The Big Dinosaur Podcast

In our 163rd episode, we got to chat with Dr. Dave Hone. He is a lecturer in Zoology at Queen Mary University of London, and he has a blog called Archosaur Musings. (If his name sounds familiar, we also got to talk to him in episode 82, “Ouranosaurus”!)

Episode 163 is also about Gasosaurus, a tetanuran whose name means, you guessed it, “gas lizard.”

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• Scientist found a tick on a dinosaur feather, preserved in amber
• Anchiornis now has a more accurate depiction of its feathers
• A tyrannosauroid metatarsus was found in Delaware, US
• Construction workers found 20 dinosaur eggs in Jianxi Province, China
• Japanese artist Hiroshi Fuji has made “Jurassic Plastic,” dinosaur sculptures made out of recycled and discarded toys
• New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science had a mobile museum
• Faulkner Planetarium in Twin Falls, Idaho has a new show, “Dinosaurs at Dusk: the Origins of Flight“
• Dinosaurs in the Wild has extended its stay in London, through July
• Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina has an exhibit of 17 animatronic dinosaurs, from now until April 29
• The North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher is getting its Dinosaurs! exhibit back this spring
• Creston, South Dakota, is a ghost town with its own dinosaur
• The dinosaur topiary sculptures on Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica will be getting refurbished early this year
• BBC Two aired the documentary, The Real T. rex
• Liz Climo, an artist on the show The Simpsons, has illustrated a children’s dinosaur picture book about Christmas
• The game Jurassic World Evolution, by Frontier, recently released another video of in-game footage
• The game GTFO will be set in the Chicxulub Crater
• Dino Stack is a new Android, block stacking game
• Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs released a screenshot of the game, showing Dinosaur Planet
• Magic the Gathering, Rivals of Ixalan is introducing five legendary elder dinosaurs
• More people dressed up in the T. rex costume:
  • Adam Haigh danced for an hour in Colne Valley
  • A teenager in New Hampshire went snowmobiling
  • A man in Philadelphia cleared snow around his house

The dinosaur of the day: Gasosaurus

• • Tetanuran dinosaur that lived in the Jurassic in what is now Dashanpu, China
  • Name means “Gas lizard”
  • Named in honor of the gasoline company that found the Dashanpu fossil quarry in Sichuan Province (now known as Lower Shaximiao Formation)
  • Found in 1985 during the construction of a gas facility
  • Named by Dong Zhiming and Tang Zilu
  • Type species is Gasosaurus constructus
  • Not many fossils found, so not clear exactly what it looked like (no skull found)
  • Some scientists think Gasosaurus and Kaijiangosaurus may be synonyms
  • Had short arms and strong legs
  • About 11-13 ft (3.5-4 m) long
  • Weighed around 330 lb (150 kg), though some scientists estimate it weighed as much as 880 lb (400 kg)
  • Thought to be a megalosaurid, but now thought to be a sinraptorid, based on data from undescribed specimens
  • Gasosaurus is the subject of a myth. On February 20, 2014, a web site published an article that claimed a 200-million-year old dinosaur egg had hatched in a Berlin museum due to a malfunctioning heating unit (said the egg was in a storage room next to the boiler room and the system overheated and started the incubation process). Turns out the article was a spoof, published by World News Daily Report, a site known for publishing fictious stories, including “Giant Housecat Now Availalbe on Market” and “Apple Announces Release of Paranormal Communication Application”, according to Snopes

Fun Fact:

Sauropods produced about 5–10x the methane that all ruminants (mostly cows) do today.

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