Episode 359 is all about Colepiocephale, the “knucklehead” pachycephalosaurid from the Late Cretaceous of Canada.
We also interview Dave and Iszi, join us from the Terrible Lizards podcast. We chat about the origin of their show and all their other projects. We were also a guest on their podcast last week at terriblelizards.co.uk
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- A new “short-snouted” troodontid, Papiliovenator, was named from Inner Mongolia source
- The Fernbank Museum has the Antarctic Dinosaurs traveling exhibit until January 2 source
- Sabrina reviews the new Flintstones spinoff named Yabba-Dabba Dinosaurs source
The dinosaur of the day: Colepiocephale
- Pachycephalosaurid that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Alberta, Canada (Foremost Formation) and Montana, US (Judith River Formation)
- Herbivorous
- May have been prey for Thanatotheristes degrootorum (“Reaper of Death”), talked about in episode 273
- Type species is Colepiocephale lambei
- Genus name means “knucklehead”
- Holotype includes part of the dome of the skull
- Originally described by Sternberg in 1945 as Stegoceras lambei
- Renamed by Robert Sullivan in 2003 to Colepiocephale
- Sullivan did a phylogenetic analysis with 49 characters of multiple pachycephalosaurs, and found Colepiocephale to be a new genus
- Unique enough in the posterior squamosal region (bumps at the back of the head)
- At the time, Colepiocephale was the oldest diagnostic pachycephalosaur from North America. There was an older skull from the Milk River Formation but it was too incomplete and indeterminate to name the type of pachycephalosaur
- In 2009 Ryan Schott and others analyzed Colepiocephale, including the holotype and a referred part of a dome found in the Judith River Formation of Montana
- Reaffirmed Colepiocephale was its own genus based on several autapomorphies and being in a different stratigraphy from Stegoceras validum (lived at a different time)
- There were three previous hypotheses that 1) it was synonymous with Stegoceras validum, 2) it was its own species within Stegoceras, or 3) it was more derived than Stegoceras
Fun Fact: Our dinosaur map has museums from 47 countries and 45/50 US states (let us know what we’re missing).
Sponsors:
This episode is brought to you by Prehistoric Pets, the new pop-up book by paleontologist Dr. Dean Lomax, illustrated by Mike Love. Prehistoric Pets takes a close look at 7 favorite pets and uses fossil clues to reveal who their prehistoric ancestors might have been. Pick up your copy at candlewick.com/r/prehistoricpets-dino