The Big Dinosaur Podcast

Episode 132 is all about the Acanthopholis, the platypus of ankylosaurs (pun intended).

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• T. rex had such a powerful bite it may have caused “catastrophic explosion of some bones” according to Nature’s Scientific Reports
• A theropod footprint was discovered imprinted in a fossilized brachiosaur vertebra and is now on display in the UK
• New theropod, sauropod, and possibly stegosaur/ankylosaur footprints found on the island Oléron in France
• Earth Touch News Network posted a story about a track site of Anomoepus which were found while constructing a pond
• David Hone and Jordan Mallon explain why we can’t tell male and female dinosaurs apart in an article in Paleontology
• Sauropod coprolites give us new insight into what the long-necked giants were eating (and possibly drinking)
• The Chinese Academy of Sciences launched an excavation zone in Yanji city expected to cover 10 square kilometers
• The China Post issued “Chinese Dinosaurs” a set of postage stamps of seven dinosaurs that were found in China
• CNN published a story about Chinese artist Zhao Chuang, who brings dinosaurs to life
• Mike Habib discussed the Mesozoic as the “age of dead baby dinosaurs” in an article on Inverse
• Dinosaur Ridge Visitor Center is struggling to keep up with the large number of visitors and may move to a larger building
• The Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum in Vernal, Utah, is sponsoring a Fossil Field School June 19-23
• NewsOK published an article about dinosaurs in Oklahoma including hundreds of Apatosaurus bones
• Dinosaur Gardens just opened for the season in Michigan and is free to visit
• Stone Mountain Park in Georgia has an attraction called Dinosaur Explore with 20 life-size dinosaurs that move and roar
• Thanks to a generous $10 million donation Yale will soon have a new lecture hall named after Othniel Charles Marsh
• Flamborough Patio Furniture (which is known for making dinosaur statues) suffered from serious fire damage, but remains open
• Barnaby Dixon showed off an amazing dinosaur finger puppet in a video
• The Facebook group Plastic Paleontology is open for all fans of prehistoric toys 
• It turns out Mookie Wilson never actually said his famous quote about dinosaurs and the 1986 article was a fake
• The San Francisco Silent Film Festival screened the original 1925 version of The Lost World based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel
• Our listener Luke created a new list of great dinosaur books features a couple of our books as well as many other great choices
• Inverse published a great list of 10 dinosaur documentaries that you can stream online including the latest “The Day the Dinosaurs Died”

The dinosaur of the day: Acanthopholis

• Name means “spiny scales”
• Ankylosaur in the family Nodosauridae that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now England
• John Griffiths, a fossil collector, found bones in 1865 at the shoreline near Kent, and he sold them to Dr. John Percy, a metallurgist. Percy let Thomas Huxley know about the bones, and Huxley paid Griffiths to dig up all the fossils at that site. He found more bones and some body armor parts
• Huxley named Acanthopholis horridus in 1867
• The species name means “frightening” or “rough”
• In 1890 Arthur Smith Woodward renamed the species name to Acanthopholis horrida, because “pholis” is feminine
• Type specimen consists of three teeth, a basic cranium, dorsal vertebra, spikes, and scutes
• Has a long, confusing history
• In 1869, Harry Govier Seeley named three new Acanthopolis species: macrocercus, platypus, and stereocercus. Then he split off material of Acanthopholis stereocercus and named a new Anoplosaurus species based on part of it: Anaplosaurus major. And he described another species, Acanthopholis eucercus, based on six caudal vertebrae. But in 1902 Franz Nopcsa reassigned that Acanthopholis major, and renamed Anoplosaurus curtonotus to Acanthopholis curtonotus.
• In 1879 Seeley also named Syngonosaurus based on part of material from Acanthopholis macrocercus
• In 1956, Friedrich von Huene renamed Acnthopholis platypus to Macrurosaurus platypus (not everyone agrees with this)
• Then in 1999 Xabier Pereda-Superbiola and Paul Barrett reviewed all Acanthopholis material and found all species were nomina dubia (specimens were composites of ankylosaur and ornithopod remains). Acanthopholis platypus, for example, had sauropod metatarsals. Seeley also had two unpublished names he used to label museum specimens: Acanthopholis hughesii and Acanthopholis keepingi. These are nomina nuda (means naked name)
• Originally Huxley assigned it to Scelidosauridae. Then in 1902 Nopcsa created the family Acanthopholididae, and later named the subfamily Acanthopholinae (changed it to Acanthopholidae in 1928). Now it’s considered to be a nodosauridae in ankylosauria
• Had thick armor made of oval keeled plates that were horizontal on the skin
• Had long spikes on the neck and shoulder, along the spine
• Quadrupedal and herbivorous
• About 10-18 ft (3-5.5 m) long and weighed about 840 lb (380 kg) (not known for sure, since it’s based on fragments)

Fun fact:

Strongest bite force ever measured: “16,414 N [3,690 lb] was directly measured for a bob-tailed, 4.51 m Australian saltwater crocodile [Crocodylus porosus]”

• Compared to an estimated 7,761 lb for a T. rex
• Humans top out at about 200 lb on the molars
  • T. rex can bite about 40 times as strong as a human
  • Normal human chewing is about 70 lb

Highest bite pressure ever measured: “2,473 MPa [358,678 psi] was deduced for a 2.99 m” Australian saltwater crocodile

• Compared to an estimated 431,000 psi for a T. rex
  • It only takes 65 MPa (9,400psi) to break bone with one bite

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