Episode 336 is all about Chialingosaurus, a potentially dubious small stegosaur with long front legs.
We also interview Scott Johnston, a preparator & technician soon to be at Harvard. You can check out his work and science communication on Instagram & TikTok @mrdrprofjohnston and on twitter @MrDrProfJohnstn
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- A new record for the most complete sauropod west of the Andes was set by the new Chilean titanosaur Arackar source
- In Redcliff, Alberta, Canada, a 7-year-old, found a nodosaur tooth while hiking source
- The Las Vegas Natural History Museum has a new life sized Dilophosaurus exhibit, created by paleoartist Brian Engh source
- Wollaton Hall Natural History Museum in Nottingham, UK will have a new T. rex on display beginning July 4th source
- Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas has a new exhibit called Dinosaur Discoveries: Ancient Fossils, New Ideas source
- A Sinclair dinosaur sculpture was stolen from in front of Mission Mountains Mercantile in Condon, Montana source
- In Perth, Australia, a family spent time quarantining by building a “Bagasaurus” source
- A man is selling dinosaur and other prehistoric animal sculptures in Sweden source
- The trailer for Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous season 3 has been released source
The dinosaur of the day: Chialingosaurus
- Stegosaur that lived in the Late Jurassic in what is now Sichuan Province, China (Upper Shaximiao Formation)
- Looks like other stegosaurs, with the small, elongate head, and had plates on the front half of the body (on the neck to the middle of the body) and spikes on the back half (middle of the body to the tail). Plates and spines thought to be in pairs (two rows)
- Similar to Kentrosaurus
- Herbivorous, and probably ate ferns and cycads
- First stegosaur described from China
- One of the oldest known stegosaurs
- Type species is Chialingosaurus kuani
- Fossils found in 1957 by Yaowu Kuan and a team from the Geological Survey of the Bureau of Petroleum of Szechuan
- Described in 1959 by C. C. Young (Zhongjian Yang)
- Genus name means “Chialing lizard”
- Genus name refers to one of the four main rivers in Szechuan, the Chialingchiang
- Species name in honor of “Mr. Y. W. Kuan who was responsible for this interesting discovery”
- C.C. Young described Chialingosaurus as similar to Kentrosaurus, and said Chialingosaurus had a slender skeleton and slender spines compared to Stegosaurus and Kentrosaurus, and relatively long front limbs
- Also said it had a short and massive humerus, that looks more long stretched than Stegosaurus and Kentrosaurus
- Estimated Chialingosaurus to be 13 ft (4 m) long
- Young thought the holotype was an adult, based on the structure and size of the vertebrae and limbs
- Now that specimen is thought to be a juvenile or subadult, and Chialingosaurus may have been gracile because it wasn’t fully grown
- Holotype, IVPP 2300, partial skeleton with six vertebrae, coracoids, both humeri, right radius, three spines, part of the right ischium, left femur, metatarsal, parts of the limb bones (no skull). The right side of the specimen was better preserved than the left side
- More fossils and specimens found later. Second specimen found included a partial skull and lower jaws, vertebrae and limb elements, and four plates
- Shiwu Zhou thought the two specimens were from the same individual (no overlapping material)
- Third specimen found was a partial skeleton (no skull)
- All specimens are now thought to be juveniles or subadults
- Second species named in 1999, Chialingosaurus guangyuanensis, but no description and now seen as a nomen nudum
- Some debate over the validity of Chialingosaurus. Peter Galton said in 1990 there was one trait that made it unique, the lesser trochanter (bony protuberance where muscles attach to the upper thigh bone) is triangular with a broad base
- In 2008 Susannah Maidment and others in a paper on the systematics and phylogeny of Stegosauria, considered Chialingosaurus to be a nomen dubium (based on Maidment and Wei’s 2006 review of stegosaurs from the Late Jurassic in China, where they found the holotype of Chialingosaurus kuani to be a juvenile with no unique characteristics)
- The 2006 review came to the conclusion that the stegosaur diversity in China was similar to Europe and North America from around the same time (they found of 7 stegosaurs named from China, only 3 were still valid), and because there weren’t as many different types of stegosaurs as previously thought, the claim that stegosaurs may have originally come from Asia “cannot now be upheld”
Fun Fact: The Andes weren’t around (or at least weren’t as tall) when dinosaurs roamed South America.
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