The Big Dinosaur Podcast

In our 122nd episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Thomas Hegna, Assistant Professor at Western Illinois University, who specializes in invertebrates, specifically arthropods; and Robert Johnson, Curator of the Geology Museum at WIU, and the artist who makes awesome dinosaur 3D prints look just like authentic fossils.

Episode 122 is also about Lourinhanosaurus, a theropod that lived in the Jurassic in what is now Portugal.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• A new hypothesis reclassifies dinosaurs into Ornithoscelida & Saurischia, potentially undercutting 130 years of dinosaur science
• Hypsilophodons flocking in a low floodplain were buried alive over and over again on the Isle of Wight
• New eggshells from the Willow Creek Formation shed light on dinosaur diversity in Southwest Alberta
• More dinosaur footprints added to the huge collection in Broome, Australia
• Jurassica just received a grant of £37,300 Heritage Lottery Funding to help produce their Mesozoic recreation
• New application “actiongram” for the Microsoft Hololense allows anyone to add CGI Tyrannosaurs to real-world scenes
• Fossilera is selling easter eggs with small fossils in them, if you don’t have access to small fossils and plastic eggs already
• “Horizon Zero Dawn has a Dinosaur Fight Club” according to Kotaku.com
• A report on 5,000+ dinosaur footprints in Bolivia on a 300ft tall, 1 mile long wall
• A school in North Yorkshire dissected Trixie the Triceratops for National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics week
• The T. rex from “T. rex Autopsy” is going on tour throughout Australia to teach people about dinosaurs.
• Akiko Shinya (of Gualicho Shinyae fame) was featured in the Field Museums women in science blog
• A feature in Nature explains how to keep field research fun, like having a black tie gourmet picnic in underground lava tubes
• New dinosaur book called “Weird Dinosaurs: The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew”
• DINOS! is coming to the Denver Zoo from July 1 to October 21
• When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is now out on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive
• A piece about David Joyner gives a peak behind the big purple Barney suit
• Life-sized animatronic dinosaurs are coming to a new mini golf course in Manchester, UK
• A new hotel near Tokyo Disneyland has a robotic dinosaur manning the front desk and egg shaped robots in every room
• Wild Dinosaurs Entertainment launched in Santa Fe, New Mexico with custom made dinosaur costumes for parties and events

The dinosaur of the day: Lourinhanosaurus

• Name means Lourinhã [Formation] lizard
• Theropod that lived in the Jurassic in what is now Portugal
• Discovered in 1982 near Lourinhã, Portugal
• Described in 1998 by Octávio Mateus
• Type species is Lourinhanosaurus antunesi
• Species named in honor of Miguel Telles Antunes, a Portuguese paleontologist
• Holotype is a partial skeleton, with vertebrae from the ribs, the right tibia and fibula, a metatarsus, and 32 associated gastroliths
• Holotype was a sub-adult
• About 15 ft (4.5 m) long and weighed about 350 lb (160 kg). Estimated that it would take 10 years to reach adult size, and an adult would be 26 ft or 8 m long
• No real agreement on where Lourinhanosaurus belongs. At first it was thought to be part of Allosauroidea, but now some scientists think it was part of Megalosauroidea. In 2010, Benson said it was part of Sinraptoridae, and in 2012 Carrano said it was a coelurosaur
• If Lourinhanosaurus is a sinraptorid, it would be the first one found outside of China
• In 1993, about 100 eggs (some with embryonic bones) were found at a nearby beach, Paimogo. In 2001, they were assigned to Lourinhanosaurus
• Eggs found were about 5 in (13 cm) long, and thought to be Lourinhanosaurus because they were found near the type specimen
• Can see Lourinhanosaurus and the eggs at the Museu da Lourinhã
• Carnivorous
• First known theropod to have gastroliths, and scientists determined they weren’t swallowed accidentally when eating an herbivorous dinosaur
• Gastroliths may have helped tenderize meat (carnivorous dinosaurs not great at chewing), or Lourinhanosaurus may have eaten shellfish and crustaceans and the gastroliths helped crack the shells (unclear if that’s what happened, since no skull was found)
• Europe in the Jurassic had many islands, so animals may have adapted to different kinds of foods
• It’s also possible that Lourinhanosaurus changed what it ate as it grew older (like how tyrannosaurs are faster and more agile and chase smaller ornithopods, and then when they get bigger and older, they go for larger dinosaurs)
• As a juvenile, it’s possible Lourinhanosaurus went to beaches to eat smaller dinosaurs or eat fish and crustaceans from tidal pools (and then swallowed gastroliths to help digest them). Then as an adult, it may have started hunting larger dinosaurs for food

Fun fact: We can determine the age of dinosaurs by counting Lines of Arrested Growth (LAGs) in bones. It’s similar to counting tree rings. We infer that growth slows down just once a year from comparisons to modern animals (like crocodiles).

 

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For those who may prefer reading, see below for the full transcript of our interview with Dr. Thomas Hegna and Robert Johnson:Continue Reading …