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Dinosaurs: New Findings & Theories

That was Jack Horner's idea 20 years ago and it just doesn't stand up. It probably ate carrion if it came across it as it could intimidate anything else but plenty of evidence shows that it evolved for hunting and that it took down live animals. As this commentary shows, it was a false debate. No one really took it very seriously. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...7/16/time-to-slay-the-t-rex-scavenger-debate/

Thanks for the info! I suppose there must have been carrion dinos, but the T-Rex definitely wasn't one of them.
 
T.rex had an estimated top speed of 25 mph, good binocular vision and the most powerful bite force of any dinosaur. These are traits of a hunter.We know it left bite marks and tooth fragments in prey species that managed to escape and survive.
 
Determining the body temperature of dinosaurs via the chemical composition of dino eggs.

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-dinosaur-parents-kids-fever.html

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To verify their hypothesis, Affek and her team needed to determine the environmental temperature in Alberta back when dinosaurs lived. They accomplished this by applying their isotope method to mollusk shells that lived in Alberta alongside the dinosaurs. Since mollusks are cold-blooded creatures, they reflect the ambient climate of the time. The mollusks' body temperature measured 26°C and showed that the dinosaurs living in Alberta were endothermic; otherwise, they could not have maintained a body temperature of 35-40°C.
 
Determining the body temperature of dinosaurs via the chemical composition of dino eggs.

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-dinosaur-parents-kids-fever.html

-------------------------------------------
To verify their hypothesis, Affek and her team needed to determine the environmental temperature in Alberta back when dinosaurs lived. They accomplished this by applying their isotope method to mollusk shells that lived in Alberta alongside the dinosaurs. Since mollusks are cold-blooded creatures, they reflect the ambient climate of the time. The mollusks' body temperature measured 26°C and showed that the dinosaurs living in Alberta were endothermic; otherwise, they could not have maintained a body temperature of 35-40°C.


More on this hot stuff.

An analysis of fossil eggshells may have settled a long-running debate about dinosaurs, suggesting that all species were warm-blooded.

This also means the ancestors of dinosaurs must have been warm-blooded too, says Robin Dawson at Yale University, who led the research.

It is now mostly agreed that the feathered dinosaurs called theropods that gave rise to birds were warm-blooded, but there is still a debate about whether other groups of dinosaurs were too. Until recently, we had only indirect methods of working out the body temperature of ancient animals, so there was no way to be sure.

There is a way to work out the temperature at which organic matter forms inside bodies based on carbon and oxygen isotopes. This technique can be applied to eggshells to reveal the body temperature of the mother when the shells formed.

In 2015, researchers applied this method to the eggshell of a theropod and a sauropod – a long-necked dinosaur – and found both were warm-blooded. Now Dawson’s team has applied this method to three more fossil eggshells.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...st-dinosaurs-were-warm-blooded/#ixzz6EDe1l2UK
 
So it wasn't just dinos playing pranks.

The mystery surrounding dinosaur footprints on a cave ceiling in Central Queensland has been solved after more than a half a century.

University of Queensland paleontologist Dr. Anthony Romilio discovered pieces to a decades-old puzzle in an unusual place—a cupboard under the stairs of a suburban Sydney home.

"The town of Mount Morgan near Rockhampton has hundreds of fossil footprints and has the highest dinosaur track diversity for the entire eastern half of Australia," Dr. Romilio said.

"Earlier examinations of the ceiling footprints suggested some very curious dinosaur behavior; that a carnivorous theropod walked on all four legs. You don't assume T. rex used its arms to walk, and we didn't expect one of its earlier predatory relatives of 200 million years ago did either."

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-mystery-dinosaur-footprints-cave-ceiling.html
 
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Germany: Mini-dinosaur fossil discovery hailed as 'sensation'

Source: dw.com
Date: 21 February, 2020

The tiny skull of a miniature dinosaur has been discovered in Germany, scientists from the Stuttgart Natural History Museum announced on Thursday.

