Saurophaganax: Largest Jurassic Theropod Dinosaur? #saurophaganax Fossil Crates 2026-09-22 | Saurophaganax: Largest Jurassic Theropod Dinosaur? #saurophaganax
Sauropod Eggs: Something so Big Comes from Something so Small Fossil Crates 2025-07-27 | They came from that? It is wild to me that #sauropod #dinosaurs lay eggs at all.Lay a bunch of cantaloupe next to three yellow school busses. That is what it would be like for #Supersaurus to lay eggs.In the Galapagos I watched marine iguanas dig holes and lay eggs. It was fascinating, and gave me some ideas on how sauropod might have approached it.I suspect they wandered into an area that held whatever substrate they preferred to lay their eggs in. They used their massive hind legs, each with three claws, to dig a sizable hole. Probably they used just one foot to dig.After a few minutes they had a hole maybe 12” deep and 3’ wide. They then shuffled slightly, squatted down as low as they dare, and dropped the eggs. All of this without ever being able to see what they were doing.It is a shame I never had grad students, as there are all kinds of ideas I have that I won’t get the time to explore personally. One is to see from what height a leathery egg could drop and not break when striking another egg. Compare that with hard-shelled eggs. Then do the biomechanical modeling of squatting heights to see what we see.In my mind, unless they pressed their cloaca to the ground, each egg had to survive a fall and the impact of one atop the other. We could figure out that height.We have sauropod nesting fields in India and Argentina and now know they laid 10 -40 eggs in one nest. And that baby #sauropods had an adorable egg tooth (how cute is that???).These egg fields suggest they visited the same sites year after year, as the eggs are found stacked in layers implying elapsed time between events.How did they keep from crushing the eggs of others?These eggs are dubbed #Hypselosaurus, thanks to egg fragments having been found with the bones of an adult Hypselo. I wonder if that was happenstance, we tend to not find adult sauropods associated with the egg fields. But tis convention now.These are at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo, Japan. They are under their fun-sized #Apatosaurus to highlight the huge size disparity. So cool!#FossilCrates
Citipati Caught in the Act: Brooding Dinosaur on Display Fossil Crates 2025-07-26 | This remarkable Citipati, forever frozen atop its nest, captures one of the most intimate moments in dinosaur behavior.Citipati (“funeral pyre lord”) is a 10’ long, 200 lb #oviraptorid. Two have been found brooding on their nest, which is how this cast at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo is mounted.The skull is toothless and extremely pneumatic. I was so fortunate to be in New York while many of these new discoveries were being studied at the American Museum of Natural History. The Mongolian specimens like Big Mama are mind blowing, as they preserve behavior. In this case keeping their eggs safe, even at the risk of death via burial in a sandstorm.Oviraptorid means “egg thief” as the first one discovered where found within nests but were interpreted as having died whilst filching eggs, possibly slain by an angry dinosaur mom. Thanks to finds in the 1990s we know they weren’t stealing eggs but hatching them. Alas, the laws of naming animals means the “egg thief” moniker stays.This exhibit has a #Tyrannosaurus next to it in a similar pose. Super cool to see two related #theropod #dinosaurs, one small(ish), the other gigantic, posed in a similar fashion. Did T. rex brood? It is unknown, but certainly a possibility!Citipati has a pygostyle, a kind of shortened tail that birds today have. In modern birds it is used as an anchor for display feathers, suggesting Citipati had feathers. Perhaps it put on colorful displays.I wonder what additional amazing fossils Mongolia holds.If you find yourself in Tokyo, definitely swing by this amazing museum in Ueno Park. Check their zoo out, too!#FossilCrates
Brachylophosaurus Tail with Skin Impressions on Display Fossil Crates 2025-07-25 | Leonardo the #BrachylophosaurusOriginal material on this #FossilFriday at the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Fukui, Japan.Brachylophosaurus, “short-crested lizard,” (brachy = short) is a #saurolopophine duckbilled #dinosaur, aka #hadrosaur, from the Late #Cretaceous of Montana.Malta, Montana’s #1 export seems to be Brachylophosaurus specimens. With 800+ individuals in a bonebed (per local paleontologists), commercial folk have been excavating and seeking specimens for years, often in parts and pieces, for complete beasts like this are still rare, but more common than anywhere else in the world.This locality would be a perfect place to conduct ontogeny and variation studies. There are many virtually complete specimens known from the same area and formation (the Judith River Fm), that one could do all kinds of wonderful science.The cast at the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum in Malta, Montana I learned after my last post, was made from a 3D printer not designed to print super-fine details. This makes sense now that I have seen the original. Even so, the 3D print is super cool, but the original is out of this world amazing.The skin is stunning! One can see the patterns quite clearly. Apparently, much technological work has been done to the specimen. My favorite was the observation of stomach parasites in a 2016 paper. Now that is some amazing preservation!I had the great fortune to see the AMNH #hadrosaur mummy just before I inadvertently saw this one. It was incredible to be standing in front of yet another “mitten”-wearing beasts, the hands being ensconced in a structure that reminds me of an oven mitten of a sort.At 30’ long and likely over 6 tons, it was an average to average+ duckbill. I was surprised to see the crest on its head was shaped like a paddle, a shape that seemed to change as the animal grew larger if the multiple specimens at the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum have anything to say. One wonders if we are seeing ontogeny alone or mixed with sexual dimorphism. This quarry could certainly give masers to that question.Artwork commissioned from @paleoart_by_g.monroy#FossilCrates
Prestosuchus: Before the Dinosaurs Ruled Fossil Crates 2025-07-24 | This striking Prestosuchus skeleton at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo showcases one of the dominant apex predators of the Triassic, long before the age of dinosaurs began.This Brazilian apex predator, “Prestes crocodile,” lived ~240 million years ago, dominating the #Triassic.I grew up knowing it as a #rauisuchian, turns out that group is considered #paraphyletic and, thus, no longer used by #paleontologists.Today the cool kids call it a #pseudosuchian. It is, happily for my memories, a close cousin of #Postosuchus, a Texas-style version.Huene named it in 1938. He had ~10 partial skeletons of these animals at his disposal! For whatever reason, they died in an area that did a great job of preserving them. Studies on skull mechanics and even muscle reconstruction have been carried out on the material. So cool!When I first saw these entities I was perplexed, they have, at first look, a saurischian-style pelvis with the pubis and ischium split and a fourth trochanter on the femur. Their skulls have an antorbital fenestra and postorbital as well. They look very similar to theropod skulls.Tis all in the wrist, as any good presto-chango magician knows, and to that end the wrist and ankles are very different from those of #dinosaurs. That, and they only have 2 sacral vertebrae wherein all but one dinosaur (#Saturnalia) has 3+.Fun fact 1: Von Huene named a bunch of beasts in his 1938 paper: Prestosuchus chiniquensis (which I think is this one) and then a bunch not as well studied: P. loricatus, #Procerosuchus celer, #Hoplitosaurus raui [which was preoccupied and kicked off a taxonomic mess], and #Rauisuchus tiradentes. Good times back then for naming…Fun fact 2: He didn’t designate a holotype. Doh!This specimen seems to be original material, though a thorough search of the National Museum’s online database failed to return a specimen number. I am sure it has one, anyone know what it is?It is beautifully displayed at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo. This is an easy to access museum I recommend visiting when in Tokyo! Ueno Park is amazing, and there is a second building with even more specimens that you might not know your entry ticket provides access to.PS: Need a Presto cast, we have one built! Contact Brian@FossilCrates.com for details.#FossilCrates #Prestosuchus #notadinosaur #prehistoricpredators #prehistoricanimals #prehistoriclife
Inside the Jaws of Megalodon! Dr. BC Talks About This Prehistoric Shark Fossil Crates 2025-07-23 | Step inside the bite radius of the most legendary shark in history as Dr. BC breaks down the science and the spectacle of Otodus megalodon, while standing inside a life-sized jaw cast available from Fossil Crates.#Otodus #megalodon is the best-known-to-the-public fossil #shark (Jaws retains the top spot for #sharks in general :-)) thanks to its gigantic, serrated teeth and fantastic jaw recreations that appear in museums around the world. This one is at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, Colorado, just outside of Colorado Springs.With a mouth over 6 1/2’ wide, laden with over 250 gigantic teeth (the largest known is over 7” tall!) in 5 rows, this shark is deserving of its limelight!In paleontologic circles, there is some debate on which genus the teeth of “The Meg” should be ascribed to. The tooth similarity to the Great White Shark (#Carcharodon carcharias) led researchers to ascribe it to the genus Carcharodon.More recently, two camps have emerged, one arguing it belongs to the genus #Carcharocles, while the other argues it should be called Otodus. Both agree megalodon is the species.The cartilaginous bones of a shark mean that only in the rarest of circumstances does the cartilage actually fossilize, thus researchers invariably are left to conduct studies using only teeth. Not ideal! I sometimes wonder what we would have come up with if we didn’t have sharks alive today to compare the teeth to.Thankfully these teeth are numerous. Being shed throughout the life of a shark, each one left thousands of potentials fossils to be preserved.O. megalodon is the State fossil of North Carolina and its teeth are commonly found in rivers in the south and southeastern US. I have a friend who dives in low-visibility, faster flowing than he likes, rivers laden with alligators and snapping turtles to probe the muddy bottoms for teeth. A stickler for accuracy, he built a version of what you see here out of original teeth, with all teeth appropriately sized and placed (left uppers, right lowers).The giant size of Megalodon suggests it may have been endothermic like some sharks today. This would have allowed it to operate in waters that were colder than a giant shark might normally be expected to inhabit, which is great for chasing whales, which we know they ate thanks to many chomped bones.#FossilCrates #sharkweek #sharkweek2025 #megalodonjaw#paleontology #paleontologistexplains
Face to Face with Megalodon! Life-Size Head for #Sharkweek2025 Fossil Crates 2025-07-22 | 🦈 Shark Week just got prehistoric!Check out this jaw-dropping life reconstruction of a Megalodon head, the largest predatory shark to ever live! With teeth the size of your hand and a bite powerful enough to crush whales, Otodus megalodon ruled the ancient oceans for millions of years.This massive model captures the terrifying scale of this extinct giant in stunning detail, just imagine swimming with this beast!#SharkWeek #Megalodon #Otodus #PrehistoricShark #FossilCrates #AncientOceans #MegaMouth #PaleoArt #LifeReconstruction #PrehistoricPredators #SharkFossils
