The Big Dinosaur Podcast

In our 149th episode, we got to chat with Dr. Caleb Brown (@Brown_Caleb_M), who worked on the amazing new Borealopelta specimen, now on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum (@RoyalTyrrell or facebook.com/RoyalTyrrellMuseum).

Episode 149 is also about Rebbachisaurus, a sauropod that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now Morocco.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• Beelzebufo (a giant Mesozoic frog) may have preyed on juvenile dinosaurs, although dinosaurs probably ate it too
• “Multi-liter coprolites” from Utah show that hadrosaurs appeared to eat crustaceans
• New early cretaceous sauropod found in the Soria province in Spain named Soriatitan golmayensis
• Kenneth Lacovara recently published a book, Why Dinosaurs Matter which highlights Dinosaurs’ many successes
• Two pieces of the Triceratops known as Bruce have been CT scanned by researchers
• The Steger-South Chicago Heights Public Library has a full sized reproduction of a T. rex that visitors can touch
• The American Museum of Natural History has a temporary 20 minute opera about Charles R. Knight’s granddaughter
• The Natural History Museum (London) has anew, exclusive dinosaurs version of Monopoly
• Dungeons and Dragons has released their newest adventure, called Tomb of Annihilation, which is about dinosaur racing
• The 7-inch plastic dinosaur “STEMosaur” which can quiz children has been released for $140
• Apple’s new Augmented Reality app includes the ability to open a gateway to a T. rex
• The baseball team the Arizona Diamondbacks had a dinosaur “throw” out the first pitch of their game on September 22
• Sports Illustrated ranked 10 “dinosaurs” by their theoretical ability to play baseball, Ankylosaurus won
• New Scientist shared a way to make a wine decanter out of a toy dinosaur, the “winosaur”
• Thingiverse, a design community that shares 3D models you can print, has a dinosaurs collection
• Ari Rudenko has launched a Kickstarter for his new Prehistoric Body Theater Dinosaur Dance Film in Indonesia

The dinosaur of the day: Rebbachisaurus

• Name means “Rebbach lizard”
• Sauropod that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now Morocco, in Africa (Aoufous Formation)
• Named in 1954 by Lavocat
• Several individuals were found (found part of the backbone, scapula, humerus, sacrum)
• Type species is Rebbachisaurus garasbae
• Gara Sba is the layer where Rebbachisaurus was found
• Second species is Rebbachisaurus tamesnensis
• About 46-66 ft (14-20 m) long and weighed about 7 tons
• Part of the superfamily Diplodocoidea
• Had a small head, long neck, and whiplike tail
• Had a tall, ridged back (spines on its backbone that could have supported a “sail”)
• There’s a South American sauropod, Rayososaurus, that looks very similar to Rebbachisaurus, which scientists think could mean there was a land connection between Africa and South America during the Early Cretaceous

Fun Fact:

Some dinosaurs ate grass.

• discovered from a titanosaur coprolite (fossilized poop)
  • Many plants contain unique silica structures (phytoliths)
    • Grass incorporate to make them tougher (and harder to chew)
  • It was only a small part of the titanosaur’s diet
  • Based on their teeth, small mammals called Gondwanatherians were possibly the first to specialize in eating grass ~70Ma
  • Widespread grasslands weren’t around for at least 20 to 40 Ma after non-avian dinosaurs went extinct
  • Still don’t have evidence for grass before the latest cretaceous

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