The fossil was found in a quarry in the town of Vellberg in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, and belongs to a new type of dinosaur of around 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) in length. The creature is believed to have lived around 240 million years ago.

"It is a scientific sensation," said paleontologist Rainer Schoch. The miniature skull shows a great deal of similarities to modern-day lizards and snakes.

"The little animal is exciting, because we know so little about the ancestors of lizards and snakes," Schoch explained. "We have discovered a new species."

The "mini-dinosaur" has been given the scientific name Vellbergia bartholomaei, after the name of the town where it was discovered and the fossil collector Alfred Bartholomä.

The creature existed on earth around 20 million years before large dinosaurs evolved. The 12-millimeter long skull was examined under a tomograph to determine how the dinosaur ate and the size of its brain.

https://amp-dw-com.cdn.ampproject.o...ssil-discovery-hailed-as-sensation/a-52458554
 
Cartilage cells, chromosomes and DNA preserved in 75 million-year-old baby duck-billed dinosaur

Source: phys.org
Date: 29 February, 2020

This study is lead by Dr. Alida Bailleul (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Dr. Mary Schweitzer (North Carolina State University, NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Lund University and Museum of the Rockies). Microscopic analyses of skull fragments from these nestling dinosaurs were conducted by Alida Bailleul at the Museum of the Rockies.

In one fragment she noticed some exquisitely preserved cells within preserved calcified cartilage tissues on the edges of a bone. Two cartilage cells were still linked together by an intercellular bridge, morphologically consistent with the end of cell division (see left image below). Internally, dark material resembling a cell nucleus was also visible. One cartilage cell preserved dark elongated structures morphologically consistent with chromosomes. "I couldn't believe it, my heart almost stopped beating," Bailleul says.

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-cartilage-cells-chromosomes-dna-million-year-old.html
 
Tiny 44 million year old bird fossil links Africa and Asia to Utah

Source: heritagedaily.com
Date: 3 March, 2020

A new species of quail-sized fossil bird from 44 million year old sediments in Utah fills in a gap in the fossil record of the early extinct relatives of chickens and turkeys, and it shows strong links with other extinct species from Namibia in Southern Africa and Uzbekistan in Central Asia.

In their paper in the online scientific journal Diversity, the authors Dr. Thomas Stidham (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Dr. Beth Townsend (Midwestern University, Arizona), and Dr. Patricia Holroyd (University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley) describe the fossil of a distinct tiny bone from the shoulder girdle of an extinct quail-like bird from 44 million year old rocks in eastern Utah.

While it is a unique fossil, the authors have not given it a formal scientific name, waiting until they find more bones of the skeleton. This new Utah bird appears to be the oldest fossil of the extinct group called Paraortygidae, a relative of the living Galliformes (the group that includes the living chicken, turkey, guineafowl, and quail). This fossil fits in a nearly 15 million-year gap in the fossil record of the galliform lineage in North America.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/...d-fossil-links-africa-and-asia-to-utah/126075
 
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A feathered, scaly wolf.

A wolf-sized warrior, kin to the fierce, feathered Velociraptor, prowled what is now New Mexico about 68 million years ago.

Dineobellator notohesperus was a dromaeosaur, a group of swift, agile predators that is distantly related to the much larger Tyrannosaurus rex. The discovery of this new species suggests that dromaeosaurs were still diversifying, and even becoming better at pursuing prey, right up to the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, researchers say March 26 in Scientific Reports.

That age came to an abrupt close at the end of the Cretaceous Period about 66 million years ago, when a mass extinction event wiped out all nonbird dinosaurs. A gap in the global fossil record for dromaeosaurs near the end of the Cretaceous had led some scientists to wonder whether the group was already in decline before the extinction, says Steven Jasinski, a paleontologist at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg (SN: 4/21/16). The new find suggests otherwise.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fossils-new-dromaeosaur-date-end-age-dinosaurs
 
Learning from the saurs.

