Episode 324 is all about Velafrons, a lambeosaurine hadrosaurid from Mexico with a crest similar to Corythosaurus.
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- A new mamenchisaurid species, Omeisaurus puxiani, was described from China with a nearly complete spine source
- A small titanosaur, Garrigatitan meridionalis, was described from Southern France source
- A turiasaur, Narindasaurus thevenini, was named from a 100+ year old find in Madagascar source
- A four year old found a Triassic dinosaur footprint in Wales source
- Some are criticizing the move to make Suciasaurus rex the official Washington state dinosaur, but not because it’s an invalid genus source
- The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History has a new exhibit, Dinosaurs: Land of Fire and Ice source
- You can rent a full size skeletal replica of the Mukawa-ryu dinosaur (Kamuysaurus) in Hokkaido source
- Massachusetts now has an official state dinosaur, Podokesaurus holyokensis source
- A new dinosaur park builder Dinosaur Park: Primeval Zoo was released on Android source
- Someone reimagined the trailer for Jurassic Park, and replaced all the dinosaurs with Pee-wee Herman source
- Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous includes a hint at a new (probably frozen) dinosaur known as “Specimen E750” source
The dinosaur of the day: Velafrons
- Lambeosaurine hadrosaurid that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Coahuila, Mexico (Cerro del Pueblo Formation)
- Bulky, probably walked on all fours, kind of looks like Parasaurolophus, but more like Corythosaurus, and instead of having the long tube on its head like Parasaurolophus, had a fan-shaped crest on its head
- Herbivorous
- Estimated to be 25 ft (7.6 m), and grow to 30 to 35 ft as an adult (9 to 10.6 m); only a juvenile has been found so far
- The dentary (lower jaw) was long and slender and slightly downturned
- Had a bony crest on its forehead
- Crest probably would have changed as it grew (lambeosaurine skulls and crests change a lot as they grow)
- Crest not done developing
- Nose was on top of its skull and the snout extended backward, up its face, to fill in the gap
- Had a series of passages where air flowed through from the snout, into the crest, and into a hold above its eyes
- Unclear what the fan-shaped crest was for, but could be to attract mates
- These complex nasal passages could probably make sounds
- Seems to have more rapid growth of its nasal than other similarly sized dinosaurs
- Like most juvenile hadrosaurs, Velafrons has a proportionately large skull, but for its development stage (juvenile/sub-adult) the skull is still pretty large
- Type and only species is Velafrons coahuilensis
- Genus name means “sailed forehead”
- Genus name refers to the sail-like crest on its head (also described as hatchet-like)
- Species name is in honor of the state of Coahuila, where the dinosaur was found
- Named in 2007 by Terry Gates and others
- Fossils first found by Martha Carolina Aguillon
- Excavated between 1992 and 2001, by field crews from the “Dinamation International Society” (many volunteers)
- Then in 2002 a joint expedition with Utah Museum of Natural History, Royal Tyrrell, and Museo del Desierto worked to excavate the skull bones
- Found a partial juvenile skeleton and mostly complete skull
- Skull and skeleton were disarticulated
- Took two weeks to dig out the skull (out of 12 feet of rock and soil)
- Took two years to prepare the skull, and it was prepared by Jerry Golden, a volunteer at the Utah Museum of Natural History
- Very similar to juvenile Corythosaurus and Hypacrosaurus
- Even though a juvenile, found distinct enough to be its own genus
- In 1981 William Morris described ?Lambeosaurus laticaudus (with a question mark in front because it was not definitive, since no complete crest was found), based on a partial skull found in Baja California, in the El Gallo Formation. Gates and others found that Velafrons was still too different from Lambeosaurus laticaudus, now known as Magnapaulia (as of 2012)
- One of the first dinosaurs named from Mexico
- When it was named, it was the first new North American lambeosaurine named in over 70 years
- At the time Velafrons lived, there was a warm, shallow sea from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and Velafrons lived on Laramidia, at the southern tip (what is now Mexico)
- Lived in a humid estuary, where rivers meet the sea
- Lots of fossilized snails and marine clams were found in the area, so it lived near the shore
- Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place included large tyrannosaurs, troodontids, ornithomimids, and ceratopsids
- Lots of large storms, which seem to have lead to many mass deaths (large bonebeds of jumbled hadrosaur and ceratopsian skeletons found in the area)
- There’s a sculpture form of Velafrons, as Ichiro the Dino, 30 ft skeleton built for Burning Man by Marianela Fuentes, and after went to Washington D.C., and was on an 11th floor roof deck for a while. Had colorful bones inspired by the designs of the Huichol tribe in Mexico
- Ichiro moved on to the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose, CA last February
- Original Velafrons specimen is permanently housed at the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico
Fun Fact: Protoceratops frills were probably primarily for socio-sexual display and not for combat.
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