In Depth Impidens is a genus of cynodont that lived during the Mid Triassic. Further reading - A new large gomphodont from the Triassic of South Africa and its implications for Gondwanan biostratigraphy. - Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. - Frederick Tolchard, Christian F. Kammerer, Richard J. Butler, Christophe Hendrickx, Julien Benoit, Fernando Abdala & Jonah … Read more
In Depth With study of Scelidosaurus going all of the way back until the mid-nineteenth century, Scelidosaurus is one of the oldest genera of dinosaur known. In addition to that, out of all the dinosaurs that are known from the British Isles, Scelidosaurus is represented by some of the most complete fossil material. Scelidosaurus was … Read more
In Depth When the dinosaur Afromimus was first described in 2017 it was as an ornithomimosaur, however a later study in 2019 led to Afromimus being described as an abelisaur, specifically a noasaurid. Unfortunately Afromimus is still only known from partial remains, making details of this dinosaur difficult to know for certain. Further Reading - … Read more
In Depth Eomaia was a ground breaking discovery as this little mammal is the oldest known placental mammal in the fossil record. Placental mammals are those that have young that develop inside their mother’s womb and are connected to their mother’s body via a placenta until they are ready to be born. Earlier Mammaliaformes such … Read more
In Depth Named after the Andes Mountains, Andesaurus was a titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from South America, but one known from only incomplete remains. This makes it hard to be certain about such things as a total size or even a preferred diet beyond just general plants. The vertebrae of Andesaurus though suggest that the genus … Read more
In Depth Palorchestes was a large and probably heavy diprotodont, a kind of large quadrupedal herbivore that as a group had a distribution exclusive to ancient Australia. With this appearance in mind, it seems odd that this creature should be given a name that means ‘ancient leaper’, but this is easily enough explained by the … Read more
In Depth Glishades is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur that lived in North America during the late Cretaceous. Since a paper was published suggesting that Glishades is actually an indeterminate juvenile (Campione et al, 2012), the genus has become widely regarded as a nomen dubium. Further Reading - Glishades ericksoni, a new hadrosauroid (Dinosauria: Ornithopoda) … Read more
In Depth As with other Australian sauropods such as Wintonotitan and Diamantinasaurus, the skull and most of the vertebrae are unknown. What can be learned from the available material is that Austrosaurus had a fairly level back between its shoulders and hips with what appears to be only twenty centimetres height difference between the two. … Read more
In Depth Astrapotherium is noted for having high nostrils, something that has led to the idea that a great amount of soft tissue was present upon this part of the head. The exact kind of tissue however is still unknown, with speculation that it could have been some kind of short trunk or prehensile lip, … Read more
In Depth It is hard to currently establish a size estimate for Arcusaurus because at the time of writing the genus is only represented by the partial remains of two juveniles. Not only does this make it impossible to run a tape measure along a known complete specimen, but as juvenile they would have grown … Read more