By casting an eye into the daily lives of dinosaurs millions of years in the past, Western researchers may be helping humanity get a glimpse of its future.

Seventy-five-million years ago, North America was divided into western and eastern landmasses by a shallow inland sea. The west was home to an extremely rich diversity of dinosaurs; it has been a mystery as to how so many big animals co-existed in such a small area. Researchers have proposed that diversity was maintained by dividing up the landscape and food sources. For example, horned dinosaurs (ceratopsians) may have stuck to coastal areas, while duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs) preferred more inland habitats.

This idea remained untested, however, as researchers cannot directly observe dinosaur behavior and ecosystems. To solve this conundrum, a team including Western researchers has now compared the compositions of stable isotopes in fossil teeth from these dinosaurs.

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-glimpse-dinosaur-ecosystems.html
 
More dino footprints.

Crawling through tight underground passages in southern France, paleontologist Jean-David Moreau and his colleagues have to descend 500 meters below the surface to reach the only known footprints of long-necked dinosaurs called sauropods ever found in a natural cave.

The team discovered the prints, left by behemoths related to Brachiosaurus, in Castelbouc Cave in December 2015 (SN: 2/21/18). But getting to the site might make even the most hardened field scientists balk. Wriggling through such dark, damp and cramped spaces every time they visit is challenging for elbows and knees, and even trickier when carrying delicate equipment such as cameras, lights and laser scanners.

It’s both physically exhausting and “not comfortable for someone claustrophobic,” with the researchers spending up to 12 hours underground each time, says Moreau, of the Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté in Dijon. It can be dangerous too, as some parts of the cave are periodically flooded, so accessing the deep chambers must be limited to periods of drought, he says.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/caves-france-dinosaur-prints-paleontology
 
Bizarre Spinosaurus makes history as first known swimming dinosaur

A newfound fossil tail from this giant predator stretches our understanding of how—and where—dinosaurs lived.

Source: National Geographic
Date: 29 April, 2020

CASABLANCA, MOROCCOAt the end of a dim hallway in Casablanca’s Université Hassan II, I’ve walked into a dusty room containing a remarkable set of fossils—bones that raise foundational questions about Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, one of the weirdest dinosaurs ever discovered.

Longer than an adult Tyrannosaurus rex, the 50-foot-long, seven-ton predator had a large sail on its back and an elongated snout that resembled the maw of a crocodile, bristling with conical teeth. For decades, reconstructions of its bulky body have ended in a long, narrowing tail like the ones on its many theropod cousins.

The red-brown remains laid before me are altering that picture. These bones assemble into a mostly complete tail, the first yet found for Spinosaurus. It’s so large, five tables are required to support its full length, and to my shock, the appendage resembles a giant bony paddle.

Described today in the journal Nature, this tail is the most extreme aquatic adaptation ever seen in a large dinosaur. Its discovery in Morocco stretches our understanding of how one of Earth’s most dominant groups of land animals lived and thrived.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...us-tail-found-confirms-dinosaur-was-swimming/


The full publication in Nature, can be found here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2190-3.epdf
 
Bizarre Spinosaurus makes history as first known swimming dinosaur

A newfound fossil tail from this giant predator stretches our understanding of how—and where—dinosaurs lived.

Source: National Geographic
Date: 29 April, 2020

CASABLANCA, MOROCCOAt the end of a dim hallway in Casablanca’s Université Hassan II, I’ve walked into a dusty room containing a remarkable set of fossils—bones that raise foundational questions about Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, one of the weirdest dinosaurs ever discovered.

Longer than an adult Tyrannosaurus rex, the 50-foot-long, seven-ton predator had a large sail on its back and an elongated snout that resembled the maw of a crocodile, bristling with conical teeth. For decades, reconstructions of its bulky body have ended in a long, narrowing tail like the ones on its many theropod cousins.

The red-brown remains laid before me are altering that picture. These bones assemble into a mostly complete tail, the first yet found for Spinosaurus. It’s so large, five tables are required to support its full length, and to my shock, the appendage resembles a giant bony paddle.

