Episode 243 is all about Tuojiangosaurus, a dinosaur that resembles Stegosaurus with thinner plates.
We also interview Jen Bauer, a postdoctoral associate at the Florida Museum of Natural History, with a focus on the myFOSSIL project and the Thompson Institute for Earth Systems. She is also the co-creator, along with Adriane Lam, of Time Scavengers
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In this episode, we discuss:
News:
- Aquilarhinus, the new hadrosaur from Texas with a shovel bill and an eagle nose source
- A large group of opalized dinosaur fossils were found in Lightning Ridge, Australia source
- The lawsuit over the dueling dinosaurs is now at the Montana Supreme Court source
The dinosaur of the day: Tuojiangosaurus
- Stegosaurid that lived in the Late Jurassic, in what is now Sichuan Province, China (Upper Shaximiao Formation)
- About 23 ft (7 m) long, and about 2.8 tonnes (Gregory Paul estimated 2.8 tonnes for a specimen about 21 ft (6.5 m) long)
- Described in 1977 by Dong Zhiming and others, but the description was mostly of traits that other stegosaurs had
- Peter Galton wrote about an autapomorphy in 1990 (pairs of spines at the base of the tail, the thagomizer, had bony skirts that ran from the front to the sides)
- Had two spikes that pointed out from the end of the tail (thagomizer), though Dong thought there may have been four spikes. Gregory Paul described them as a “pin-cushion array” with two vertical pairs of spikes and another pair of spikes that pointed behind
- Had rows of plates on the spine, the tallest ones around the hip area
- Plates near the neck and the front of the body were rounded, plates near the back were more pointy and triangular
- The plates were shaped in a way that looked like modified spikes
- Dong estimated 17 pairs of plates and spikes
- Had a narrow, low head
- Had a bulky body
- Had short limbs, especially the forelimbs
- Ate ground vegetation and probably kept its head close to the ground (had teeth better for soft vegetation)
- Fossils were found in 1974, during construction of a dam in Zigong, Sichuan
- Type species is Tuojiangosaurus multispinus
- Name means “Tuo River Lizard”
- Species name means “many spines”
- Found two specimens initially (more specimens have since been referred to Tuojiangosaurus, including juveniles)
- Holotype is mostly complete, but missing parts of the skull, lower jaws, tail, and limbs (when it was described, it was the most complete stegosaur skeleton found in Asia)
- Sister taxa to Stegosaurus
- Can see Tuojiangosaurus mount at the Municipal Museum of Chongqing, in China, and another mount at the Beijing Museum of Natural History (fighting a Yangchuanosaurus)
- Can also see a Tuojiangosaurus cast at the Natural History Museum in London
Fun Fact: There is a formation of cretaceous rock larger than Montana in central Africa that is completely unexplored.