Prehistoric Predator Preserved: Cretoxyrhina on Display Fossil Crates 2025-07-21 | This Shark Week 2025, get up close and personal with a cast of Cretoxyrhina, the "Ginsu Shark," a beast that ruled the Cretaceous seas thanks to its speed, power, and astonishing bite!#Cretoxyrhina, “Ginsu shark,” is larger than today’s great white shark, possibly reaching 30’ in length. It lived in the Late #Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway of North America.Sharks rarely preserve more than teeth, yet a few specimens, such as this one as well as a stunner at the KU Museum of Natural History, in Lawrence, KS and one at the Sternberg Museum at Fort Hays, KS, preserved vertebrae, fin remnants, skin impression, and even a last meal.This mighty beast is know to have eaten #Xiphactinus, #mosasaur, #plesiosaur, and pretty much anything else it had a hankering for.Specimens like this are extra special to #paleontologists, the exquisite preservation allows us to better understand the #shark’s physiology and makeup. Histology tests on the vertebrae can predict how old it was at death. The preserved cranial region helps tease out teeth mysteries and even sensory proportions.I love studying this cast, admiring each vertebra, fin ray, and teeth. The preservation is stunningly exquisite. It likely sunk into an anoxic pocket, where no life was capable of eating it. The water chemistry altered the cartilage to a bone-like substance during preservation.#FossilCrates #SharkWeek #SharkWeek2025 #shark
Kosmoceratops: Ceratopsian with a Unique Frill Fossil Crates 2025-07-20 | #Kosmocerstops is cosmopolitan!This Kosmoceratops, “ornate horn face,” is on display at the Gunma Museum of Natural History in Tomioka, Japan.The original was found in the Late Cretaceous Kaiparowitz Formation in southern Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which continues to produce incredibly important fossils.The holotype, named by Sampson et al. in 2010, can be seen in the collections of the Natural History Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah.If Dali were designing a frill, this would be the one! Persistence of Memory has nothing on those melted epioccipitals :-).Kosmoceratops is a hippo-sized (15’ 2,500 lb) #chasmosaurine. What it gives up to hippos (gnarly teeth) it makes up for with horns, fifteen if one counts the epioccipitals. It would definitely be a beast to be wary of.I have attached a pic of me pretending to feed one. Yeah, that’d be a risky business in life for the beak of big #ceratopsians could sever an arm in a snap.#Ceratopsian skulls are wonders of nature. Their sheer immenseness results in their cervical vertebrae fusing into a syncervical to support such mass.They have a dental battery akin to duckbill #dinosaurs. Their teeth have no gaps, being instead one continuous wall, all ground to the same height by rough foliage.The teeth that interact with plants are but one of at least two, sometimes more, rows of teeth stacked as columns. A #dinosaur replaces its teeth constantly throughout life, thus the row underneath those contacting food grows upwards, replacing worn and damaged teeth, thereby ensuring a perpetually sharp series of functional blades.#Ceratopsians don’t chew like mammals, instead the lower jaw on many grinds back and forth, shredding plants just enough to maximize the digestive juices efficiency. They had huge guts and thus didn’t need to chew their food well, just enough to get it off the plant, and cut it a bit to make digestion easier. #FossilCrates #CeratopsianSunday
Meet Nicole: Massive Torosaurus Skull on Display! Fossil Crates 2025-07-19 | On display in all her horned glory, “Nicole” is one of the largest and most impressive Torosaurus skulls ever mounted, an unforgettable look at a Late Cretaceous titan.#Torosaurus means “perforated lizard,” thanks to two giant perforations in the frill. It has nothing to do with being bull-like.It is the longest skull on a land animal that has ever been found at 9’ and weighing a ton (not necessarily 2,000 lbs, but a lot nevertheless!).The massive horns over the eyes gave even the largest #Tyrannosaurus pause, the huge frill keeping its neck safe from bone crushing bites.Brow horns might have been used to duel others for territory, mates, and general tomfoolery. How long was their external keratinous sheath? No one knows for sure. The sheath, essentially a fingernail, likely kept the horns sharp.That is me peering through the nostril. How much of the nostril was exposed? Did it have fleshy sacs it could inflate, like hooded seals today? How did it sneeze???There was some disagreement for a few years about if Torosaurus was its own genus or simply an ancient #Triceratops. From what I can tell, Farke and Longrich, independently and from two different methods, successfully demonstrated they were separate. In recent years young Torvo were found, resolving the debate for nearly everyone. However, there may be those that prefer the Toro-tops, the MOR signage definitely argued for it when I visited a few months ago. That is what is great about #paleontology, we are always searching!This skull cast is on display at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center. #RMDRC#FossilCrates #CeratopsianSaturday
Pteranodon Takes Flight: Stunning 3-Piece Panel on Display! Fossil Crates 2025-07-18 | This breathtaking 3-piece panel captures the iconic Pteranodon in mid-flight, wings outstretched, soaring across prehistoric skies in dramatic detail.Pteranondon means wing (pter) without (a), tooth (don) referencing its toothless beak which was in stark contrast to the flying reptiles known when it was named, such as #Rhamphorhynchus, #Pterodactylus, and the like.All of us (ok, maybe not #pterosaur researchers :-)) think of #pterosaurs in 3 dimensions, yet they are almost always found crushed flat. Real flat. A centimeter of bone thickness would be massive! Why? Thin, hollow bones don’t hold up well to sediment piling atop them. After having held them I can vouch for how thin and hollow they can get.Pterosaur displays come in three flavors, traditional panel mount, 3D restoration, and life resto. This panel has an original-bone right arm, while the 3ad model was built from the incredible assemblage observed at the end, which was decidedly 2D.Triebold Paleontology #RMDRC pioneered 3D scanning, retrodeforming the crushed-flat bones within software, then 3D printing these otherwise 2D skeletons, revolutionizing #pterosaur, and fish, exhibits.Why fish? They, too, are usually preserved crushed flat. This new methodology (new as in this century :-)) has led to some of the most astonishing pterosaur, and fish, casts ever made. If you have seen a 3D pterosaur or fish in a museum, twas likely their handiwork.Despite my love of 3D skeletons, I like the elegant simplicity of the panel mount exhibit, how clever engineering results in the ability to transport a very wide specimen replete with original material.No teeth? No problem! Possibly #Pteranodon speared fish from above, using that long beak to pick up food. Or maybe it dove into the sea, flapping its mighty wings to regain the air with a mouthful of fish, like osprey do today.Crest size and hip width suggest some (small crests, wide hips for laying eggs) are female, while small crest, small hips are sexually immature. Leaving the big-crested ones as males. The more grandiose the crest possibly indicating the more fit to have offspring with it is, like we see in many animals today (antlers, long feathers, etc.).#FossilCrates #FossilFriday
Deinonychus and Seriema: The Deadly Claw Connection Fossil Crates 2025-07-17 | Deino-Might! #Seriema pic at end :-)A pair of leaping #Deinonychus, “terrible claw,” at the Gunma Museum of Natural History in Tomioka, Japan remind viewers that, though not giant, these Early #Cretaceous (~110 mya) #dromaeosaurid #dinosaurs, aka raptors, were not to be trifled with.Powerfully built with a long, counterbalancing tail, so important to Ostrom that in 1969 he chose the species name “antirrhopus,” which means “counterbalance,” the thought being the tail could help it steer when running at high speeds. The tail is exquisitely built, with overlapping zygapophyses and ossified tendons creating a broomhandle of sorts. I’ve always wondered how much flexibility is in.#Tenontosaurus and Deinonychus lived alongside each other. We know this because of the presence of Deinonychus teeth around Tenontosaurus skeletons. The pack hunting hypotheses stemmed from the presence of multiple partial Deinonychus skeletons present at the site of a vastly larger Tenontosaurus. The assumption was that since no 200 lb predator, even one armed with a 5” long killing claw, is foolish enough to attack something over 2,000 lbs., a pack must have killed the Tenontosaurus, which in turn killed 4-6 of its attackers.This view isn’t as widely held today as it has been noted that cooperative feeding is almost unheard of. The opposite happens in Komodo dragons, which fight over a kill, sometimes mortally wounding (and then consuming!) smaller dragons that try to get a bite.I have observed hawks cooperatively hunting large jack rabbits. Another bird has been observed working together, too. But tis anomalous in an otherwise world of solo predation, where there is no cooperation. If one uses phylogenetic bracketing for feathers, perhaps one can use it for behavior?I was part of a team led by Oswald studying #seriema #Cariama cristata “killing” claws. We observed their pinning prey, and second Fowler et al. 2011 that the claw was not used predominantly for slashing/jumpkicking but rather not manipulating prey.Note T. rex foot for scale :-)#FossilCrates
Ceratosaurus Sold for $26,000,000 at Auction! Fossil Crates 2025-07-16 | This incredibly cool juvenile #Ceratosaurus sold for $26,000,000 at the Sotheby’s auction this morning. This is the first time a Ceratosaurus has been available for purchase.The specimen, collected from Bone Cabin Quarry in 1997, was housed at the Museum of Ancient Life (MOAL) in Lehi, Utah, from 2000 to 2024, where it was beautifully displayed in a glass cast beneath the awesome Supersaurus cast.The sale was legal, my deep dive blog at www.FossilCrates.com (click blog up top) will likely surprise you at the legality of 501 (c) (3) museums selling fossils. Hundreds of specimens collected from private lands displayed, reposited, and described in museums across the U.S. could legally be sold. The issue is surprisingly nuanced and thoroughly misunderstood. I entered a warren (a series of rabbit holes :-)) to gather info on museums selling fossils.This specimen appeared at least twice in the literature from what I can tell. Snively and Russell in 2007 referenced it as NAMAL 1 in their Table 1 as Ceratosaurus sp., and Tsai’s unpublished dissertation dubbed it TPI 1010 in Table 3-2. Tsai referenced its acetabulum in a sentence.The holotype of #Tanycolagreus was named from the MOAL collections, which derive from the incredible work conducted by Western Paleontological Laboratories throughout the 1990s at Bone Cabin Quarry (BCQ).BCQ produced stunning skeletons with cranial elements and, even today, reveals amazing specimens, including a trio of barosaurid cervical series and a pair of mid-cervical through mid-tail articulated skeletons that provide a treasure trove of information on character variation.As a sauropod lad visiting MOAL, I’d see the Ceratosaurus specimen nigh annually, always admiring the fact that here was the only juvenile Ceratosaurus, one with the majority of the skull present, along with parts of the rest of the skeleton. A treasure trove of ontogenetic study is locked up in that specimen, awaiting the right researcher to come along.I hope the venue that lands this amazing specimen provides a proper description and CTs each element. I’d be happy to help out ;-).