Described today in the journal Nature, this tail is the most extreme aquatic adaptation ever seen in a large dinosaur. Its discovery in Morocco stretches our understanding of how one of Earth’s most dominant groups of land animals lived and thrived.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...us-tail-found-confirms-dinosaur-was-swimming/


The full publication in Nature, can be found here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2190-3.epdf
I've seen Spinosaurus depicted as an almost crocodile type predator that would eat either fish or any unlucky animal at the water edge.
 
Unlike ‘Jurassic Park’ movie, real Velociraptors did not hunt in packs

Source: kalingatv.com
Date 7 May, 2020

New York: It appears that famous movie on dinosaurs the ‘Jurassic Park’ may have got it all wrong as the Velociraptor dinosaurs did not hunt in packs, says a new study.

The raptors (Deinonychus antirrhopus) with their sickle-shaped talons were made famous in the 1993 blockbuster movie ‘Jurassic Park’, which portrayed them as highly intelligent, apex predators that worked in groups to hunt large prey.

Now, a new analysis of raptor teeth, published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, shows that raptorial dinosaurs likely did not hunt in big, coordinated packs like dogs.

Recently, the scientists at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh in the US has proposed a different model for behaviour in raptors that is thought to be more like Komodo dragons, in which individuals may attack the same animal but cooperation is limited.

“Raptorial dinosaurs often are shown as hunting in packs similar to wolves. The evidence for this behaviour, however, is not altogether convincing. Since we can’t watch these dinosaurs hunt in person, we must use indirect methods to determine their behaviour in life,” said study researcher Joseph Frederickson.

“Though widely accepted, evidence for the pack-hunting dinosaur proposed by the late famed Yale University paleontologist John Ostrom is relatively weak,” Frederickson added.

[...]

https://kalingatv.com/amp/miscellan...vie-real-velociraptors-did-not-hunt-in-packs/
 
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T. rex was a deadly 'power-walker'

These apex predators were built for endurance, not speed

Source: livescience.com
Date: 19 May, 2020

Tyrannosaurus rex may have been the world's first power-walker, using its lengthy legs to relentlessly pursue fleeing prey, new research has found.

Walking, the scientists discovered, would have been an energy-efficient hunting strategy for big dinosaurs like tyrannosaurs.

To better understand walking and running in T. rex and other theropods, or meat-eating dinosaurs, scientists measured metrics such as relative limb size, posture and body mass in 93 individual dinosaurs from 71 theropod species, in order to calculate how those factors may have affected the animals' maximum speeds.

They found that while long-leggedness made some theropods fast runners, that wasn't always the case. In very large dinosaurs, such as T. rex, long limbs came with a different advantage, allowing the predator to keep up a slower but steady pace long after a speedier animal would have grown tired and given up the chase.

[...]

http://www.livescience.com/t-rex-power-walker.html
 
T. rex was a deadly 'power-walker'

These apex predators were built for endurance, not speed

Source: livescience.com
Date: 19 May, 2020

Tyrannosaurus rex may have been the world's first power-walker, using its lengthy legs to relentlessly pursue fleeing prey, new research has found.

Walking, the scientists discovered, would have been an energy-efficient hunting strategy for big dinosaurs like tyrannosaurs.

To better understand walking and running in T. rex and other theropods, or meat-eating dinosaurs, scientists measured metrics such as relative limb size, posture and body mass in 93 individual dinosaurs from 71 theropod species, in order to calculate how those factors may have affected the animals' maximum speeds.

They found that while long-leggedness made some theropods fast runners, that wasn't always the case. In very large dinosaurs, such as T. rex, long limbs came with a different advantage, allowing the predator to keep up a slower but steady pace long after a speedier animal would have grown tired and given up the chase.

