Raeticodactylus
- 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:
—Matt Celeskey.
File under: Recent Discoveries, Reptiles, Triassic.
Comments on record: (5)
It came from WIPP
From Will Baird I learned of this story of 253 million year-old biological material recovered from subterranean salt deposits near Carlsbad. The material was found by analyzing the contents of microscopic bubbles in salt and halide crystals from the site of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a repository for low-level radioactive waste deep beneath the southeast New Mexico desert.
According to Wikipedia, the WIPP site was chosen, in part, because the salt deposits have remained relatively stable since they precipitated from a receding Permian sea, over 250,000,000 years ago. Presumably, the same stability helped preserve the earliest direct evidence of biological life—nearly four times the age of the previous record holder: traces of protein from 68 million year-old T. rex fossils.
Cellulose microfibers, from the UNC News press release.
Cellulose microfibers were the most abundant biological materials found, although the article tantalizingly mentions that some evidence of ancient DNA was “observed.”
Now a quarter-billion year-old bit of biomass is pretty darn nifty, and since the research is published in April’s issue of Astrobiology it leads to some interesting ideas about the possibility of finding durable bio-molecules preserved in salt deposits on other worlds. But I think there’s far greater potential for speculation here. I mean, we’ve got Paleozoic biology in proximity to low-level radiation. Forget the atom-bomb triggered monster ants of THEM!—imagine a pickled monuran, revivified and grotesquely enlarged by the careless placement of a used radiation suit, leaping out across the desert as it attempts to satisfy 250 million years worth of salt-cured hunger…
—Matt Celeskey.
File under: Permian, Recent Discoveries.
Comments on record: (3)
Glacialsaurus hammeri
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:
—Matt Celeskey.
File under: Dinosaurs, Jurassic, Recent Discoveries.
Comments on record: (1)
Paleo news wrap-up
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.
Comments on record: (3)
Speaking of camels…
Anoplotherium skeletal diagram from copyrightexpired.com
Over at Catalogue of Organisms, Christopher has put up an interesting post about recently described bipedal adaptations in an extinct relative of camels, the tylopod Anoplotherium. Well worth a read!
—Matt Celeskey.
File under: Mammals, Paleogene, Recent Discoveries.
Comments on record: (0)
