Episode 262 is all about Magyarosaurus, an armored dwarf sauropod from a Cretaceous European island.
We also interview Philip Mannion, Steve Poropat, and Adele Pentland. Paleontologists at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum in Winton, Queensland. We discussed the new sauropods literally coming up out of the ground in the Outback as well as a brand new pterosaur, Ferrodraco.
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- A new small ceratopsian was named Ferrisaurus from northern British Columbia, Canada source
- Victoria Arbour summarized her Ferrisaurus discovery on her blog source
- A new study shows just how fast dinosaurs could replace their teeth source
- The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a new exhibit called Ultimate Dinosaurs source
- The Natural History Museum in Los Angeles is having an Antarctic Dinosaurs Family Day source
The dinosaur of the day: Magyarosaurus
- Dwarf sauropod that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Romania (Sânpetru Formation, when it was found it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire)
- About 19.6 ft (6 m) long
- Weighed about 1.1 tons
- Had dermal armor (unique shape and size, which is why fossil eggs found may have been Magyarosaurus)
- No skulls have been found
- Insular dwarf, lived on an island so had limited food and not really any large predators, so it was smaller than other sauropods (didn’t have to grow large for protection)
- Type species (only species) is Magyarosaurus dacus
- Originally called Titanosaurus dacus
- Friedrich von Huene renamed to Magyarosaurus dacus in 1932
- He also named two more species: Magyarosaurus hungaricus and Magyarosaurus transsylvanicus
- Genus name means “Magyar lizard”
- The genus name comes from the word “Magyar”, a tribe of people who settled in Hungary in the 9th century
- Species name refers to the Dacians, who had lived there 2000 years before
- At least 10 individuals found
- Franz Baron Nopcsa’s younger sister Ilona found dinosaur fossils on their estate in 1895, around the same time dwarf mammals had been found on a Mediterranean island
- This lead Franz to hypothesize the dinosaurs were dwarfs
- Nopsca was the first to suggest island dwarfism for Magyarosaurus, though some scientists thought the fossils he’d found were juveniles
- In 2010, Michael J.Benton, Zoltan Csiki, Dan Grigores, Ragna Redelstorff, P. Martin Sander, Koen Stein, David B. Weishampel studied the histology of Magyrosaurus and found the specimens were adults and the sauropod was an island dwarf
- The 2010 team collected 21 samples from 19 different sized individuals and cut them up to look at the microstructure of the bones. They found all the individuals were adults, and they were between 95 and 99 percent of their maximum size
- Magyarosaurus had a high metabolism but a slow growth rate
- The 2010 team found that the island Magyarosaurus lived in was about 80,000 square kilometers, and was part of a number of islands that is now central Europe
- Not all dinosaurs on Hateg island were dwarfs, but it’s unclear why Magyarosaurus and a few other dinosaurs were so small
- No record of any large predators found on the island
- The team also found Magyarosaurus hungaricus was too big to be a species of Magyarosaurus and was a different taxon (but said a full description was out of scope for their study)
- Not clear if these larger bones come from a dinosaur that swam to the island from the mainland, or came from large ancestors of Magyarosaurus
- Fossil eggs found in 2001 were assigned to Nemegtosauridae and are possibly Magyarosaurus dacus or Paludititan, though Magyarosaurus may be more likely
- Hateg Basin was a large dinosaur nesting area in the Late Cretaceous, though it’s hard to identify which species the eggs belonged to, so it’s been associated with hadrosaurs and titanosaurs
- In 2012, Gerald Grellet-Tinner, Vlad Codrea, Annelise Folie, Alessandra Higa, Thierry Smith looked at 11 fossilized egg clutches, and found they belonged to Nemegtosauridae
- These were the first described set of well preserved, complete titanosaur egg clutches from the area, which help shed light on reproduction and insular dwarfism
- Having 11 egg clutches, instead of 15 like has been found in other nests, may mean part of the “island effect” is to decrease the number of eggs per clutch, instead of reduce the egg size or change the structure of the eggshells
- One specimen from the clutch had tissue preservation, and the team found dome-shaped features over a thickened area of skin. Based on what we know about modern crocodiles, these dome-shaped features were found to be dermal papillae (the uppermost layer of the dermis)
- Presence of these domes is congruent with the osteoderms that Magyarosaurus has
- Magyarosaurus lived in a somewhat humid environment, with rainy seasons
- Magyarosaurus closely related to Rapetosaurus, Nemegtosaurus, Malawisaurus, and Trigonosaurus
- Other animals that lived around the same time and place include the small hadrosaurid Telmatosaurus (another dwarf dinosaur), the dwarf ornithopod Zalmoxes, the small nodosaurid Sturthiosaurus, maniraptorans, pterosaurs and euornithopods, as well as turtles, dromaeosaurids
Fun Fact: Many dinosaur groups appear to have used their heads as radiators to cool off.
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