Episode 77 is also about Tethyshadros, a hadrosauroid from Italy whose holotype has the nickname “Antonio.”
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In this episode, we discuss:
- The dinosaur of the day: Tethyshadros
- The genus name is after Tethys, an ocean that was in the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt, and the fact that it’s a hadrosauroid
- Type species is Tethyshadros insularis
- “insularis” means insular or “of the island”, at the time Tethyshadros lived it lived on the Adriatic-Dinaric Island, a large island of the European Archipelago
- Described in 2009 by Fabio Marco Dalla Vecchia, an Italian paleontologist
- The site where Tethyshadros was found was discovered in the 80s by Alceo Tarlao en Giorgio Rimoli
- A student named Tiziana Brazzatti found hand bones in the area in 1994
- A company called Stoneage, which deals with fossils, got a commission to excavate fossils, and they had to remove more than 300 tons of rock. Dalla Vecchia helped guide the project. “Antonio” was taken out of the quarry in 1999, slightly damaged
- 6 other Tethyshadros specimens were found, though one fell apart during excavation and another one there were only forelimbs found
- Tethyshadros is a hadrosauroid that lived in what is now Italy
- Paper by Fabio M. Dalla Vecchia in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2009: Tethyshadros insularis, a New Hadrosauroid Dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Italy
- The holotype is of a mostly complete skeleton, nicknamed “Antonio”
- The holotype is one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons found. “The specimen is the most complete skeleton among medium to large-sized dinosaurs found in Europe since the 1878 discovery of Iguanodon and Dollodon at Bernissart, Belgium,” according to the paper
- The holotype was about 5-6 years old
- Has a mix of derived and primitive features
- About 13 ft (4 m) long and weighed 770 lb (350 kg)
- Large, elongated skull
- Short neck and tail, long legs
- Possibly a fast runner, based on long legs and fewer toes
- Dalla Vecchia said it’s small because of “insular dwarfism”
- Insular dwarfism is when animals are on an island and have limited resources, so they become smaller over time
- Dalla Vecchia said that basal hadrosauroids were probably island-hopping from Asia, which is how Tethyshadros ended up on an island in Europe (doesn’t think it comes from European or American hadrosaurs
- Over time, sea levels may have changed and lands moved around, making it possible to island hop
- Had a serrated, snowplow shaped beak (not a duck like beak, as hadrosaurs are known for)
- Tethys ocean covered most of southern Europe
- Upper beak was pointed
- Unclear why the beak looked the way it did, could be for display, grooming, biting certain types of vegetation
- The fossils are at the Civico Museo di Storia Naturale di Trieste
- Can see an animation of Antonio at http://video.gelocal.it/ilpiccolo/locale/trieste-ecco-come-si-muoveva-il-dinosauro-antonio/50252/50355
- Hadrosauroidea is a superfamily of “duck billed” dinosaurs (hadrosaurids) and dinosaurs more closely related to them than Iguanodon
- Fun fact: Trees down (gliding to flapping) vs, ground up debate (flapping to get up trees “WAIR” into flying) is still hotly contested. Unlike baby birds which use WAIR, early theropods had claws which probably would have been a better way to climb than flapping proto-wings. So it is still unclear exactly how flight developed.