[...]

http://www.livescience.com/t-rex-power-walker.html
It seems like T-Rex is always up for debate, i.e.: running vs. walking (I've heard reports the beast could run at > 20/mph. This and the debate as to whether the beast was a predator or scavenger. Perhaps we'll never know for sure. Either way an impressive beast.
The below article details the speed debate over T-Rex with speed est ranging between (10 to 45)/mph?
http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/clocking-t-rex/
 
Fossil of rare species of toothless dinosaur discovered in Australia

A dinosaur fossil in Australia has reportedly been identified by scientists as a rare, toothless dinosaur that existed nearly 110 million years ago.

Source: republicworld.com
Date: 20 May, 2020

A dinosaur fossil in Australia has reportedly been identified by scientists as a rare, toothless dinosaur that existed nearly 110 million years ago. The fossil was discovered by Jessica Parker, a volunteer, who dug it as a part of annual dig led by Melbourn Museum. At the time of discovery, it was assumed to be of a flying reptile, called Pterosaur, however, upon further analysis, scientists at Swinburne University found that it was a delicately built dinosaur.

According to reports, scientists discovered that it was Elaphrosaur, dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor. Dr Stephen Poropat, one of the scientists, explained further revealing that the Elaphrosaurs had long necks, slumpy arms with small hands and relatively lightly built bodies. The five-centimetre vertebrate fossil, which was discovered near Cape Otway, Victoria in 2015 marked the first fossil of the species to be found on the Australian mainland.

[...]

https://www.republicworld.com/world...othless-dinosaur-discovered-in-australia.html
 
Bone of contention settled.

A legal saga that threatened to upend fossil hunting in dinosaur-rich Montana has drawn to a close, and paleontologists are breathing a sigh of relief.

The Montana Supreme Court this week ruled that fossils are not legally the same as minerals such as gold or copper. Therefore, Montana fossils, including a dramatic specimen of two dinosaurs buried together, belong to people who own the land where they are found, rather than to the owners of the minerals underneath that land.

The 4-3 decision upholds the way U.S. scientists have long approached questions of fossil ownership. It appears to defuse a potentially explosive 2018 ruling by the federal 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that fossils went to the owners of mineral rights. The outcome is a win for scientists who had warned that tying fossils to mineral rights could make it harder to get permission to excavate and could throw into doubt who owns fossils already on display, says David Polly, an Indiana University paleontologist and past president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The ruling is the final blow in a war that was, in many ways, already decided. In 2019, the Montana legislature passed a law affirming that fossils belong to landowners. But it exempted active lawsuits, leaving open the case now decided by the state Supreme Court. “The general principle was already made by the legislature,” Polly says. “But it is good that the Supreme Court felt the same.”

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/court-rules-dueling-dinos-belong-landowners-win-science
 
Dinosaurs Turned to Cannibalism in Hard Times, Fossil Evidence Shows

Source: sciencealert.com
Date: 27 May, 2020

Eating one's own kind might be considered poor taste to us humans, but it's a remarkably common survival tactic among other animals. Which is why we shouldn't be surprised that dinosaurs also turned to cannibalism on occasion.

A haul of fossils from over 150 million years ago has provided palaeontologists with a rare glimpse into the chomping habits of Jurassic meat-eaters. Among the bones are signs that, in desperate times, one common theropod took desperate measures.

Identifiable bite marks left by dinosaur diners are less common than most of us might imagine. The tooth imprints of theropods – avian dinosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus rex and velociraptors – have only been found in a few percent of bones in dinosaur fossil assemblages.

Unfortunately, this rarity makes it harder to come to definitive conclusions on which species left the marks. Most studies simply pin them on T. rex, perhaps thanks to its taste for bones, if not its general infamy.

