In Depth At the time of its description, Australotitan is thought to possibly represent the largest dinosaur known from the Australian continent. However, Australotitan has only been described from partial limb and hip bones, and while the femur of Australotitan suggests that this dinosaur was comparable to other titanosaurian dinosaurs such a Dreadnoughtus and Futalognkosaurus … Read more
In Depth Armadillosuchus is but one of many bizarre crocodiles from the Cretaceous period, but what makes this genus different are the armadillo-like plates in the form of flexible bands and rigid plates that run down the length of its body (hence the meaning of the genus name). Armadillosuchus is widely believed to have been … Read more
In Depth Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus? Even though Apatosaurus is one of the sauropod dinosaurs best known to palaeontology yet most people confused it with Brontosaurus. The reason for this goes all the way back to 1879, roughly two years after the naming of Apatosaurus ajax when a new sauropod specimen was given the name Brontosaurus … Read more
In Depth The description of Abrictosaurus was born out of the naming of a species of Lycorhinus earlier in 1974. The palaeontologist Richard Thulborn had named Lycorhinus consors, based upon a partial skull and skeleton, UCL B54, of what seemed to be a Lycorhinus angustidens, but lacked the tusk like teeth at the front of … Read more
In Depth Angustinaripterus has been envisioned as being like Dorygnathus because of the similar dentition. Angustinaripterus had nine pairs of teeth in the upper jaw, three in the premaxillae and six in the maxilla itself. These meshed with ten pairs that were in the mandible. Overall the teeth were quite simple in that they were … Read more
In Depth Like with many early named dinosaur genera, the taxonomic history of Acanthopholis is in the simplest terms a mess. Numerous species have been named, reallocated, moved to other genera, and back again, but all of the fossils involved have been isolated bones found in association to one another. The first bones assigned to … Read more
In Depth Agathaumas has been envisioned as a very large ceratopsian dinosaur, potentially as much as ten meters long, that lived in what is now the USA near the end of the Cretaceous period. However most palaeontologists agree that Agathaumas is a highly dubious genus of ceratopsian since it was based upon the description of … Read more
In Depth Akainacephalus is a genus of ankylosaur that lived in North America during the late Cretaceous. During this time, the central portion of North America was submerged by the Western Interior Seaway, carving North America into two landmasses; Appalacia to the East, and Laramidia to the West. Akainacephalus hails from the southern portion of … Read more
In Depth Aeolosaurus is one of the better known South American titanosaurs of the late Cretaceous period. The name is derived from the mythical figure of Aeolus who was dubbed the ‘keeper of the winds’ in Homer’s Odyssey. It might seem rather obscure to name a dinosaur after this figure, but it is actually in … Read more
In Depth Archaeoceratops is yet another of the increasingly large number of basal ceratopsian dinosaur remains that are coming from Asia. These remains point to an Asian ancestral origin for all ceratopsians from Protoceratops of Mongolia, to huge and horned Triceratops and Styracosaurus of North America. Archaeoceratops however was very different to these larger later … Read more