The Big Dinosaur Podcast

Episode 232 is all about Indosuchus, an Indian abelisaurid from the Late Cretaceous.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• The foot of a new dinosaur, Imperobator antarcticus, was found in Antarctica source
• Xingtianosaurus ganqi was found in China and named after a headless deity and his weapon source
• A robotic Caudipteryx and baby ostriches may help explain how birds learned to fly source
• New measurements of the Berlin Archaeopteryx appear to show that it could fly (and not just glide) source
• In Ogdensburg, New Jersey, the Sterling Hill Mining Museum has new dinosaur tracks on display source
• A lambeosaurine from Alaska’s North Slope has made it to the Perot Museum in Dallas, Texas source
• Dinosaur National Monument has been recognized by the International Dark Sky Association source
• Dino Parc Rasnov in Romania recently doubled in size source
• In London, there will be a 12 week run of Dinosaur World Live at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre source
• Smithsonian’s National Zoo is having a dino summer from June to August with animatronic dinosaurs source
• A new movie called Velicipastor is skipping the theaters source
• Jurassic World the Ride is set top open at Universal Studios, CA this summer source
• Fortnite has dinosaurs in the desert biome and gives a reward if you dance with them source

The dinosaur of the day: Indosuchus

• Abelisaurid that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now India
• Bipedal, carnivore
• Medium-sized, about 23 ft (7 m) long, and weighed 1.2 tonnes
• Had a narrow crested skull that was flattened on the top
• Type species is Indosuchus raptorius
• Described in 1933 by Charles Alfred Matley and Friedrich von Huene
• Genus name means Indian crocodile (suchus comes from Ancient Greek for the Egyptian crocodile god). Friedrich von Huene apparently liked to give dinosaurs the name “suchus” instead of “saurus” because he thought crocodiles were more closely related to dinosaurs than lizards
• Species name means “raptorial” in Latin
• Not to be confused with Indosaurus, theropod that lived in India, named same year 1933 by same people, Matley and Huene)
• Huene name Indosuchus in a monograph in 1933, based on fossils from three partial skulls found by Charles Matley of the Geological Survey of India in 1917-19 in the Lameta Group (in the same monograph, Huene and Matley also described sauropods, Huene described Indosuchus and Indosaurus, and Matley described a stegosaur)
• Both Indosuchus and Indosaurus were originally described as carnosaurs, close to allosaurids, based on their skull
• In 1956 Romer found Indosaurus and Indosuchus to be junior synonyms of the megalosaurid Orthogoniosaurus, but in 1966 he reclassified Orthogoniosaurus to the family Tyrannosauridae
• In 1964 Walker found that Orthogoniosaurus was based on one tooth and was indeterminable, and separated Indosuchus and Indosaurus into different families
• In 1964 Walker found that Indosuchus was a tyrannosaur
• Sankar Chatterjee in 1978 confirmed that Indosuchus was a tyrannosaur, based on analysis of some of the original material and also referred specimens that Barnum Brown had found in 1922 near Jabalpu, Central India (pair of premaxillae, left maxilla, right denture, two caudal vertebrae, all possibly from one individual), that Robert Long found 50 years later at the AMNH and passed on to Chatterjee
• However, the discovery of Carnotaurus and other abelisaurids helped show Indosuchus was not a tyrannosaur. In 1986 José Bonaparte said it was an abelisaurid
• Chatterjee found that Indosuchus had continuous dental lamina (tissue in tooth development), and it replaced teeth regularly even into old age (unlike Crocodilia)
• Lived with a large variety of dinosaurs, including sauropods, coelurosaurs, carnosaurs, ankylosaurs

Fun Fact: The full name of Utahraptor is Utahraptor ostrommaysi. However it is often incorrectly called Utahraptor ostrommaysorum.