Episode 337 is all about Eotriceratops, a large three-horned dinosaur that evolved roughly one million years before Triceratops.
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- T. rex probably walked about as fast as humans source
- 25 new fossils of possible titanosaurs were found in northeast India source
- There is a fundraiser to help a 9 year old with cancer take a trip to Dinosaur National Monument source
- The Mace Brown Museum of Natural History in South Carolina has a new dinosaur tracks exhibit source
- The unveiling of a new Allosaurus skeleton at the Zhengjia Museum of Natural Science was accompanied by a “dinosaur eating event” source
- A new game titled Second Extinction has humans trying to reclaim Earth after mutated dinosaurs take over source
- A Resident Evil Village mod has made Barney the Dinosaur an enemy source
The dinosaur of the day: Eotriceratops
- Chasmosaurine ceratopsian that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Alberta, Canada (Dry Island, Horseshoe Canyon Formation)
- Looks a lot like Triceratops, with the two big brow horns and a small nasal horn, a frill, and a beak
- One of the largest ceratopsians. Other large ceratopsians include Triceratops horridus and the ichnogenus Ceratopsipes
- Estimated to be about 29.5 ft (9 m) long
- Gregory Paul estimated it to be 27.8 ft (8.5 m) long and weigh 10 tonnes
- Holotype skull estimated to be about 9.8 ft (3 m) long
- Herbivorous
- Had a relatively flat, long snout
- Rostral is large and from the side, looks somewhat boomerang-shaped
- 35 tooth rows preserved in the maxilla
- Unique features in the premaxilla, nasal horn core, squamosal frill, and epijugal
- Had long, crescent or spindle shaped epoccipitals on the squamosal frill (bones lining the bottom of the frill)
- Had a sharply conical epijugal (on the cheek)
- Had a low nasal horn that was slightly recurved
- Nasal horn core was longer than it was wide
- Horns above the eyes curved forward, and were about 2.6 ft (80 cm) long
- Three bite marks above the eye, near the base of the left horn (could be from scavengers)
- Type and only species is Eotriceratops xerinsularis
- Genus name means “dawn three-horned face”
- Close relative of Triceratops, Nedoceratops, Torosaurus (Eotriceratops, when named, found to be the oldest known member of this group, hence the name “dawn”)
- Species name means “of the dry island”, and refers to Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park, where the specimen was found
- Fossils found in 1910 by Barnum Brown, during an AMNH expedition
- But Brown at the time was more interested in the Albertosaurus skeletons in the same location, so didn’t do anything with the find
- In 2001, a team from the Royal Tyrrell and Canadian Museum of Nature went on an expedition to Dry Island. But they didn’t know about what Barnum Brown had found. Glen Guthrie, the camp cook of the team, rediscovered the skeleton by accident
- Described and named in 2007 by Xiao-Chun Wu, Donald Brinkman, David Eberth, and Dennis Braman
- First identifiable dinosaur found in the upper 65 ft (20 m) of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation
- Found in carbonaceous shale
- No duplicate bones found, so interpreted to all belong to one specimen
- Holotype is RTMP 2002.57.5, and is a partial skeleton with a skull (no lower jaws). Skeleton includes neck and back vertebrae, ribs, and ossified tendons, and skull includes parts of the frill sides, large horns above the eyes, horn above the nose
- Left premaxilla was more complete than the right
- Bones (especially skull) were disarticulated, and some of them badly crushed
- Braincase was badly crushed
- Gregory Paul renamed Eotriceratops to Triceratops in 2010 but others didn’t agree
- More potential specimens found in New Mexico, but have been classified as Ojoceratops fowleri and Torosaurus utahensis
Fun Fact: There is a lot of nutritional content in bones, so T. rex might have had access to a food source that most vertebrates can’t manage.
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