In our 128th episode, we got a chance to talk to Thea Boodhoo, a Director at the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs (ISMD). You can help support the preservation of Mongolian dinosaurs and their new museum by visiting mongoliandinosaurs.org/

Episode 128 is also about Yutyrannus, a tyrannosauroid that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now northeastern China.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

• French and British scientists have named the earliest Brachiosaurid, Vouivria damparisensis, from the Late Jurassic with titanosauriform features
• A Quipalong was found outside of China, marking the first transcontinental ornithomimid genus according to an article in the new journal FACETS
• A new paper investigates the biomechanics of Diplodocus feeding habits and fails to find support for the branch stripping technique
• Japan has a new largest dinosaur fossil. The hadrosaur was found in the mountains of Hokkaido and is about 8m (~26ft) long
• The first evidence of an iguanodontid in western Canada was found in the form of an isolated footprint
• A professor at the University of South Florida has begun creating digital animations of dinosaurs and viewing them in Virtual Reality
• The 5th Annual Canadian Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology meeting is coming next week (May 15th–17th, 2017) and the abstracts are available here
• University College London posted a specimen of the week, the 100 year old Proavis wax model complete with really strange feathers
• 9News shared a feature about Arthur Lakes in Morrison, Colorado, including how the area was involved in the Bone Wars
• Before Dippy was dismantled and being prepared to travel, the museum used a laser scanner system to make accurate measurements of the skeleton
• Markie Massey, one of our patrons, was the featured volunteer on the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs website
• Dinosaurs were seen crossing the Clifton Suspension Bridge in the UK to promote the animatronic dinosaurs coming to Bristol Zoo
• Peter Kulikowski is a one man dinosaur band and he sings songs about meteor strikes and dinosaurs in love
• Two NBA players on the Toronto Raptors showed up to a game wearing the $800 Saint Laurent T. rex sweater
• The Dinosphere at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis was listed number three as top places in the world to see dinosaur fossils, according to Forbes

The dinosaur of the day: Yutyrannus

• Name means feathered tyrant
• Tyrannosauroid that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now northeastern China
• Largest known dinosaur with direct evidence of feathers
• Only one species: Yutyrannus huali
• Species name means “beautiful” in Mandarin and refers to the beauty of the feathers
• Described in 2012 by Xu Xing and others
• Three nearly complete specimens (adult, subadult, juvenile) found, all came from one quarry in Liaoning Province, China
• The largest specimen is the holotype, and consists of a nearly complete skeleton with a skull
• The juvenile is estimated to be 8 years younger than the adult holotype
• Holotype was 30 ft (9 m) long and weighed about 3,100 lb (1,400 kg)
• As Yutyrannus grew, it’s skull got deeper and more robust, and it’s lower legs, feet, ilia, and forelimbs became relatively smaller
• Bipedal predator
• Adult and subadult had “wavy” crests on their snouts, which were probably for display
• The fact that an adult was found with a sub adult and juvenile makes some people wonder if Yutyrannus hunted in packs, but it’s hard to know for sure
• Preserved feathers on Yutyrannus were about 8 in (20 cm) long and filamentous, and the feathers covered multiple parts of the body (on the pelvis and foot of the holotype, another specimen had feathers on the tail, and the juvenile had filaments on the neck and upper arm)
• Possible that feathers covered the whole body
• Feathers may have helped regulate body temperature, or feathers may only have been where they were found, and used for display
• Yutyrannus lived in a climate that was about 50 degrees F (10 degrees C) so the feathers may have kept it warm
• First known feathered tyrannosaur was Dilong, named in 2004
• Yutyrannus is 40 times heavier than the previous largest known feathered dinosaur, Beipiaosaurs (a therizinosaur)
• Yutyrannus is considered to be a basal tyrannosauroid, and because it had feathers, that means it’s possible that later tyrannosaurids, even as large adults, had feathers. But, late Cretaceous tyrannosaurids, like Gorgosaurus, Tarbosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, had scales on parts of the body where Yutyrannus had feathers, so it’s possible that scales evolved secondarily
• Most T. rex skeletons were found in sandstone or siltstone, which are too coarse to preserve feathers, so it’s possible T. rex had feathers and the right specimen just hasn’t been found yet (Yutyrannus was found in fine sediments)
• Yutyrannus had three fingers on its hand (unlike the two-fingered Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus), and was missing a specially adapted middle toe that helped support its weight, which makes it a basal tyrannosauroid
• Part of the family Proceratosauridae, because a 2016 study found Yutyrannus to be more basal than Dilong
• Can see Yutyrannus in The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Brave (two of them are Sharptooth opponents)

Fun fact:

About 30 million years before the Chicxulub impact, dinosaurs went through another extinction event: the Cenomanian-Turonian extinction event

• Caused by an “oceanic anoxic event” a period of low oxygen in the ocean
• Possibly by changes in ocean circulation or plankton diversity
• May have wiped out Spinosaurids
• There were at least 2 other anoxic events in the Mesozoic
  • 1 in Cretaceous and 1 in Jurassic

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Interview:

For those who may prefer reading, see below for the full transcript of our interview with Thea Boodhoo:

COMING SOON!