Two Titan Duckbills on Display in Japan Fossil Crates 2025-07-16 | The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Fukui, Japan has an amazing series of duckbills on display. Here are the two largest, in slowish motion for your viewing pleasure :-).#Prosaurolophus “before lizard crest” was named in 1916 from nice material that would soon be overshadowed by multiple nearly complete specimens including wonderful skulls and skin impressions. This is one of the better-known, skeletally, dinosaurs and, at 30’ long and 3+ tons, it was no tiny entity. Yet many have never heard of it:Notice it doesn’t have a large head crest. There are two big groupings of #hadrosaurs, the cool ones and then those lacking headgear! :-)The bowing Edmontosaurus looks small(ish) being so low to the ground, making the Prosaurolophus more imperious.#Edmontosaurus, “Edmonton Lizard,” named for the Formation it came from, was the first hadrosaur to be mounted (called #Claosaurus then) and, at the time, it might have been the most complete dinosaur mount.Edmontosaurus has gone by many names over time, as one would expect being found near the beginnings of dinosaur paleo in North America. Lambe coined the term that “won” in 1917.The species name, annectens, means “connected,” and refers to ossified tendons that stiffen the tail.In more recent times, #Anatosaurus and #Anatotitan appeared because why not have “duck lizard” and “duck titan”?Today’s world seems to have settled on #Edmontosaurus annectens and E. regalis being the valid species of this genus but stay tuned. Much work is ongoing with these amazing beasts!#FossilCrates
Armored catfish: Part of the Loricariidae Family? Fossil Crates 2025-07-15 | I see all kinds of things I’ve never seen before when I am looking at #dinosaurs in collections. I presume this is an armored catfish, of the family #Loricariidae, but that is just a presumption.Alas, my knowledge of fish is not deep, though in my youth, I did spend many an hour fishing for channel and flathead #catfish in Arizona. They don’t call it catching for a reason :-)…I once reeled in a flathead that exceeded 20 pounds. That was the night I learned their bite strength is enormous and their teeth are like meat tenderizers… my thumb leaked like a sieve from dozens of tiny holes. But I digress.This was shown to me in Florida, but the provenance wasn’t known. That happens a lot in museums, someone passes away, and their collection is donated to a museum. Lacking locality information severely reduces the item’s utility to research in some ways.This one caught my eye because of its wildly serrated fin spins Why? Why have such vicious, offensive–looking spikes? I know firsthand how a dorsal fin makes a catfish very dangerous. In fact, catching a catfish over a few pounds means you had best slide your hands underneath the dorsal and pectoral in order to remove the hook, their slipperiness and sharpness can ruin your night (sharing for a friend hahaha).If you know what genus and species this is, I’d be much appreciated to learn! I have had no great luck, I even tried iNaturalist, but perhaps it was the angle of the photo that prevented me from getting the level of information I seek.#FossilCrates #catfish #armoredcatfish
The Truth About the “Irish Elk” | Megaloceros at AMNH Fossil Crates 2025-07-14 | Rudolph as an Adult :-)#Megaloceros giganteus, Great Horn Giant (Blumenbach 1799), though nicknamed “Irish Elk,” is technically a #deer.It lived around 450,000 years ago in the #Pleistocene and died out recently, around 7,700 years ago. I wish it was still around!Growing up, #Megaceros (note it doesn’t have the “lo”) was its name, and it lived in Ireland. Today we know it lived across much of Europe with suggestions it ranged as far as Greece. Recent DNA studies indicate its closest relative is the fallow deer (Dama #dama) which are *much* smaller.The largest individuals weighed nearly 1 ton and were moose-sized at 7’ high at the shoulder and 10’ long, taking a back seat to two giant species of #Cervalces in overall size and weight.With 12’ wide antlers they took second to nothing! Jim Jensen told me a story of him tucking a cast of a Megaloceros rack in the back of his truck on the opening day of deer season in rural Colorado the 1960s. When he stopped for gas everyone in town came out to gawk at the largest antlers they’d ever seen! I wonder if he came clean that they were from a fossil :-)?Imagine two of these majestic beasts squaring off during mating season. The speed, power, and grace must have been stunningly beautiful. Did they bugle?Cave paintings of giant antlered animals, likely Megaloceros, show a stripe on their back, dark coloration on their throat, and a dark hump between their shoulder blades, the purpose of which is debated. Thank you paleo paleoartists for capturing the color and a character we’d not know was present!Climate change seems to have done them in. I hope a small group survive somewhere in Russia’s vast tracts of unexplored land. Sadly, like my thylacine hope, this is pure fantasy, but a person can dream!This specimen, which includes original bones, is at the American Museum of Naturally History. I think it is FM 14302, though FM 14304 is in collections with the note “antlers cut off.” What happened there???#MammalMonday #FossilCrates
Face-to-Face with T. rex at the AMNH! Fossil Crates 2025-07-12 | AMNH FARB 5027 needs no introduction to hardcore #dinosaur fans, but for the rest of the world, this is the one that started the #Tyrannosaurus craze, the OG T. rex. (A PSA: Please don’t capitalize the rex when preceded with a T.)Not the holotype, but rather the best one found in the early days, this specimen has a fantastic skull and solid postcranial skeleton.Though named in 1905, this was the first one mounted. It was originally in a classic, upright stance, I’ve included at the end of the video a number of images I copied from Osborn’s papers. I love the artwork, the photography, and giggle every time I read old papers.One of my favorite paragraphs is how Osborn struggled with osteoderms found with the #Dynamosaurus (AMNH FARB 5866) holotype. In his 1905 holotype paper he wrote, “This animal is distinguished by the presence of superficial bony dermal plates which extended either along the dorsal or side lines of the body,”In 1906, he wrote, “Mingled with these remains were found part of the frill of a specimen of Triceratops and part of a jaw of an Iguanodont; it is believed, however, that the dermal plates are part of the type individual,”1917: “Problematic Dermal plates. The dermal plates previously described by Osbom (1906) are still unique in the American Museum collections; they are totally unlike those of the armored herbivorous dinosaurs or the armored Ceratopsia. In a type specimen of Ceratosaurus recently mounted in the U. S. National Museum there is part of a row of dermal plates present above the tips of the neural spines. It is, therefore, quite possible that plates of the character attributed by Osborn to Dynamosaurus (= Tyrannosaurus) extended down over the sides of the body.”Did anyone ever illustrate a #Trex with such plates?The osteoderms ended up belonging to #Ankylosaurus, thanks to Carpenter in 2004 (anyone note them earlier?). I’m curious if Osborn ever figured it out as Brown named Ankylosaurus in 1908 based on a nice skeleton of one, and Osborn likely saw that skeleton daily.This is a tough exhibit to get good vids as there was a perpetual line of selfie takers (of which I was one!). So worth it!#FossilCrates
Real Dinosaur Size Comparison: Apatosaurus and T. rex at AMNH Fossil Crates 2025-07-11 | AMNH FARB 460 #Apatosaurus on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It dwarfs the #Tyrannosaurus rex AMNH FARB 5027 in the hall, which as a #sauropod lad makes me giggle.This specimen has never been described afaik, despite being very complete. The mount is a composite of a few different specimens, but the vast majority is the 460 specimen, which was found in 1898 in Wyoming from Como Bluff at the Nine-Mile Crossing Quarry. It provides most of this mount’s vertebral column and girdle regions.The supporting cast (actually real bone, heh) is Como Bluffs AMNH 222 which is a few bits including the beautiful right femur. The tail of 222 I showed in an earlier video being gnawed by #Allosaurus.AMNH 339 and 592 round out the original material. Both are from the amazing Bone Cabin Quarry, a locality so named because a shepherd apparently had a low wall made of dinosaur bones from which his tent was attached. The classic cabin made of dinosaur bones was constructed much later, seemingly from bones not from Bone Cabin Quarry proper. Today it can be seen alongside a highway, a plan to move it into town appears to have stalled mid-process.592 contributed toe bones of the right rear foot while 339 provided 21 articulated caudal vertebrae, the mid-caudals through part of the whip. As a tail lad, those are near and dear, and alas nigh impossible to study today as they are mounted.Despite all of these contributors, a few bones were still missing, which were borrowed from Yale’s YPM 1980, the holotype of #Brontosaurus excelsus, which after studying recently is simply Apatosaurus. Maybe 2025 will be the year I get that paper submitted!When I was a grad student in New York in the 1990s the AMNH remounted this specimen as part of the Dinosaur Hall renovation, raising its tail from off the ground, where the OG #paleontologists had dutifully given it the classic tail drag. Most of them thought it was amphibious, spending nearly all of its time in shallow water, only coming to shore to lay eggs. Some argued otherwise, but when Cope and Osborn agreed, the majority went with their erroneous results.#FossilCrates #FossilFriday
A Tale of Tails: Diplodocus or Barosaurus? Fossil Crates 2025-07-10 | Dinosaur National Monument collections have amazing bones! AFAIK, this string of tail vertebrae from a #diplodocine #sauropod #dinosaur has never been published. A diplodocine means, realistically, #Diplodocus or #Barosaurus, not #Apatosaurus.Dino 2920 has always been considered Diplodocus, however in recent years our knowledge of Barosaurus has grown considerably with astoundingly cool specimens to be published on soon. Mix those in with the fact that the Diplodocus holotype is so scrappy and the splitting of Diplodocus proper into distinct morphotypes (D’Angelo FTW!) and all of these “classic” tails need revisited.Maddeningly, this tail is missing the more proximal vertebrae, and its chevrons, both of which would be extremely helpful. This means the SauroSquad needs to better define mid-caudal characters, which we are doing.Traditionally, the presence of a deepish ventral sulcus would be enough to ID it as Diplodocus, but alas I have to sink my own character with the amount of variation I am finding. Which means we need to look at centrum ratios and neural arch placement, among other characters, for solace. Happily on our team are some of the finest of the next-gen researchers, like the aforementioned D’Angelo and Bivens, too!These caudal vertebrae were excavated from the Carnegie Quarry, as the Dinosaur National Monument’s main quarry face, aka The Wall, is also known.The Wall was excavated for many years by the Carnegie Museum and produced some stunning specimens such as the “baby” #Camarasaurus, CM 11338, various nearly complete skeletons including Barosaurus and Apatosaurus, a neat #Stegosaurus, and lots of other beasts, many of which are on display in Pittsburgh.The matrix is extremely hard, standing there gazing at the enormity of the project, especially considering the tools of the day, it blows me away at what they were able to accomplish. It reminds me of the Hoover Dam or Golden Gate Bridge, these enormous structures built pre-computer. The quarry has been mapped, and I await seeing the computer-age map!Illustration of a diplodocine commissioned from awesome @paleoart_by_g.monroy#FossilCrates
