Episode 290 is all about Khaan, an oviraptorid known for a possible mating pair that were buried together.
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- The new dinosaur Overoraptor was like a bird on the top and a raptor on the bottom source
- Male gharial noses are much bigger than females and you can tell on their skeletons source
- At least 61 Edmontosaurus individuals were described from Wyoming source
- There’s a petition in Massachusetts to replace a Christopher Columbus statue with the Saugus Orange Dinosaur source
- Gwinnett County, Georgia put up eight prehistoric animal statues including several dinosaurs source
- A new stop motion video features the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs source
The dinosaur of the day: Khaan
- Oviraptorid that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Mongolia (Djadochta Formation)
- Looked a lot like other oviraptorids
- Did not have a crest on its head, like Oviraptor
- Had a beak, no teeth
- Had a short tail
- Had a small body
- Three specimens found
- Two individuals were about 4 ft (1.2 m) long, third individual found that was larger (found one study that mentioned 6.5 ft or 2 m long)
- May have been an omnivore
- Probably had feathers
- Had big feet. Articulated feet in all three specimens were well preserved, and the whole foot is about 32% of the length of the hindlimb
- Type species: Khaan mckennai
- First found with its tail sticking out a small hill, and the second specimen was found near it. Both had broken necks, killed by the same event
- At first, thought to be Ingenia, in 1995 and 1996
- But 2001 study found enough differences in the hands to be its own genus
- Named in 2001 by James Clark and others
- Genus name comes from the Mongolian word khaan, meaning “lord” or “ruler”
- Species name is in honor of paleontologist Malcolm Carnegie McKenna
- Closely related to Conchoraptor
- Holotype is a nearly complete skeleton
- First specimen found in 1993, then the two specimens Sid and Nancy found in 1995
- Two specimens have been called “Romeo and Juliet” and “Sid and Nancy”
- Nicknamed Sid and Nancy, after the Sex Pistols bassist and his girlfriend
- Sid and Nancy were buried alive when sand dunes collapsed on them, and then were preserved from the sand dunes and heavy rains, and since they died together, they probably interacted with each other while they were alive
- May have been a social animal, based on Sid and Nancy, and also remains of juveniles found together in a bone bed, they died together, may have lived in a flock
- May be sexually dimorphic (could tell the female apart from the male)
- Sid and Nancy were about the same size, same build, and probably around the same age.
- But one of them had large boney structures in the tail, which may have been to support muscles used for tail feather displays (like modern peacocks)
- Scott Persons and others ruled out pathology, and said the structures were too different to be individual variation
- Found they were both adults, based on fused vertebrae
- The one with muscles for tail feather displays was probably male, and the one with the smaller boney structures was probably female (would have had more room/been easier to lay eggs)
- The team noted that this instance of sexual dimorphism was linked only to Khaan mckennai, and there weren’t enough specimens of other oviraptorosaurs to know for sure
Fun Fact: “Birds are the only group of animals that rival mammals in terms of brain size.” -Daniel Ksepka
