sails Archives - The Big Dinosaur Podcast

In our 118th episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Nelio Bugallo, a.k.a. Jaye Jurassick, an amazing artist who has worked in many mediums. He’s a tattoo apprentice, an illustrator, painter, sculptor, and more, who has created some beautiful dinosaur in eggs illustrations, and some wonderfully detailed feathered dinosaurs. You can purchase some of his work on Etsy (where he sells custom toys and replicas, such as Jurassic Park crates and Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus venom) and shirts, phone cases, prints, and more at Red Bubble. You can also see more of his work on his website, neliobugallo.com, Facebook, @nbugalloart, and Instagram, @jaye_jurassick.

Episode 118 is all about Suchomimus, a spinosaurid with a crocodile-like skull.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News

Scientists discovered a new Jurassic dinosaur, Isaberrysaurua mollensis, found in Patagonia, according to Nature

Scientists analyzed the “Fighting Dinosaurs” from Mongolia, according to Paleontological Journal
New titanosaur osteoderms found in North Patagonia are described in ScienceDirect
Scientists described dinosaur eggshells from Alberta, Canada, in ScienceDirect

PLOS One explained how sauropods ate to become gigantic
Scientists described Jurassic carnivorous dinosaur footprints, found in China, according to Vertebrate PalAsiatica
A bill was introduced in California to name Augustynolophus morrisi the state dinosaur, according to California Legislative Information

The Environmental Science Institute at the University of Texas at Austin published new videos on Youtube about dinosaurs: a short clip on what dinosaurs looked like, and another short clip on what dinosaurs sounded like, taken from the “Secret Lives of Dinosaurs” talk by Dr. Julia Clarke in their series “Hot Science Cool Talks”
TV Overmind reported on James Burrows, who built a 125,000 piece dinosaur themed LEGO park
Chicago Tonight reported on Neil Shubin, a paleontologist from the University of Chicago, who recently came back from his first fossil hunt in Antarctica

Geek.com wrote about Hasbro’s Toy Fair media briefing, which featured Trypticon, a dinosaur Transformer
The 65th Symposium of Vertebrate Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy and the 26th Symposium of Paleontological Preparation and Conservation will be held in Birmingham, UK, September 12-15
According to Birmingham Mail, Birmingham park will have life-sized dinosaurs for the summer

According to Gadgets Now and ABC, a team of scientists in Melbourne, Australia, are working to combine virtual reality and 3D printing to teach people about dinosuars

Dinosaur of the day: Suchomimus

Spinosaurid with a crocodile-like skull

Lived in the Cretaceous in what is now Niger, Africa
Species is Suchomimus tenerensis
Species name is after the Ténéré Desert where Suchomimus was found

Paul Sereno and his team found Suchomimus fossils in 1997 (David Varrichhio found the first bone, a thumb claw, in December 1997)
Found a partial skull and skeleton
Paul Sereno and his team described Suchomimus in 1998

In 2007 the furcula (wishbone) was described (found in a 2000 expedition)
In 2002, some scientists said that Suchomimus was the same as Cristatusaurus lapparenti, which was found in the same formation in Niger. Cristatusaurus was named earlier in 1998 than Suchomimus, but they proposed the two were actually a second species of Baryonyx, Baryonyx tenerensis
Part of Baryonychinae in Spinosauridae

Similar to Baryonyx (from England), both had strong forelimbs and large claws on their “thumbs”
Suchomimus is larger than Baryonyx, but it’s unclear how old the specimens were when they died
Suchomimus had neural spines, that may have held a low crest of sail

Skin sail or hump may have been used for thermoregulation or storing food (neural spines were large, which may mean it was a hump, to support the weight)
Baryonyx didn’t have neural spines, but the specimen found wasn’t an adult, so some scientists think Baryonyx and Suchomimus were the same, and that they grew neural spines as they aged (not clear if this is true, would need to find a specimen that shows intermediate development of neural spines)
Suchomimus find helped scientists better understand Spinosaurus

More closely related to Baryonyx than Spinosaurus, which means spinosaurids may have been across Pangaea, but then were split up by the opening of the Tethys sea, so Europe/Laurasia spinosaurids evolved separately from South America/Africa/Gondwana spinosaurids. Then there may have a dispersal event in the early Cretaceous (Europe to Africa) that led to Suchomimus in Africa.
Subadult Suchomimus found, estimated to be 34-36 ft (10.3-11 m long), weighing between 2.7-5.2 tons (Gregory Paul estimated in 2010 it was 9.5 m and 2.5 tons), adult probably larger
Had a long, low snout and narrow jaws

Had long, narrow nostrils
Had a short, muscle-y neck
Lived in a swampy habitat

Rest of body not great for aquatic lifestyle
Had powerful hand claws
Had conical teeth, about 122 of them, that were finely serrated and curving slightly backward (not too sharp)

Tip of snout was enlarged sideways and had some longer teeth (7 on each side of the skull)
Ate fish and probably carrion (dinosaurs and pterosaurs, though it’s not clear if they hunted or scavenged)
Teeth were good for grasping (not slicing) and had a solid roof of mouth, so it could withstand prey twisting in its mouth, also probably better suited for scavenging than hunting

But Suchomimus claws would have made it easy to slash small dinosaurs (like Ouranosaurus) while holding it in its mouth
Suchomimus fossils are in the Musée National du Niger collection
Spinosauridae family were theropods (a group of mostly carnivorous dinosaurs that evolved into birds).

Spinosaurids have been found in Africa, Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia.

Fun fact: Dinosaurs and humans have similar femur to hip connections which means that we walk in similar ways. However, their ankle is much higher up their leg than ours (sometimes it looks like they have a second knee that bends backwards).

Allosaurus T-shirt (Limited Time!)

We have an Allosaurus t-shirt on sale at Teespring. Hurry, it’s only up for sale until March 27! Special thanks to artist Josh Cotton, the Doodling Dino, for the awesome drawing. Get it here:

teespring.com/iknowdino