Sauropelta: Stunning Specimen on Display Fossil Crates 2025-07-09 | Shield wall! A stunning specimen of #Sauropelta, “lizard small shield,” named by Ostrom in 1970 for a 2 ton, 20’ long #nodosaur, a kind of #ankylosaurian sans tail club. Though the last part of the tail in this specimen has been painted on, it has a curiously long tail, one I adore, with 29 preserved verts and possibly up to 50. Check out those chevrons!His etymology lists “small shield” and he originally named it S. edwardsi “named for Nell and Tom Edwards,” however when naming a species after two or more people one must use the -orum ending, thus S. edwardsorum is the correct species name today, fixed by Olshevsky’s 1991 famous volume.This is AMNH FARB 3036, collected from the “E. Fork of Beauvais Creek MT” which is classic Cloverly Formation, ~108 mya. #Deinonychus (Ostrom named it in 1969) and #Tenontosaurus (named with Sauropelta) are from the Cloverly Fm.Ostrom wrote, “It is quite possible that more than one species* is represented among the items here referred to Sauropelta, but no concrete evidence to that effect is available at present.” but his footnote reads “The most suggestive evidence of a second species lies in the ‘unique’ armor preserved in AMNH 3036 which seemingly lacks any hollow-based spikes or strongly keeled plates, both of which are abundantly represented in the other partial skeletons known and in the isolated ankylosaur remains. (See Plate 27: G to L for the keeled and hollow-based scutes and compare with Plate 75, Colbert, 1961 for the dermal armor of AMNH 3036.)” I’ve attached both images, it was a pain to track down Colbert’s and it turns out this video shows it much clearer :-).3036 isn’t the holotype (3032 is, it has lots of the skeleton) but with the armor in situ (meaning in place as in life) it was key in figuring out how these critter’s armors were assembled. Tis on display behind heavy, reflective plate glass at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.I have included 3035’s cool spine. Ostrom wrote, “Forward-directed shoulder spikes surely would have snagged on brush and tree trunks and therefore would seem an improbable arrangement.” Newer finds show they were forward.Art by Sean Fox#FossilCrates
Triceratops: A True Legend Fossil Crates 2025-07-08 | AMNH FARB 5033 is a composite mount consisting of original bones from four separate specimens of Triceratops (5045, 5039) from MT and WY, mounted in 1923 at the American Museum of Natural History with cast parts from 970, 971 and 973. It is 19’ x 5’ x 7.5’ and casts an impressive, and menacing, presence.The skull, AMNH 5116 was purchased from C. Sternberg and was considered T. elatus. Today called T. horridus. I won’t be touching Triceratops species history here, ugliness.Ceratopsian limbs continue to befuddle, assemble a cast of one to see :-).Osborn gave a colorful and functional stance description, “…the fore limbs, unlike previous mounts, stand widely apart to brace the head, with its horns and shield, against powerful attack probably from carnivorous dinosaurs of the Tyrannosaurus type.”The pose of the fore limb, set out widely apart from the body, is also designed to withstand attack, like the widely spreading feet of the pugilist or wrestler.” I will endeavor to include such color in my writings :-).Gregory (in a letter dated June 24, 1924): “All the apparent anomalies in the fore and hind limbs… are entirely explicable by Dollo’s theory that the Ceratopsia are secondarily quadrupedal, the gigantic descendants of small upright, running dinosaurs.” Amazing accuracy! These lads knew their anatomy well and, if alive today, would continue to be amazing contributors.Osborn wrote Lang spent 161 days + Bultman 102 days =263 days to restore and mount (260 work days in an avg. US work year fyi), or 2,104 hours. And that doesn’t include the time spent “freeing the specimen from the matrix,” which wasn’t given, but another 1-3 years probably. Preparing fossils for display involves a lot of expense.This was one of the iconic Triceratops mounts that impacted generations of perceptions on how it looked. Today, the legs aren’t thought to have been nearly so sprawled, a debate as to how sprawled does still exist.Note the model on the ground in front of the skull. Before computers they’d make mockups to see what it should look like. I included images in the video from Osborn’s paper discussing this specimen. Has it ever been fully described?#FossilCrates
Gorgosaurus in the Raw Fossil Crates 2025-07-07 | Gorgosaurus: That’s original bone in AMNH FARB 5458, behind the #Allosaurus munching on an #Apatosaurus. Tis labeled #Albertosaurus at the American Museum of Natural History as some have argued they are the same genus. Today it seems most split the two taxa, and this is Gorgo.Matthew y Brown 1923 call it #Gorgosaurus libratus from the Late #Cretaceous of Alberta, excavated in 1914 by Barnum Brown and mounted in 1921.There was a time when the locomotion style of big, two-legged #dinosaurs was debated. They lay out why dinosaurs ran like birds, justifying the position of the mount.“The pose adopted is that of a running #dinosaur, and was studied from photographs of running lizards and from the dinosaur footprints of the Connecticut Triassic sandstones... we used photographs of the Western Tiger Lizard”“Many western lizards run on their hind legs when in haste, as may be seen from a study of their tracks on the sand. The photographs show that the animal has the fore part of the body well raised from the ground and the tail projects backward as a balance to the weight of the body. The tiger lizard, however, does not swing the legs directly under the body, as a bird does when running, but flings the leg outward to one side in the middle of the step.”“It is concluded that the bipedal dinosaurs walked with a comparatively straight step, swinging the hind limb well under the body and with the foot near to the median line of movement of the animal. The carnivorous dinosaurs, however, are fully bipedal even in the Jurassic, and in #Gorgosaurus the forelimb is so small as to have no practical influence even in balancing the weight. The animal appears to have walked and run much like a gigantic bird, save that the long tail served to balance the weight of the large and heavy head and shoulders. The balance is, of course, incomplete, the pitching forward of the body being as essential to maintaining the speed of the step as it is in a man running.”The “fierce lizard” named by Lambe in 1914 from a different skeleton is a #tyrannosaurid 30’ y 3 tons. The attached painting shows this mount in a life restoration, hunting a #Corythosaurus. #FossilFriday#FossilCrates
Saurolophus: Massive 3+ Ton Crested Duck-Billed Dinosaur Fossil Crates 2025-07-06 | You have heard of Para- and Pro, now meet “Prime.” This big #hadrosaur, aka duck-billed #dinosaur, is none other than Saurolophus, “lizard crest,” Brown 1912. In a rare-for-its-time move he provided the etymology, “…a long median, dorsal crest to which the genus name refers.” So why lizard, though? His next sentence, “…this crest is analogous to that of the chameleons, but it has a different origin and may have served a different purpose.” Which presupposes we know what the purpose of a chameleon’s crest is…Happily, Brown answers this in his next paragraph, “…serves chiefly as attachment for the large temporalis muscle.” He then states, “The crest near the posterior end on the dorsal face carries a series of fine ridges and in life it probably bore a frill as in the living lizard #Basiliscus.” Thus, the origin (?) of such a frill in #hadrosaurs? He continues, “This comparison is further borne out by the high spines of the mid-dorsal vertebrae which, like Basiliscus, probably carried a high median dorsal frill.” A dorsal-frilled dinosaur, on the basis of a skull spike, is born. This spike has been suggested to have been a sexual identifier, temperature regulator, noise maker, and likely other functions as #paleontologists are a clever lot.The paper provides an amazing sclerotic ring figure and description (end of video). Brown writes, “…by slipping one plate over the other it was possible to dilate the pupil to twice its normal size while the width of the sclerotic ring remained the same.” He notes its similarities with pterosaurs and differences from ichthyosaurs. I have included the ring figure, plus the two plates he included, as I thought they were cool. He spoke of giving it a monograph treatment within this first paper, did that come to pass? I don’t recall an awesome hadrosaur monograph.This nearly 30’, 3+ ton beast, AMNH FARB 5220, is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, New York. I marveled at its size, something about seeing it laid out like this really drove home the fact that these animals, though not sauropods by any means, are huge, and we have nothing quite like them alive today. #FossilFriday #FossilCrates
Utahraptor Megablock Up Close Fossil Crates 2025-07-04 | This is arguably the largest single dinosaur block ever excavated from the side of a high cliff. The Utahraptor megablock is legendary for its size and for what it contains.Here I am focusing on various claws, jaws, teeth, and vertebrae of numerous size classes of Utahraptor and a second #theropod #dinosaur genus.The block, which weighed over 8 tons when collected, is absolutely gigantic at an easy 8 feet wide 10 feet long and a few feet thick.It has been worked on for over a decade and work continues to this day. It has extremely small critters in it, as well as at least one adultish sized beast.A researcher has agreed to describe the block; I am super excited at the selection and can’t wait to hear the results.The white circles with black dots are for photogrammetry, a technique uses images from multiple cameras angles to recreate the block in three dimensions. Every time a new layer is removed, we can digitally overlay it with the previous layers, making a virtual block. Should they decide to take all of the bones out then we will have a digital representation of the block in its entirety.Despite a few challengers, #Utahraptor is the largest known #dromaeosaurid (#paleontologist term for Hollywood #raptors). It is a big, bulky massive beast that might have weighed 1,000+ lbs. Creatures this small of it are unknown, though stay tuned for some announcements on a young individual!Utahraptor is known from mostly disarticulated bones from numerous size classes. This disarticulation means that every skeleton of Utahraptor is a best guess. Adding a second taxon into the mix will mean each bone previously assigned to Utahraptor will have to be investigated to make sure the bone still belongs to Utahraptor proper.It is always fun to see the Utahraptor original bones! #FossilFriday#FossilCrates #Dromaeosaurids #RaptorDinosaurs #Dinosaurs #DinosaurVideos #DinosaurVideo #DinosaurFacts #Paleontology #PaleontologistExplains
Three Glorious Ceratopsian Dinosaurs Fossil Crates 2025-07-03 | Ceratopsians! Only two bones are required to be a member of the horned #dinosaurs: big jugal and a rostral bone.I have labeled them for each of these spectacular specimens. The jugal bone flares from the side of the skull. The rostral is the “upper lip,” a triangular-shaped bone that occupies the front of the upper jaw, unique to #ceratopsians.#Psittacosaurus, “parrot lizard,” Osborn 1923 lived in the Early #Cretaceous of Mongolia (and elsewhere) 120-100 mya. Despite being a ceratopsian, it was bipedal, like the earliest seem to be.#Protoceratops (“first horned face”, Granger and Gregory 1923) lived around 75 mya in Mongolia. Being older than the known at the time ceratopsians, it was thought to be ancestral, based in part on having premaxillary teeth, which only basal ceratopsians had, with a single root and they do not form a dental battery.The eggs initially attributed to them belonged to Oviraptor, whose name derives from the thought it was eating Protoceratops eggs, when in reality it was taking care of its own eggs. It wasn’t until recently that actual Protoceratops eggs were found.Marsh named #Triceratops, “three-horned face,” in 1889. It lived at the very end of the #Cretaceous (66 mya) and has been found all over western North America, from Denver, Colorado to Alberta, Canada.Those horns were likely covered in a keratinous sheath, making them even more fearsome. How much longer the sheaths made them is unknown.The frill of #Triceratops is solid bone, unlike the larger skull of #Torosaurus. It, too, was covered in keratin. It might have been quite colorful, or maybe camouflaged, or with all the arterial channels maybe it had patterns that could change color by flushing blood to it? At up to 30’ and 8+ tons, they make rhinos look tiny!These are on display at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.
