Hairy Museum of Natural History

• 
• A quick vector sketch of the head of
  Raeticodactylus filisurensis

• New pterosaur: Raeticodactylus filisurensis
• Name means: (Wing) Finger from the village of Filisur, in Raetia (the old name for the Swiss Canton Grisons, where it was found)
• Relations: Basal pterosaur
• Location: Eastern Switzerland
• Age: Late Triassic, ~203,000,000 years ago
• Material: Nearly complete skull, partial postcrania
• Wingspan: 135cm (~4.5 feet)
• Info: The oldest known pterosaur fossils come from late in the Triassic period, when this finger-winged group of reptiles first took to the skies. Newly-described Raeticodactylus adds to the handful of currently known Triassic pterosaurs. Raeticodactylus sported a unique crest above its nose, a deeply-keeled lower jaw, and a unique combination of teeth—fangs at the front of its mouth with wrinkled enamel on the inside, and crunching teeth further back in its jaws tipped with three to five cusps. Its limbs were long and thin compared to its contemporaries, giving it about twice the wingspan of the most famous Triassic pterosaur, Eudimorphodon ranzii. And, oddly enough, the head of its femur is offset 90° from the shaft, suggesting an upright stance more similar to that of dinosaurs than other pterosaurs.
• Reference: Stecher, R. 2008. A new Triassic pterosaur from Switzerland (Central Austroalpine, Grisons), Raeticodactylus filisurensis gen. et sp. nov. Swiss Journal of Geosciences doi: 10.1007/s00015-008-1252-6.
• Web coverage:
  • Laelaps
  • When Pigs Fly Returns 1 & 2
  • David Hone’s Blog
  • microecos

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Recent Discoveries, Reptiles, Triassic.

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In which I play “catch-up” for a few sites overlooked in my absence (note the partially-updated blogroll to the left). Today I’ll point out some excellent posts from the past few months dealing with different aspects of the Permian:

First up, Will at The Dragon’s Tales has had a couple of great articles on two of the more charismatic groups from the latter days of the Paleozoic: the carnivorous, sabre-toothed gorgonopsians and the herbivorous, tusk-beaked dicynodonts. Plus, he notes that there are some fantastic restorations of Permian vertebrates showing up on Wikipedia.

Speaking of dicynodonts, The Lord Geekington, mentions the ubiquitous Permo-Triassic straddler Lystrosaurus in his review of aquatic habits in stem-group synapsids. At the other end (that is, the beginning) of the Permian, he also discusses the potentially piscivorous pelycosaur Ophiacodon.

Finally, I recently came across the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Prehistoric CSI blog, whose archives are chock full of fossil finds from Seymour, Texas—a treasure trove of Early Permian vertebrates—with videos and photos, and field sketches by Dr. Robert Bakker.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Permian, Reptiles, Synapsids, Tetrapods.

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Glacialsaurus restoration from Science Centric
© 2007 William Stout

New Dinosaur: Glacialsaurus hammeri
Name means: Hammer’s Frozen lizard

Relations: Basal sauropodomorph (prosauropod) dinosaur
Location: Beardmore Glacier region, Antarctica
Age: Early Jurassic, 190,000,000 years ago

Material: Partial right foot and ankle, partial left femur
Est. Length: 8 meters (25 ft) long
Est. Weight: 5 tons

Glacialsaurus hammeri is only the second dinosaur described from the Jurassic of Antarctica, the first being the pompadour-crested theropod Cryolophosaurus ellioti. Although fragmentary, the remains of Glacialsaurus identify it as a prosauropod, one of several types of early long-necked dinosaurs that split off from the sauropodomorph line before true sauropods like Apatosaurus and Camarasaurus evolved. Other fossils found in the same rock formation as Glacialsaurus may come from a true sauropod, suggesting that prosauropods survived alongside their more advanced relatives for a time in the Early Jurassic.

Technical article: Smith, N. D. and Pol, D. 2007. Anatomy of a basal sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Early Jurassic Hanson Formation of Antarctica. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 52 (4): 657–674. PDF.

Elsewhere on the web:

• Laelaps
• Palaeoblog
• The Dragon’s Tales
• Wired News
• Eurekalert

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Dinosaurs, Jurassic, Recent Discoveries.

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A few paleontology posts of note have sprung up within the past 24 hours or so…

Laelaps takes a look at pachycephalosaurs, and the possibility that three named genera of these thick-headed dinosaurs might actually represent three growth stages of a single species.

Zach reviews the Troödontidae, which paleontologists suspect filled the niche of the skinny, brainy outcasts compared to their more popular dromaeosaur cousins.

And Amanda shows off a few stunning works-in-progress at the Self-Designed Student household: a lovely Triceratops skeleton, and the “Pteranodon jeebus,” a fantastic paleo-icon sure to inspire praise among the fossiliferous faithful.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Cretaceous, Dinosaurs, Paleo-Pop, Webbery.

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Several interesting tidbits of paleo news have been reported this week:

First up, a fossil claw of the eurypterid (sea scorpion) Jaekelopterus rhenaniae could have come from the largest arthropod that ever lived. The claw, described in Biology Letters, measures 46 cm in length, and presumably was part of a Jaekelopterus individual 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long. The story has been well-covered by National Geographic News, The Loom, and Palaeoblog.

This week’s issue of the journal Science has a few brief articles on research presented at last month’s Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting. One provocatively titled story, “Did Horny Young Dinosaurs Cause Illusion of Separate Species?”, reports on the work of John Horner, Mark Goodwin, and Holly Woodward, which suggests that the spiky-headed pachycephalosaurs Dracorex hogwartsia and Stygimoloch spinifer might, in fact, be juvenile forms of the knobby domehead Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis. Update (11/24): Manabu Sakamoto has a summary of Horner et al.’s presentation up at his blog, Raptor’s Nest.

Finally, researchers at the Royal Tyrrell Museum have announced the discovery of a new ceratopsian dinosaur: Eotriceratops xerinsularis (ee-oh-try-SAIR-ah-tops zeer-in-soo-LAIR-iss), the “Dawn Three-horned face from Dry Island (Buffalo Jump Provincial Park)”. This 68,000,000 year old dinosaur is a couple of million years older than Triceratops, and it may be the ancestor of that well-known genus. Eotriceratops and Triceratops shared several features such as large brow horns and a solid frill, but Eotriceratops also possessed some more primitive characteristics than its younger relative, according to this story in the Edmonton Journal. The three-meter-long skull of Eotriceratops (reconstructed in this photo) would seem to put it in the running for the largest head of any terrestrial animal, alongside other ceratopsian contenders such as Torosaurus and Pentaceratops.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Cretaceous, Devonian, Dinosaurs, Invertebrates, Recent Discoveries.

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