The Mygatt-Moore Quarry in the US state of Colorado is something of an anomaly, however, revealing fossils with an unusually high density of cuts and impressions clearly made by theropod teeth.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee, Colorado Mesa University, and Daemen College in Amherst, New York took the opportunity of this bite-mark bounty to track down the genus most likely to be responsible.

https://www.sciencealert.com/an-ana...ones-shows-some-turned-cannibal-in-hard-times
 
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This is a significant find ... The contents of an armored herbivorous dinosaur's stomach were incredibly well preserved for over 100 million years, and researchers were able to determine some specifics about the creature's diet that had been merely subjects of speculation.
Armour-Plated Dinosaur's Last Meal Found Beautifully Preserved, 110 Million Years Later

The last meal of a huge armour-plated dinosaur has been found 110 million years later, still in its fossilised belly, in what is now northern Alberta.

First described in 2017, this thorny, 1,300-kilogram nodosaur (some 2,800 pounds) unearthed in 2011, is said to contain the best-preserved dinosaur stomach found to date.

After five years of careful work, exposing the dinosaur within the marine rock, the soccer-ball sized mass in tummy has now bestowed us with the first definitive glimpse into what large, plant-eating dinosaurs once munched on all those millennia ago.

"When people see this stunning fossil and are told that we know what its last meal was because its stomach was so well preserved inside the skeleton, it will almost bring the beast back to life for them, providing a glimpse of how the animal actually carried out its daily activities, where it lived, and what its preferred food was," says geologist Jim Basinger from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

That's something we've never really known about any herbivorous dinosaur. While this dinosaur represents just one species of one ankylosaur family - known as Borealopelta markmitchelli and without the archetypal 'club' tail of its closest relatives - it could help us better understand dinosaur digestion and physiology, especially since ankylosaurs are found on every continent, including Antarctica. ...

FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/dinosa...its-mummified-stomach-110-million-years-later

See Also:
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists...-ate-for-its-last-meal-110-million-years-ago/
 
The First Stegosaur Tracks in Scotland Were Just Discovered on This Windy Island

Source: sciencealert.com
Date: 13 March, 2020

Stand on the wind-swept crags lining Scotland's western coast today, and you'd be lucky to spot a puffin or two. But the closer we look, the more evidence we find it was once home to an incredibly diverse array of ancient beasts.

The discovery of new sets of fossilised tracks has expanded the list of potential dinosaur populations that roamed what is now the Isle of Skye. Among them are tracks left by an animal that would have belonged to one of the most famous plate-backed herbivore suborders, Stegosauria.

[...]

Back then, the lands making up the British Isles were nothing like they are today. Jurassic Scotland sat far closer to the equator, roughly in alignment with where Greece is today. Warm seas and a sub-tropical climate established ecosystems that were bustling with life.

[...]

Not only do the tracks provide tantalising evidence that stegosaurs once trod along the muddy Scottish coastline, the age of the tracks provides some of the earliest evidence of this particular dinosaur's existence.

Only last year, a species of stegosaur was dug up in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. At an estimated age of around 168 million years old, the fossilised remains of Adratiklit boulahfa are officially the oldest of its kind.

These tracks at Brother's Point are closer to 170 million years old. While there's no way to confirm what kind of stegosaur might have left them behind, it does help establish timelines and distributions describing their evolution.

"In particular, Deltapodus tracks give good evidence that stegosaurs lived on Skye at this time," says the study's lead author, Paige dePolo from the University of Edinburgh.

With such a rich assortment of tracks being found across the island, this part of Scotland is representative of an important period in evolutionary history, where the late Jurassic's zoo of classic creatures was just beginning to develop their famous characteristics and spread out around the globe.

[...]

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-di...scotland-island-make-it-a-true-jurassic-world
 
New Pterosaur Species Identified from Fossil Found in England

Source: sci-news.com
Date: 1 June, 2020

A new genus and species of pterosaur has been identified from a partial fossilized jaw collected on Isle of Wight, southern England.

The newly-discovered flying reptile lived during the Cretaceous period some 127 million years ago.

Named Wightia declivirostris, it belongs to Tapejaridae, a bizarre group of small- to medium-sized pterosaurs with wingspans of up to 4 m.

Most tapejarids had large, highly elaborate soft tissue crests sweeping up from the front of the skull. The crests were probably used in sexual display and may have been brightly colored.