Lestodon: Giant Ground Sloth Fossil Crates 2025-07-02 | Lestodon, “thief tooth,” Gervais 1855 named from fragmentary bits found near Buenos Aires, Argentina. This giant ground #sloth lived all over the grasslands of South America, Brazil, the “guyas” (Uru and Para), y Argentina.Why “thief”? I translated the original paper and couldn’t tell for sure. I think it is because of the caniniform tooth? The lone plate had no figures of the material...Tis the largest known #mylodontid sloth discovered, some estimates put it at over 4 tons. It was likely a grazer, munching everything in its path and letting its gut take care of the rest.Thanks to genetic analyses, we know #Lestodon is closely related to #Choloepus, the two-toed sloth that has 5-6 cervical vertebrae (the three-toed sloth has up to 9 cervicals, all other mammals have 7 but manatee with 6).#Groundsloths are #xenarthrans, which means “strange joint” thanks to the utterly amazing vertebrae. Armadillos and sloths are the most recognizable members of this group.#Giantgroundsloths lived all across the Americas, alas humans seem to have driven them to extinction, along with climate change. The very thing that kept them safe, massive size, slow speed with huge power, made them “easy” for humans to kill, especially with ranged weapons. There is evidence of the bones being used as possible fuel in South American fire pits. Certainly, presuming it was tasty, the meat would have fed a tribe for days on end.Look directly into the eyes of a sloth and see a massive hole where the nose goes staring back at you. That giant hole wasn’t hollow in life, rather it would have had, like all mammals, a soft divider. It likely had nice olfactory capabilities.It had four #caniniform teeth. Check out the skulls of living sloths and you will be shocked at the size of these caniniform teeth. And their sharpness! They have a savage bite. Plus, powerful arms with large, sharp claws. Sloths don’t run from their foes, they can’t. Instead, they turn and fight, swinging for the fences! Giant ground sloths could punch a hole in the side of a sabertoothed predator. Some species (not this one) made giant burrows.Artwork commissioned from the incredible @hodarinundu#FossilCrates
Glyptodon: Legend in an Armored Shell Fossil Crates 2025-07-01 | Sir Owen named “sculptures tooth” Glyptodon in 1839, and it has been a legend ever since. Phenomenal specimens have been excavated in Argentina; we have great glyptodont shells with fantastic preservation in Arizona. They take a lot of room to store :-).They lived 3 mya to the end of the Ice Age, dying off around 12,000 yrs ago. I doubt we will find any frozen, but maybe we can find a mummy in the high South American deserts?Glyptodon reached 6’ long and 900 lbs, the big glypto, #Doedicurus, “pestle tail,” so dubbed thanks to its awesome 150 lb tail club that reminded people of, well, a pestle I suppose :-), reached 12’ long, 2.5 tons, and was amazing!These #armadillo relatives were something to behold. I *love* their tails, wondrous weapons to thwart predators and likely competitors for food, territory, and reproductive partners.The armor is nigh impenetrable. Watch videos of big cats messing with pangolins, or coyotes with armadillos, to see how real-world effective armor is.I suspect humans accelerated their extinction. They’d be relatively slow and susceptible to ranged attacks, even with thick armor there were weaknesses.This display specimen was first cast in 1898 (!) by Ward’s Scientific from a specimen found in Argentina that is now in France. Talk about global! It is still a wonderful cast today. This one has a “privacy skirt” because either the original buyer didn’t purchase the feet, or they were lost somewhere in the ensuing century. I reached out to Ward’s to see how much feet are, alas they no longer make them.The fact Ward’s offered such amazingly accurate, life-sized casts is amazing, a tip o’ the cap for making specimens catalog-orderable. This was my first time seeing one, now I am curious as to how many still exist. Is there a FB group for owners of these casts? What other taxa did they make?The terror bird in the background is #phorusrhacid, is #Paraphysornis, a new-to-me bird I posted a video of a few days ago. They both lived in South America at the same time. I am certain adult #glyptodon didn’t pay these #birds any mind.Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn#FossilCrates
Corythosaurus Holotype with Skin Fossil Crates 2025-06-30 | Over 100 years ago, 12/6/1916, two incredible specimens of #Corythosaurus went down with the SS Mount Temple, sunk by the German ship SMS Mowe. One of them was a mummy, supposedly vastly eclipsing that of the beauty in this video, AMNH FARB 5240, the holotype of Corythosaurus covered in skin impressions. Of course, Sternberg would say that as he was selling them, but he did discover some of the most incredible dinosaurs ever and would know it’s relative cool-factor.Corythosaurus, “helmet lizard,” Brown 1914 lived ~76 mya in Alberta, Canada, where these 30’, 3-ton herbivores spent their days browsing on conifer needles whilst avoiding the #tyrannosaurids #Gorgosaurus and #Daspletosaurus.Brown described it in 1914 and included this nest phrase, “The extraordinary crest rises above the brain-case like a Corinthian helmet or the crest of a cassowary which it resembles.” The 1914 paper was a quick, “check out our cool new dinosaur” paper. It lifted Lambe’s skin description from an early hadrosaur paper verbatim, but it didn’t figure or photo any of the skin! It does include two nice, labeled, skull pics, though.The crest looks like a #cassowary casque and likely aided in vocalizations and species recognition. Their skeletons all look the same (ok, sauropod researcher bias here 🤣) so they needed some way to tell one species from another :-)!With juvenile skulls known, #paleontologists have been able to elucidate how the crest grew. This kind of ontogenetic work is super important as it lets us identify characters that are variable and help figure out when taxa are oversplit (meaning we have names too many dinosaurs).I hope we are able to raise the skeletons from the bottom of the sea! They are at a depth slightly deeper than that of the Titanic. They likely are fine, having been wrapped in plaster jackets and now sitting in a ship’s hold in a cold, lightless, low oxygen environ. #FossilFriday#FossilCrates
Allosaurus Munching on an Apatosaurus Tail: Legendary Mount at the AMNH Fossil Crates 2024-12-14 | Leave my sauropod alone!#Allosaurus AMNH FARB 5753 (Fish. Amphibians. Reptiles. Birds. Now you know :-)) portrayed munching on the tail of my beloved #Apatosaurus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.This mount is legendary for many reasons, let’s talk about a few.Charles Knight has a painting based on it, which filled my youthful self with a sense of awe and wonder. Truth be told, it still does. Knight was a genius!The Apatosaurus, AMNH FARB 222, has tooth marks on it and allegedly Allosaurus teeth were found nearby, which gave some inspiration to the mount, which was the first free-standing #theropod #dinosaur mount in the world back in 1907. And probably the first munching on a sauropod.This Allosaurus has never been described! Cope had this at-the-time-most-complete Allosaurus sitting in boxes and he didn’t open them. I doubt he knew just how complete this skeleton was. Instead of “in-your-face-Marsh” he tinkered with scrappy specimens. And, because Cope didn’t mark them as important crates, according to Breithaupt et al. 1999, these were some of the last of the Cope crates the AMNH opened.Osborn, a big boss at the AMNH, upon realizing what he had, promptly had them mounted. Alas, even if Cope had known of ‘em, he’d of simply called it a new genus and, at best, given us a single illustration.Now that it is on display, it is unlikely it’ll be described, unless during the AMNH’s next dino hall redo they choose to take it down and CT scan each bone, as that’d be the only way to know for sure what is original and what is plaster.Plates (exquisite illustrations) were done but never published. I have been seeking them and, alas, none know where they are today within the massive building. They were last seen in the early 2000s.The Apatosaurus I don’t believe was described, either. Parts of it on are on the big mount, parts here, and more in the collections. It appears we academics have many, many specimens in our possession that we haven’t properly touched. Time to get to work!#FossilCrates
Styracosaurus: Awesome Spikey Ceratopsian on Display at the AMNH Fossil Crates 2024-12-13 | Get up close with Styracosaurus, the spectacular horned dinosaur whose spiky frill steals the spotlight at the American Museum of Natural History!Mi favorito!Styracosaurus albertensis, “Spiked lizard” is a 20’ long, 3 ton #centrosaurine #ceratopsian named by Lawrence Lambe in 1913 from a partial skull from Canada’s Dinosaur Park Formation, Late Cretaceous ~75 mya.In 1935, the rest of the skull and nice skeleton were found.In 1915 the specimen in the video was found and thought to be a #Monoclonius. It wasn’t until almost 20 years later that they realized it was actually a Styracosaurus.Brown and Schlaikjer 1937 studied Lambe’s specimen and named this one S. parksi based on a number of perceived differences (skull, tail) that many (most?) today think fall into the realm of variation, making this S. albertensis.This beauty is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City AMNH FARB 5372. It has 10 sacral vertebrae, twice that of the typical sauropod. Ceratopsians have around 40 caudal vertebrae, about half that of diplodocids. Now you know :-).This is my favorite ceratopsian skull. Since I was a wee lad, I adored the awesome spikes coming off of that huge frill. The massive nose horn seals the deal for me. In life, these frills likely had a keratinous covering, the extent to which such sheaths projected, and their coloration, remains unknown.If you tore your eyes away from the spikes, frill, and horn, you might have noticed the rostral bone; it is the triangular bone in front of that massive nose opening. Having one makes you a member of the ceratopsian club (we’ll discuss this in another video).You might have noted it lacks huge brow horns like #Triceratops has. That is because, for the most part, such horns are present in the other group of #ceratopsians, the #chasmosaurine club. #Centrosaurines, like #Styracosaurus, make do with one big nose horn and fancy frills, whilst chasmosaurine frills are typically much more subdued in comparison.#FossilCrates #paleontology #dinosaur #dinosaurfacts
Binturong: Living Animal that Can Go Tripodal Fossil Crates 2024-12-12 | Meet the binturong, a curious, tree-dwelling mammal that can stand on three limbs!#bearcat tripodalAlso known as the “bearcat,” the Binturong (Arctictis binturong) is a unique and fascinating #mammal native to the dense #forests of Southeast Asia. This #arboreal creature is neither a #bear nor a #cat but belongs to the #Viverridae family, which includes #civets and #genets. With its shaggy fur, long prehensile tail, and popcorn scent, the #Binturong delights me every time I see one.Binturongs are medium-sized mammals, adults weighing 44-66 lbs and up to 3’ long w/o the tail, which adds another 1.5’ - 2.5’.I saw a skeleton of one and noticed it had some diplodocid-style double-beam chevrons, a morphology I am always on the hunt for. It has a prehensile tail, a fifth limb if you will, that is used for climbing and balancing in treetops.Primarily nocturnal, Binturongs spend most of their time in trees foraging for food. Omnivores, they eat fruits and leaves, small animals, and eggs. I watched this one munch on two small birds (always a struggle for me to see, I suppose I am an old softie).Binturongs smell, to me, like popcorn. This odor wafts from scent glands under their tails and marks their territory plus is a form of communication between them.I have spent hours observing these animals at zoos and wildlife parks, watching how they use their tail. This shot might not look like much but was the culmination of hours of waiting. I had been told by Keepers they go tripodal and wanted to see it for myself. After so many agonizingly close movements, this one went full tripod to peer atop a big log. It was immensely gratifying to capture the shot and is now part of my tripod paper.It is, to me, important that paleontologists observe living animals, to see how they move and behave, as it allows us to extrapolate what the skeletons we study might have been doing during life.#FossilCrates #AnimalBehaviorReseach #TripodalAnimals #wildlifefacts
Bowmouth Guitarfish Jaw with Thorny Dermal Denticles on Display Fossil Crates 2024-12-11 | Check out the incredible jaw of the Bowmouth Guitarfish, lined with thorny dermal denticles that offer both protection and power!I love visiting museums because I often see things I didn’t know existed. Take the jaw of a #Bowmouth #Guitarfish, #Rhina ancyclostoma, on display at the Brazosport Museum of Natural Science in Texas. I immediately stopped in my tracks as I had never observed a jaw quite like this one before. I have studied a Port Jackson #shark jaw, which is very cool (and also in the display case), but this was new to me. I had to research this one!The interlocking upper and lower jaws with those odd round areas bejeweled with stunning teeth arranged in twisty rows delighted me. There must be hundreds of teeth on the surface and I had to know more. I presumed it was a shark… wrong there!It turns out tis a ray of uncertain phylogenetic position. DNA analyses place it in a few positions, which differs from where morphological analyses place it. #Rays and #sharks are cousins, as both have cartilaginous skeletons (and a few other shared characters), but they split from one another ~200 mya, in the Jurassic.I presumed it spends its days smashing shells on the sea floor. Turns out it eats bottom-dwelling fish, plus crustaceans and other hard shelled critters. Isotope studies suggest it eats swimming fish, too, something I wouldn’t have guessed!They are protected thanks to thorny dermal denticles (think mini-teeth) in a rows-of-spiky-terror pattern. They have spiky eye ridges, too, and apparently will ram predators and prey alike. Take that, tiger shark!Despite being known from ocean bottoms (up to ~300’) from South Africa’s Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, India, and the Pacific in Asia, Australia, and Japan, it is in danger of extinction thanks to trawler byproduct catches and targeted fishing for its fins :-(. It has live birth (viviparous) and doesn’t generate huge quantities of offspring, making their losses unsustainable.The end pic highlights their thorny denticles that serve as a predator deterrent.#FossilCrates #BowmouthGuitarfish #DermalDenticles #marinebiology #fishfacts
