Episode 339 is all about Kryptops, an abelisaurid which may have had a keratin covering on its snout that could be useful for scavenging.
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- A basal hadrosaurid, Yamatosaurus izanagii, was named from Awaji island in Japan source
- Dippy is going to Norwich Cathedral from July 13 to Oct 30 and is free to see source
- You can visit over 1,300 dinosaur tracks in southeast Colorado if you’re up for a difficult 11 mile hike source
- A new Dinosaur theme park may be coming to Upstate New York source
- May 18 was (an) International Dinosaur Day with several museums holding special events source
- Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous was released, we’ll be watching it for our next few watch parties source
The dinosaur of the day: Kryptops
- Abelisaurid that lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now Niger (Elrhaz Formation)
- Looks like other abelisaurids, bipedal, large head, short arms
- Estimated to be 19 to 23 ft (6 to 7 m) long
- Had tall vertebral spines
- Carnivorous
- Had a short snout
- Jaws covered in armor
- Surface of the maxilla was heavily textured (rugose)
- Had pits and impressions of blood vessels on the maxilla, which shows there was some sort of covering attached to the face, maybe keratin (hence the genus name)
- Had small teeth
- Maxilla estimated to be about 10 in (25 cm) long
- Had about 17 or 18 maxillary teeth
- Probably a scavenger
- Steve Brusatte said in Science Daily: “A fast, two-legged hyena gnawing and pulling apart a carcass is how we might best imagine Kryptops’ dining habits”
- In a Reuters article, Paul Sereno said: “The idea was that the animal was sticking its head into carcasses”
- Sereno also said: “We think the face was covered with a bill-like material. It would have looked pretty much like the bill of a bird”
- Type species is Kryptops palaios
- Only one specimen found
- Described in 2008 by Paul Sereno and Stephen Brusatte
- Genus name means “covered face” in Greek
- Species name “palaios” means “old” in Greek
- Fossils found in 2000 on an expedition led by Paul Sereno
- Partial skeleton found in the western Ténéré Desert
- Holotype is an adult and includes a maxilla, vertebrae, ribs, pelvic girdle and sacrum
- Oldest abelisaurid found in Africa, and the oldest indisputable abelisaurid in the world
- Sereno and Brusatte considered Kryptops to be a basal abelisaurid
- In 2021, Matthew Carrano and others found it to be a chimera, and suggested that the postcranial fossils (particularly the pelvis and sacrum, which were found articulated) were found 15 m away from the maxilla, and that those postcranial fossils actually belonged to a carcharodontosaurid, such as Eocarcharia, which was found nearby in the same formation and named in the same 2008 paper)
- Kryptops, with Eocarcharia, help show an earlier stage of abelisaurids and carcharodontosaurids in Gondwana
- The spinosaurid Suchomimus, the sauropod Nigersaurus, the ornithopods Ouranosaurus and Lurdusaurus, and the crocodilian Sarcosuchus also lived around the same time and place (lots of large predators)
Fun Fact: T. rex is often considered the largest, strongest, and longest lived theropod. But it just lost the lifespan record to a carcharodontosaurid from Argentina.
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