These pterosaurs are well known from the Araripe Basin of northeast Brazil and the Jiufotang Formation of China. Elsewhere, however, their remains are exceedingly rare, with only fragmentary specimens reported from North Africa and Europe.

Wightia declivirostris is the first record of Tapejaridae in the United Kingdom.

[...]

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/wightia-declivirostris-08487.html
 
Ancient crocodiles walked on two legs like dinosaurs

Source: phys.org
Date: 11June, 2020

An international research team has been stunned to discover that some species of ancient crocodiles walked on their two hind legs like dinosaurs and measured over three meters in length.

University of Queensland paleontologist Dr. Anthony Romilio said the researchers first thought the similar-shaped fossilized footprints were from another ancient animal known as the pterosaurs.

"At one site, the footprints were initially thought to be made by a giant bipedal pterosaur walking on the mudflat, we now understand that these were bipedal crocodile prints," Dr. Romilio said.

[...]

https://www.phys.org/news/2020-06-ancient-crocodiles-legs-dinosaurs.html
 
Examination and analysis of archived dinosaur footprints has produced the first evidence of large carnivorous dinosaurs in Australia.
Evidence of huge carnivorous dinosaurs discovered in Australia

Scientists have found evidence that large carnivorous dinosaurs lived in Australia.

A team of researchers analyzed dinosaur footprint fossils and concluded they belonged to large-bodied carnivorous dinosaurs that were up to three meters high at the hips and about 10 meters long, according to a press release from the University of Queensland.

"To put that into perspective, T. rex got to about 3.25 metres at the hips and attained lengths of 12 to 13 metres long, but it didn't appear until 90 million years after our Queensland giants," said lead researcher Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the university. ...

The footprints, which date from the late Jurassic period, between 165 and 151 million years ago, were mostly between 50 and 60 centimeters in length, said Romilio, with some reaching almost 80 centimeters. ...

Romilio points out that paleontologists previously knew about the Tyrannosaurus rex in North America, the Giganotosaurus in South America and the Spinosaurus in Africa, but now there is evidence Australia had large carnivorous dinosaurs. ...

"They were discovered in the ceilings of underground coal mines from Rosewood near Ipswich, and Oakey just north of Toowoomba, back in the 1950s and 1960s," he said, explaining that they had sat in museum drawers for decades.

The full research paper was published in the journal Historical Biology.

FULL STORY: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/asia/australia-carnivorous-dinosaur-scli-intl/index.html
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the Australian carnosaur report ...

Footprints of large theropod dinosaurs in the Middle–UpperJurassic (lower Callovian–lower Tithonian) Walloon Coal Measures of southern Queensland, Australia.

Anthony Romilio, Steven W. Salisbury & Andréas Jannel
Published online: 12 Jun 2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2020.1772252

ABSTRACT
Dinosaur tracks associated with coal-mines of the Middle to Upper Jurassic (Callovian–Tithonian) Walloon Coal Measures (Clarence–Morton Basin) have been reported on more than any other track-bearing formation in Australia, yet due to the brevity of ichnological information, remain poorly known. All these tracks were found in sediments directly above coal seams in the ceilings of subterranean mines. This style of mining ceased more than a quarter of a century ago, and with many of the original mines having been back-filled or closed, ichnological investigations are restricted to the study of museum specimens and archival photographs. Here, we consolidate data from the literature, present previously unpublished archival photographs, and show the 3D topography of all accessioned track specimens from the Walloon Coal Measures. We recognise eleven track-bearing sites, most of which produced large (length of 30–50 cm) and very large (length greater than 50 cm) sized theropod tracks, including Australia’s largest carnivorous dinosaur footprint (79 cm long). The domination of theropod tracks is unique among Australian dinosaur tracksites. In light of the absence of near coveal body-fossil candidates, the Walloon Coal Measures ichnofaunal assemblages fills significant gaps in our understanding of Australia's Jurassic dinosaur fauna.

SOURCE: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2020.1772252
 
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