Borealosuchus: Prehistoric Crocodile Cousin on Display Fossil Crates 2024-12-10 | Where is Crocktober when you need it? ;-)#Borealosuchus, formerly #Leidyosuchus (which still remains btw), appears in the Late #Cretaceous around 70 mya, lived through the death of the #dinosaurs, and goes extinct in the #Eocene,~47 mya. It is known from Colorado to Canada.I find it interesting that it was mounted here without its #osteoderms. As a vertebral lad, I appreciate the visibility into the vertebrae. But, osteoderms do look cool on croc-morphology bodies. And they are phylogenetically important, with some only have two rows of scutes while others have four and suppose others even six. I am not a croc expert, struggling to tell many of the extant species apart, and defer to those more croc-minded.The crocbody bauplan of low-to-the-ground, elongated snout, and large propulsive tail evolved repeatedly across wildly disparate lines, think #choristoderes and #phytosaurs for example. Nature loves a plodding yet explosive low-slung predator patiently waiting for prey to come close enough to be consumed.The tail is its primary means of watery propulsion, lateral undulations rocketing forward, hands and feet steering and proving minor assist, grabbing substrate with its clawed hands and feet as needed.I have now been around enough #crocs and #gators to have a tremendous respect for their explosiveness. I have observed saltwater crocs in Australia and various crocs in Africa erupt out of nowhere, gives me chills remembering. Gator parks in Florida (and likely elsewhere) demonstrate #alligators ability to leap high into the air via tail propulsion.Borealosuchus is no longer considered a card-carrying member of the Crocodylia, rather twas moved to being a more basal member of the #Crocodylomorphs within the #eusuchian. If your head is spinning, you aren’t alone! I am in awe of the #paleontologists that work on early-days #reptiles. I will stick with my much simpler sauropods 🤣.This specimen is at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn. Their #paleontologist, Bruce Erickson, had a love of croc-bodied critters, and the exhibits reflect his deep research love of ‘em.#FossilCrates
Borealosuchus: Prehistoric Crocodile Cousin Juveniles Fossil Crates 2024-12-09 | #Borealosuchus!60 million years ago in North Dakota these #crocodyliformes youths perished, perhaps when their pond dried up? I need to track down why this particular locale is so chock full of #crocodylomorphs (Borealosuchus, #Wannaganosuchus) and the #choristodere #Champsosaurus.When found at the same locale with characters that make us confident that these are juveniles of the adults, there is all kinds of science that can be done. Understanding the changes in ontogeny, changes that happen from juvenile to an adult, are imperative for #paleontologists. Why? Modern taxonomy uses phylogenetic systematics, a character-driven methodology to determine relationships.A character that is present only in juveniles and disappears in adults, or the converse, causes all sorts of troubles. How? Let’s look at an oversimplified example with gorillas. Juvenile males lack the big crest adult males have. If we didn’t know this, we could conclude they were different species. Controlling for variation is therefore key, and by having juveniles and adults from the same place we can make our characters, and thus analyses, better.I was absolutely delighted to be shown such cool specimens. Thank you Grace and the entire Minnesota team! At the end you hear one of my best buddies, Dr. Ray Wilhite, amazing anatomist and a leading sauropod #paleontologist who specializes in appendicular elements (limb bones, shoulder and pelvic girdles). Ray is so much fun to collaborate with hang out in and out of collections. He shares his tremendous anatomical insights in a way that this vertebral lad can understand :-).If I had found either of these elements myself, I wouldn’t have known what they belonged to. Tis important when visiting collections, time permitting, to look at animals outside of those one studies, to get a feel for what other taxa look like.You can tell in our voices we love what we do! :-)Thanks so much to @SMMPaleo and @sciencemuseummn team for sharing these neat lil bones!#FossilCrates
Behind the Scenes in the Science Museum of Minnesotas Collections Fossil Crates 2024-12-08 | Behind the Scenes!Put a number of #paleontologists in a collections room they aren’t familiar with and watch them get the “zoomies” and share their specialized knowledge with their compatriots!Here Dr. Ray Wilhite, a #sauropod #dinosaur specialist, is demonstrating his extreme croc/gator knowledge by showing us how he can, with only a lower jaw, get to within inches of the length of a specimen. By measuring the complete lower jaw in inches and dividing that number by 2, the ensuing result is how long the animal was in feet. On living animals, provided they haven’t lost the end of their tail to an accident, Ray can get within an inch or two. It seems to work on #crocodiles as well, excluding the ultra-long snouted #gharial.In the Science Museum of Minnesota collections @SMMPaleo and @sciencemuseummn there are numerous croc-bodied beasts to test it on. We were having a ball hearing Ray’s #gator stories as he tested the methodology on extinct critters. He didn’t think it would be an exact match, after all #Borealosuchus split from the main croc line 10s of millions of years prior, the “northern crocodile” (so named because they are found in Colorado to Canada, from the Late #Cretaceous into the #Eocene) being a #crocodyliform but not a #crocodylian (yeah, it never gets any clearer hahahah). However, he got pretty close from what we could tell :-).The typical #paleontologist has a deep specialty, I am a sauropod tail lad, Ray is limbs extraordinaire, but also a second, typically complimentary, specialty. Ray is a world-class anatomist (and awesome geologist, a triple threat!), teaching at the Auburn vet lab. I am not sure of my secondary knowledge yet 🤣, still searching I guess (I do enjoy #stegosaurs, too!).On this day in the collections, Tom van der Linden, another sauropod lad, educated us on eggshells (!), and John D’Angelo walked us through vertebral serial variation nuances, something I am so glad to see that is being tackled in a comprehensive way!If you get the chance to wander a museum collections with a paleontologist, please do! We love to share our love of amazing prehistoric creatures.#FossilCrates
Paraphysornis: Terror Bird from the Oligocence on Display Fossil Crates 2024-12-07 | 5’ 555#That is a probable max *hip* height and weight of a bird y’all might not have heard of, I certainly hadn’t, #Paraphysornis brasiliensis.Paraphysornis was originally dubbed a species of #Physornis by Alvarenga way back in 1982, who was working on, from a paleontologist POV, an incredibly complete skeleton from rocks ~23 mya. That means either end of Oligocene or beginning of #Miocene, depending on the decimal. Which is why one sees this taxon appear in different epochs. I should look to see if modern dating has been done to nail that down. It was missing most of the skull but, as a sauropod lad, aren’t they all? :-)11 years later, after much more study, he concluded it is a new genus, and named it “alongside Physornis”. Physornis is a “terror bird” named in 1894 by Ameghino from #Oligocene rocks about 27 mya. Ameghino, that rascal, named Physornis from two fragmentary cranial elements, which understandably gave Alvarenga pause as some argue the Physornis bones aren’t even diagnostic.I grew up with the classic images of #Phorusrhacids running down #horses and small #mammals, in a time before birds were thought to be dinosaurs (apparently I am old :-))!We know close cousins of Paraphysornis had beaks that ended in a sweet hook. I have studied #seriema, their closest living relatives, and they, too, have a hooked beak (and killing claws similar to #Velociraptor…) that they use once they have stomped on their prey to rip chunks of flesh off. It was a marvel (and gruesome…) to behold.I wonder if many prey items were swallowed whole by predatory birds with such giant heads. I watched a great blue heron swallow a 4’+ eel, and seriema throw lizards and mice in the air to swallow them, but those needing more work were ripped into tiny pieces by the seriema. I have never observed a heron dissect its food (not saying it doesn’t happen, I have simply never seen it).I saw this skeleton at the awesome Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn#aFossilCrates
Original Material Borealosuchus Skull at the Science Museum of Minnesota Fossil Crates 2024-12-06 | That’s original material!In the #Paleocene 60 mya, #Borealosuchus prowled the shores of rivers and lakes in North Dakota. The genus arose in the Late #Cretaceous and its name, “northern croc,” reflects where tis excavated, the northwestern U.S. and Canada. With some down in Colorado. They lived until 47 mya.This is the actual skull of one in the collections @SMMPaleo and @sciencemuseummn, who were kind enough to let me take a peek at it before the croc researchers arrived. Their collection are amazing and I am truly thankful for all the time and kindness y’all gave me!Notice it even has some teeth still in their sockets. Thanks to how their teeth are attached that is a rarity. The empty sockets give you a feel for how big a ballpark 12’ Borealosuchus tooth would be.The skull is laying in a jacket to keep it safe whilst on a shelf. It can be removed from the jacket for research, thanks to all the white on the bone. The jacket makes it convenient to move it to a table where researches can ooh and ahh. Many of us retain our unbridled youthful delight when we see fossils. #Paleontologists love to show folks their faves in the collection. If you are ever with me in certain collections I know well, be prepared for a treat!The white on the skull is material used to hold the skull together. The skull is cracked in many places and when picked up, without something to hold it together, it would become a puzzle we’d rather not see :-). I am delighted that the preparators chose to not color match, it makes researching it much easier.If one were to CT scan this animal, the different density of the filler from the bone means that, with the touch of a button, the non-bone digitally disappears. I should make a video on the power of CT, but I digress as I oft do in my typings :-).I will likely show two more backstage videos, one of the baby and juveniles mentioned, the other on how to tell via only a lower jaw and the non-metric measurement of inches ;-) how to determine length. It works to within a few inches on American Alligators and seems to work on most every croc (gharials and the longest-snouted crocs excepted). Doh, another side track!#FossilCrates
Pelagornis: Extinct Bird with Sclerotic Ring and Pseudo Teeth Fossil Crates 2024-12-05 | Those aren’t teeth!#Pelagornis “pelagic bird” was new to me! I was fascinated when I first saw it, now I need to find a cast of its skull :-). I derive so much joy when I enter a museum and see new-to-me critters, and this one still has me smiling!These birds have what at first glance appear to be teeth! And not tiny little beak “bumps” like you see on some birds, but full-born, savage-looking slashers!They aren’t teeth at all, but called “pseudo-teeth,” or false teeth. I am sure to the soft invertebrates and fish speared by them “on the wing” that delineation is cold comfort :-).This group, Pelagornithidae, lived from 62 to 2 mya globally. Why they went extinct, I know not. Being so large you’d think they could fly to other food sources they knew of. Anyone know?That ring of bone was actually *inside* the eye! The sclerotic ring likely keeps the eye in the correct shape during dives and altitude changes. Birds, reptiles, and dinosaurs have it while mammals lost it somewhere along the way.I grew up fascinated by huge flying #birds, those that approached, if not eclipsed, the giant #pterosaurs. As a lad #Pteranodon reigned supreme in my mind as flying king. Yet a book’s last page hinting at the existence of a Texas-sized pterosaur, it stoked my imagination!I need to find that book as that last page showed four(?) year old me that there are so many more cool creatures to be discovered.I had thought #Teratornis and then #Argentavis were the longest-wing-spanned flying birds. Off of Tasmania we saw wandering #albatross, their 12’ wingspans are absolutely stunning. But #Pelagornis sandersi, named after Al Sanders, the man who led the excavation, takes the case for awesomeness!Aside, I learned about Al when trying to figure out genus a cast of what ultimately, I discovered was named #Zygorhiza. My cast was labeled ASNW and didn’t look like any whale skull I had seen before. Turns out it stood for Al Sanders No-name Whale… Digression over :-).This awesome beast, along with numerous other critters I hadn’t seen before, are on display at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn#FossilCrates
