout and about 13 in (33 cm) long
- Femur belonged to a subadult or adult
- Herbivorous
- Type and only species is Cryptosaurus eumerus
- Genus name means “hidden lizard”
- Genus name refers to it being a rare find (first one found in the Oxford Clay, even though later it was determined to be from Ampthill Clay Formation)
- Species name means “well-formed thigh” in Greek
- Found a partial right femur in 1869, found by geologist Lucas Ewbank, who donated it to the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge
- Harry Seeley named Cryptosaurus in 1869
- Seely’s description was brief: “On Shelf g is temporarily placed the femur of a Dinosaur from the Oxford Clay, Cryptosaurus eumerus”
- Seeley gave a full description in 1875
- Seeley thought it was an animal “of sluggish habits” and may have been cold-blooded
- Seeley thought Cryptosaurus was related to Iguanodon, and later, in 1909, Friedrich von Huene classified it as Camptosauridae
- In 1980, Peter Galton found Cryptosaurus to be an ankylosaur
- Galton found the femur of Cryptodraco was very similar to the femur of Hoplitosaurus
- Galton wrote that the name Cryptodraco / Cryptosaurus “has turned out to be extremely appropriate because it took over 110 years for the ankylosaurian affinities of this femur to be recognized.”
- Richard Lydekker renamed Cryptosaurus in 1889 to Cryptodraco because he thought Cryptosaurus was already used to name a crocodyliform in 1832. Turns out this was an error, and due to the wrong spelling the crocodyliform was Cystosaurus. So the name Cryptosaurus could remain for the dinosaur
- For some reason Lydekker said that it was unknown where the femur was found, even though Seeley described the locality (the Oxford Clay)
- Galton wrote that the femur was found with 17 associated Pliosaurus vertebrae, and therefore the femur “must have come from a brick pit rather than as an isolated bone from a conglomerate”
- Galton suggested the ancestors of Cryptosaurus were probably bipedal ornithopods, but that Cryptosaurus may have been facultatively bipedal (normally on all fours but could go on two legs when necessary)
Fun Fact: For ~140 Million years (at least all of the Jurassic & the Cretaceous) every terrestrial megaherbivore on Earth was a dinosaur.
