Episode 382 is all about Avaceratops, a small ceratopsian that may have lived alongside Zuul and Dromaeosaurus.
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- A new very early stegosaur, Bashanosaurus primitivus, was named from Chongqing, China source
- A new alvarezsaurid from Uzbekistan, Dzharaonyx eski, was described including its fascinating small hands source
- An Amurosaurus appears to have broken its wrist after falling, but it survived for at least a few months source
- Using a new type of CT scan, researchers found the T. rex nicknamed Tristan Otto probably had an infection in its jaw source
- Researchers found four pathologies in sauropod ribs found in Chongqing, China source
- An analysis of B-rex identified some conditions that helped to preserve soft tissue in its bones source
- A photographer took some fun photos of squirrels “playing” with dinosaur toys source
- Capcom has a new game about fighting dinosaurs, called Exoprimal source
- Skyhook Games has a Dino Safari DLC for mowing the lawn in Dino Safari park source
The dinosaur of the day: Avaceratops
- Ceratopsian that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Montana, U.S. (Judith River Formation)
- Looked like other ceratopsians, walked on all fours, had a bulky body and long tail, and a beak, and frill on its head
- Had a short, fan-shaped frill
- Small and herbivorous
- Originally estimated to be 7.5 ft (2.3 m) long
- In 2010 Gregory Paul estimated it to be 13 ft (4 m) long and weigh 1 tonne
- Type species is Avaceratops lammersi
- Described in 1986 by Peter Dodson
- Fossils found in 1981 by fossil dealer Eddy Cole on Careless Creek Ranch, owned by Arthur Lammers
- Fossils were scattered on a prehistoric stream bed
- Probably buried after its body was swept downstream by a current
- Peter Dodson looked at the fossils in Cole’s fossil shop when visiting in 1982, and they were fully excavated in 1984
- First ceratopsid named since Pachyrhinosaurus (named in 1950)
- Genus name is in honor of Ava Cole, Eddy Cole’s wife
- Species name is in honor of the Lammers family
- In 1990, George Olshevsky updated the name to Avaceratops lammersorum (plural, since it referred to a few people), but Dodson objected (singular can also refer to a single family name)
- In 1990, Thomas Lehman referred Avaceratops to Monoclonius, but was not accepted
- Holotype includes a partial skeleton with the lower skull, vertebrae, shoulder girdle, and most of the forelimbs and hindlimbs
- Skeleton is probably a juvenile or subadult
- Pankalski and Dodson described a second skull in 1999, of a larger specimen
- But a 2010 study by Michael Ryan and others found “it will never be possible to definitively assign” that skull to Avaceratops, since the holotype is a juvenile without unique characters, and the second skull, presumably of an adult, looks too different, and it’s hard to know if they’re related without having a growth series
- Also said that even though Avaceratops didn’t have any unique characters, “the specimen cannot be attributed to any other known centrosaurine, and so the genus cannot be synonymized or declared a nomen dubium”
- Sister taxon to Nasutoceratops
- Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include the ceratopsid Medusaceratops and the hadrosaur Probrachylophosaurus
Fun Fact: Even in the Cretaceous, dinosaurs were sometimes the meals of other animals.
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