Tiltaalik: One of the Most Important Fossils Ever Discovered Fossil Crates 2024-12-04 | #Tiltaalik!One of the most important fossils ever discovered, this 375 mya sarcopterygian, “flesh fin,” lived during the Age of Fish.We always see it small but pieces suggest it grew up to 9’ long. Imagine a 9’ down crawling in mud.Multiple specimens have been found on Ellesmere Island in Canada. It was named in 2006 from an amazing specimen that preserved a #fish with structures that let it possibly cross muddy sections of land.A member of the #Osteichthyes, the bony fish, it has a pectoral girdle and ribs that suggest it could support itself on its forelimbs and a breathing shift that enabled it to breathe air for a bit. The pizza-slice head reminds me of later amphibians.It lacks an opercular, and numerous skeletal bits show a large shift in breathing style.I never like using the term “missing link,” as evolution is a continuous process, no one point in time tends to encapsulate the future as clearly as I’d like it to.However, this is a great transitional taxon. The skeleton represents a moment in time where an animal that, though it could clearly swim, could also get along on land.To an observer in the #Devonian, it’s arms would have seemed odd in comparison to the multitude of fish about. However, armed with the knowledge of how the future works out, those arms seem plenty important :-).You know the Houston Museum of Natural Science has a bevy of beautiful beasts when the legendary #Tiktaalik is in a remote corner of the building. This superstar, in most any other museum, is prominently displayed. Yet such is the astonishing assemblage that is Houston that it is on display in a corner of the museum. Be sure to seek it out when you visit!#FossilCrates
Pteranodon Flying High at the Science Museum of Minnesota Fossil Crates 2024-12-03 | #Pteranodon “wing without teeth” is the short-tailed, toothless, head-crested flying marvel that, until the 1970s, was known as the flying creature with the longest wingspan, over 20’! It is best known from Late #Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway localities in Kansas.The lack of teeth caused quite the stir as #pterosaurs had all been small toothy flyers, like #Pterodactylus, with long tails. Yet here was found a giant graceful glider.Numerous genus names such as #Sternbergia, #Geosternbergia, and #Dawndraco, plus a number of new species names, have been used to describe this most awesome of flying reptiles.Why so many names? In part tis a result of the researcher’s underlying philosophies on concepts such as #anagenesis, where one species turns into another, and on a desire to name things in general :-).P. sternbergi lived in the Late #Cretaceous of Kansas, from around 88-85 mya. P. longiceps shows up in the same area, identical but for head crest differences, 86-84 mya. Some use this overlap as evidence for anagenesis, where one species evolves into another.Others aren’t so sure, and argue the differences are at the genus level. Adding further to the mix? An 80 mya species has been named. A 4 million year gap may very well@be a new genus.This taxon is a fantastic example of the import, and challenges, of a reasonably complete #fossil record. The more you know the less you know, but the more you can say (BC the Philosopher :-)).We have lots of specimens showing male vs female differences from the same stratigraphic layers (ultra rare to find two in one spot). Thus we can run statistics to quantify the differences. This chronal control lets us put more sophisticated evolutionary principles like anagenesis to work.But we lack a complete record, leaving holes to debate. And then new finds further complicate things. Nature is messy (yet awesome!), and working with the tiny shoebox diorama holes we have presents lots of challenges. And fun!This ceiling-mounted wonder is at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn#FossilCrates
Champsosaurus in Cobra Pose at the Science Museum of Minnesota Fossil Crates 2024-12-02 | Champsosaurus FTW!I like the cobra yoga pose, gets that lower back nice and stretched :-).Champsosaurus is a #choristodere, a group not related to #crocodiles other than by virtue of both being in the group #Reptilia. They split from the main #reptile line over 250 mya, in the #Permian it is thought, and were quite successful in their niches.#Champsosaurus died out in the #Paleocene and shows up in the Late Cretaceous. The last choristodere seems to have died out 11 mya. Talk about a long run!All members of this group seem to have a #neomorphic bone, meaning a net-new bone (think #pteroid bone in #pterosaurs). Such bones are always awesome as they help #paleontologists figure out who goes in what clade. Have the right bone and you are in the club, like how arostral bone makes one a #ceratopsian (you are welcome #Psittacosaurus, a bipedal #ceratopsian :-)).Champsosaurus is the most famous choristodere, living in the Late #Cretaceous and surviving into the Age of #Mammals, too! It makes me wonder what it was doing that let it survive the Big Impact when so many others didn’t. #Aestivation? #Brumation? Luck (which we have few ways to categorize so we don’t write about it enough in my opinion)?It has massive temporal fenestrae, which gives it a unique, heart-shaped skull look when observed from above.Differences in sacral morphologies suggest sexual dimorphism, with one sacrum type suggesting its possessors could crawl ashore to lay eggs. The other type doesn’t possess the same feeling of biomechanical strength.The long, #gharial-like snout suggests it ate #fish. They are only known from freshwater and the longest reached 12’ but just about all I have ever touched were much, much smaller, closer to 4’. Convergent #evolution is amazing!Skin impressions of Champsosaurus indicate tiny scales. Close cousins have been found with webbed feet and no osteoderms.Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn is legendary for its #Borealosuchus, #Champsosaurus, and various #crocodile skeletons in their collections. During my sauropod study visit I met three researchers studying these long-snouted beauts!#FossilCrates
Three Titanic Taxa on Display at the Science Museum of Minnesota Fossil Crates 2024-12-01 | Three Titanic Taxa!Meet three taxa that were arguably the largest of their kind!#Quetzalcoatlus shown here life+ sized in the new-think Maribou stork-meets-giraffe terrestrial hunter mode and old-think gorgeous-glider mode.I prefer mine gliding, after all, why have a 30’ wingspan with concomitant risk of damage while stalking prey when one can soar all day?I read the new(ish, how time flies!) Quetzal volume and saw they made a nice argument for why it stomped about the Late #Cretaceous of Texas. Why is #Hatzegopteryx not a Quetzal that flew across the ocean akin to wandering albatross today??? :-).#Massospondylus “longer vertebra” and I spent quality time together in South Africa, where it was named by Owen in 1854 from Early #Jurassic, you guessed it, long(ish) vertebrae.When I studied the material it was part of a group known as a #prosauropod. Being a #sauropod lad I figured I’d best look at what came before, as it were, and the South Africa and Argentina specimens are fantastic!Today they are called #sauropodomorphs. And they are still fantastic, with stunning Chinese specimens being found in abundance recently.Lastly, I said the wrong name! It isn’t #Postosucbus!!! Apologies to Von Huene, who in 1928 named Triassic (~240 mya) material shipped to him from Brazil #Prestosuchus. Not because they are magical (they are!), but after a person, Prestes. In my defense, I had been looking at Posto material, and the two are close cousins, with similar morphologies and skeletal reconstructions. Rather than do a voiceover I left it to show paleontologists in a museum are far from perfect :-).I can’t convey the terror these would have caused. Nearly 25’ long, with an upright posture, and likely speed much greater than crocs of today, they were ferocious predators.The skulls remind me of theropods. Deep, toothy, powerful!I’d call it a #rauisuchian but it seems like this, like #prosauropods, is now polyphyletic. Time for me to learn some new terms!The audio was recorded live at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn has fantastic exhibits. The interesting background sounds are part of another exhibit.#FossilCrates
Castoroides: Prehistoric Gigantic Beaver Fossil Crates 2024-11-30 | Leave it to Beaver! Many 40-60 yr olds will recognize this omnipresent after school TV tune!Meet #Castoroides, a #Brobdingnagian #beaver that lived until ~10,000 years ago across all of North America, from Alaska to Florida.Remains are, surprisingly for a presumed aquatic-loving animal, rare.At over 7’ long and 300 lbs, these were truly gigantic. I could see a horror movie starring one, or more, surviving to present day in a remote Great Lake locale, driven to rage at humanity’s incursion. The damage those 6” incisors, powered by massive masseter muscles, could inflict makes me shudder!#Castor is the genus of the modern beaver. The entire skull of the extant, loveable, tree-felling critter would fit in the mouth of this prehistoric wonder. Castoroides incisors are longer than the skull of today’s busy body!I grew up imagining the size of dams a 7’ beaver would build. Not even the General Sherman giant California tree would be safe from the gnawing of Castoroides.Today's beavers can build 7’ tall, 1/2 mile long dams. Is it inconceivable that #Castoroides could build a 15’ tall, 1+ mile long one? To young BC it was not! I presumed they shaped, and re-shaped, ecosystems with their ability to block off mighty streams and build huge lakes. However…A 2019 paper by Plint e.a., used stable isotopes analyses to suggest giant #beavers didn’t build dams. Blasphemy! Yet the paper makes some great points, keeping Paul Bunyan’s title as greatest North American tree fell-er safe.The huge incisors are striated, which is very different from #beavers today. Also, skeletal proportions are slightly different, indicating they may not have had a giant tail! As a tail lad, I weep imagining a puny, paddle-less tail for this resplendent beast.Their last bastion seems to have been remote areas of New York and the Great Lakes. The climate that killed off the megafauna may have been responsible, but humans arrived as well, and I’m sure a fashionable 7’ fur coat was great for the winters. What leader wants to be without one?This specimen is on display at the @sciencemuseummn @smmpaleo in St. Paul, Minnesota, an amazing place with sweet exhibits like this!#FossilCrates
Ankylorhiza on Display at the Science Museum of Minnesota Fossil Crates 2024-11-26 | My first meeting with a mount of Ankylorhiza!Ol’ “fused roots” is a gigantic killer #doplhin (of a sort) that lived in the Oligocene ~25 mya. At 16’, twas the largest toothed #whale of its day, combining powerful jaws and amazing teeth with speed, much like #orca killer #whales (which, too, are dolphins).I had never hear of it! However, in 2022, I found a skull cast labeled ASNW, which after much searching I learned Madsen used for “Al Sanders No-Name Whale,” which is what he dubbed the specimen while molding material found in the 1970s by Al. The bones would be named Ankylorhiza by Boessenecker e.a. 2020.The skull is over 3’ and loaded with sweet teeth! Toothed whales today have one style, conical, but this one has 3 incisors, 1 canine, snd 9 postcnanines w/ sharp tips and serrations! The lower incisors look like forwardly-projecting tusks, they are very cool. The teeth all interlock ominously.The forelimbs are shorter than long-armed #Basilosaurus (I have a Basilo skeleton in my backyard…), but longer than modern toothed whales, with the fingers being much longer than modern whales.You can read the 2020 paper here: bit.ly/4fLqSi9At SVP I heard a talk on ancient toothed whale teeth. They had massive bite power thanks to huge jaw muscles, and have thick tooth internals to survive high bite forces.I love this quote from the paper re teeth, “The enigmatic procumbent incisor tusks may be related to intraspecific combat or prey ramming behavior. Extreme wear of the i1 indicates mechanically stressful impacts or repeated wear against hard prey items.” Such sublime way of saying biting bone in my mind :-).As the earliest known macrophagous toothed #whale, esp. one with a great skeleton, it is extremely important and I was delighted to see it mounted at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn #FossilCrates
Stegosaurus on Display at the Science Museum of Minnesota Fossil Crates 2024-11-25 | Stego!#Stegosaurus, the iconic western North America Late #Jurassic #dinosaur, on display at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummnThe bony plates were covered by a keratinous sheath, a giant “fingernail” if you will. They are grooved by putative arteries and veins, leading some to suggest the plates could change color as blood flow was routed to semi-transparent spots. Imagine those giant plates turning a deep red, or neat patterns giving it a fiery glow!Were the plates also heat dumpers a la elephant ears? Blood passing through broad plates might have cooled off or heated up.I don’t believe the plates could be wiggled or moved independently like adjustable solar panels. The life position of the plates was heavily debated over the years. Marsh named it “roof lizard” because he thought the plates were parallel to the ground, providing shade!Paired, single row, and alternating positions like this one were suggested via different lines of evidence. Discoveries in the late 20th century demonstrated they alternated. No shade here, Marsh!The #thagomizer, those four giant tail spikes, means business! They also were covered in keratin. How long was such a covering? No one knows for sure. What angle did the spikes project? This is something folks debate still.Older mounts lack throat armor, aka gular armor, which is a collection of osteoderms that keep the neck safe. It isn’t present because though the armor was found in the 1930s, it wasn’t realized until the late 1990s. We sell a retrofit kit for museums that want to bring their Stego throats up to current understanding!Adult Stegos are surprisingly large, over 25’ and 6 tons+, with an enormous, jacked up, ready-to-swing-the-tail hind end. The Yale mount is the size of a small sauropod!That elongate and low to the ground skull has Tic-Tac-sized teeth. Some of the tiniest, seemingly ineffective, teeth around. What, exactly, were they eating???Maligned for being unintelligent, they did something right, living as group 70+ million years. Low and slow FTW!#FossilCrates
Compsognathus on Display at the Science Museum of Minnesota Fossil Crates 2024-11-24 | Comp-sog-nay-thus, Comp-sog-nath-us, Comp-so-nath-us or ??? Do your spell it Compy or Compie?Regardless, Compsognathus “elegant jaw” longipes “long foot” is one of the most significant dinosaurs discovered thanks to its amazing preservation and similarity to #Archaeopteryx. None other than Thomas Huxley, #Darwin’s bulldog and a gent way ahead of his day in terms of linking #birds to #dinosaurs, studied it, as did Cope and Marsh.Tis from ~150 mya German #Jurassic rocks. Alas, the exact locale isn’t known!Wagner named it in 1859 calling it a #lizard, making multiple references to similarities with flying lizards and focusing on the feet, as you can see here in German bit.ly/2Y2UTqYThough called a lizard, it is most certainly a #dinosaur. Life is ironic in that an actual lizard was found in the stomach of the German specimen and the other Compy found, from #France (which was described in 1972). The lizard, originally called #Bavarisaurus was redescribed (and renamed) in 2017 to #Schoenesmahl “beautiful meal” dyspepsia “difficult digestion” Link: bit.ly/3mrPWRKFeathers or no feathers? #Theropods this small are often said to be feathered. Yet twas found in #Solnhofen #limestone which, if it had #feathers, one would think they would have preserved a la #Archaeopteryx and other mind-blowing specimens. Neither specimen has feathers but #scales were found on the #tail. Curiouser and curiouser!2 fingers or 3? It has 3 metacarpals but only 2 preserved fingers. Small sample sizes make mysteries like these quite challenging! If we only had just one more specimen. Which is code for let’s keep looking :-).This #skeleton is a sculpt made before the cool 3D scanners of today. The original is smooshed (technical term 🤣) flat into 2 dimensions. Ostrom’s paper shows beautiful camera lucida drawings (link here: bit.ly/3CrPv4x ). We now offer a sculpt done referencing numerous photos and meticulous illustrations :-), DM me if interested!.A skull sculpt can be purchased at FossilCrates.com!The Science Museum of Minnesota in Minneapolis @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn has this gorgeous specimen on display.#FossilCrates
Ceratosaurus and Stegosaurus on Display in Utah Fossil Crates 2024-11-23 | Ceratosaurus!The “Horn Lizard” named by Marsh in 1884 from the Late Jurassic (~150 mya) of western North America is best known for its awesome nose horn.The nose horn was made from a fusion of parts of the left and right nasal bone, it wasn’t its own separate horn, but rather part of the skull. It is quite rugose and likely was covered in some kind of keratinous sheath.Was the nose horn brightly colored? Could it be flushed with blood to change its colors like a bipedal, rampaging Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer?The nose horn wasn’t used for offense, twas too fragile for that. Likely it was used for display, and maybe recognition. It’d be useful to know which #theropod was about to eat you, and for #theropods to know which ones they can safely (?) hang out, or have children, with.The “eye ridge” horns are made from the top portion of the #lacrimal bone. In #humans our tears come from the lacrimal gland inside the lacrimal bone, one of the smallest and most fragile bones in the human body, and one that would be working overtime if a hungry #Ceratosaurus attacked us on #TheropodThursday or #TheropodTuesday.Those teeth are HUGE in proportion to its skull. They are sharp and thin. When one describes a mouth full of “steak knives,” think #Ceratosaurus. It isn’t dubbed the saber-toothed theropod for nothing!Ceratosaurus has only 3 teeth in its premaxilla, which is the bone on the tip of the snout separated from the maxilla, which has 15 teeth in adults.It has armor that runs down its back in the form of osteoderms. Why? 🤷🏻♂️ As if killer teeth and claws didn’t make it cool enough!Ceratosaurus adults reached over 20’ long and weighed upwards of 1 ton.This amazing specimen is at the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum in Vernal, Utah @utahfieldhouse . When you visit make sure to check out Dinosaur National Monument @dinosaurnps up the road, too!The adult #Stegosaurus dwarfs this Cerato, having little to fear from a lone adult. The plates and spike kept it well defended from the back and top. Throat armor adds to its awesomeness.Stego necks and skulls are long. Their teeth are Tic-tac sized! #FossilCrates
Houston Museum of Natural Science: Astounding View from the Gallery Fossil Crates 2024-11-22 | From the GalleryThe Houston Museum of Natural Science has a sweeeet second story gallery that gives an incredible view of the entire museum. I was blown away with how awesome this view was, and how incredibly cool the museum is!Many of the specimens consist of original bone.They have not one but three #Tyrannosaurus mounted! One, a cast of Stan, is squaring off against a #Triceratops named Lane that is very complete and even has preserved skin impressions!!! Bucky rounds them out, here facing off against a few #Quetzalcoatlus!The other T. rex, #Wyrex, is missing the back half of its tail, seemingly bit off by another #tyrannosaur! In this instance it is marauding #Denversaurus.A cast of the #Allosaurus Big Al 2 caught a #Stegosaurus by surprise. The Stego is rearing up and pivoting. I love the dynamism displayed. Plus always cool to see a tripodal Stego.The #Galeamopus formerly known as #Diplodocus hayi also strikes and imposing, if improbable, pose of rising its forelimbs and tail off the ground simultaneously. The tail is a result of the space they had to work with, sometimes building designs impact a dinosaur’s mounted position. For 99.999% of visitors they’d not notice, but I study tails :-). It is a stunning and imposing display!There are dozens more specimens with heads turned and bodies positioned in ways I have never seen. The exhibits possess a feeling of motion simply not seen in museum mounts. The Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center comes closest with dynamic poses, but Houston has so many specimens covering all of Earth’s history.A Dali-esque vision of a gigantic floating mastodon initially makes no sense. That’s until you realize the human with the glowing orange light way up high is holding a torch, the display is meant to simulate running them off a cliff.The other bull mastodon in the room has thrown a human being into the air! It is modeled exactly after a rodeo clown being tossed. Splendid!The Green River material is arguably the best anywhere in the world. My jaw dropped seeing the specimens!@hmns thank you for an incredible experience, both research and Texas-sized hospitality!!!#FossilCrates
Bambiraptor on Display at The Science Museum of Minnesota Fossil Crates 2024-11-21 | Don’t let the size fool ya!Would #Bambiraptor, “Bambi robber” per the etymology in Burnham et al., 2000, dine on #venison if alive today?Nicknamed “Bambi” thanks to its small size, this nearly complete skeleton is gorgeous! Belonging to a ~3’ juvenile weighing maybe 5 lbs, this cutie delivers the goods with amazing claws and a gorgeous skull. How big could an adult get? That is a mystery. There are alleged adult partial skeletons (AMNH 002-136) and a maxilla (MOR 553S-7-30-91-274) that allow guesstimates that adults may have reached 10’ long!Burnham’s 2004 paper noted it had the largest brain to body of any dinosaur, though possibly related to being a juvenile (juveniles can have larger heads than bodies), it is large no matter how one slices it. Huge optic lobes probably offset its small olfactory bulbs, suggesting it relied upon vision instead of smell for hunting.Senter 2006 suggests Bambiraptor could touch its first and third fingers together. Though it couldn’t pronate and supinate (dribble or hold soup) with its wrists, instead having them face one another (palming a basketball it could do!), by touching its fingers it would have superior manipulating capabilities over other #dromaeosaurids. Took use anyone ;-).Where it falls within the #Dromaeosauridae is up in the air: #Microraptor, #Velociraptor, or #Saurornitholestes cousin? Despite having a wonderfully complete skeleton phylogenetic studies remain out of agreement.The Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn displays theirs with a feathered/non-feathered split, emulating an ostrich in that way, but adding a featherless head and tail for good measure. #TheropodTuesday#FossilCrates
Brachiosaurus Skull Cast Available from Express Exhibits Fossil Crates 2024-11-20 | Brachiosaurus!Twas described in 1903 by Elmer Riggs from Late #Jurassic material found in Colorado and curated at the Field Museum in Chicago. I recently toured the locality, twas so neat for me! It consists of two caudal vertebrae, a crushed pelvis with five sacrals, seven dorsal vertebrae, plus ribs, a humerus, femur, ilium, and coracoid.Notice no cervical or cranial elements were discovered. This means in order to conclusively demonstrate a skull is Brachiosaurus we’d need to find one with overlapping elements to allow comparison… or speculate.The name derives from the fact the humerus is as long as the femur, unheard of in sauropods, thus “arm lizard.”In 1998 Carpenter and Tidwell described a skull found nearly 100 years before, a cast of which you see here. It wasn’t found attached to any cervicals nor with any other bones we can positively say go to it. But it has a strong resemblance to a former Brachiosaurus species.In 1914 B. brancai was named from nice material in Africa that had humeri as long as femora, plus a skull with postcrania. Long forelimbs and a few other similarities led it to being dubbed Brachiosaurus brancai.In 1988 Paul suggested the vertebral differences were enough to be its own subgenus. Afaik only this and Bakker’s Edmontonia have been assigned #dinosaur subgenera, not coincidentally the same year and journal (Hunteria). Paul called it #Giraffatitan. In 2009 Taylor elevated it to a genus.The skulls on all #Brachiosaurus altithorax skeletons are casts of the Tendaguru material from Tanzania that reside in Berlin, Germany and today are called #Giraffatitan brancai. This is the only putative Brachiosaurus skull from North America in the literature. I have been asked to describe the new, gorgeous, Brach skull y’all might have seen on social media recently. I am eager to compare it to this skull and that in Berlin.This skull should be used for B. altithorax specimens. Until recently it could only be seen at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, now we sell an official cast of it!!!#FossilCrates
Science Museum of Minnesota: Amazing Dinosaur Displays Fossil Crates 2024-11-19 | ExhibitsThe Science Museum of Minnesota in Minneapolis @SMMPaleo @sciencemuseummn has a number of neat skeletons on display. Each of these in the video has at least some original bone.#Camptosaurus is a classic Late #Jurassic (150 mya) #ornithopod #dinosaur that may very well be one of the ancestors of the #iguanodons.At 20’ long and around 1,000 lbs, it relied on speed to escape.Alas, #Allosaurus was speedy and armed with massive hand claws, sharp toe claws, and a mouth full of sharp teeth.Marsh in 1879 named it #Camptonotus “flexible back,” but in 1885 wrote, “Camptonotus, applied to a genus of Jurassic reptiles, has also been used, and Camptosaurus may be substituted.” And just like that Camptosaurus “flexible lizard” was born!The #diplodocid is labeled #Diplodocus but I am not so sure that’s the correct genus. I studied it in 1995 and thought it was an odd Diplo. Returning in 2024, with 3 Saurosquad members, we def have more questions than answers! Looking at our pics we were wondering if it would turn out to be #Ardetosaurus, but twas not to be. Stay tuned!#Triceratops is another classic critter, this one from the Late #Cretaceous. It is a composite mount and includes many original elements, such as the skull. The skull is particularly interesting, with deep gouges that appear to be the result of locking horns with another Triceratops!We see horned and antlered animals today square off, seeing which one can bend the will of the other. I have watched rhinos, Galapagos marine iguanas, and various antlered critters “throw down,” always with great gusto as if the next generation depended upon it :-). I suspect this happened with #ceratopsians, too.There are many more skeletons, original and cast, on display. I’d you are in the Twin Cities area and like neat museums, this one is for you. They have a large non-paleo section that includes science museum-style physics demonstrations and local history. A great way to spend a few hours out of the cold and snow :-).#FossilCrates
