In Depth First discovered in the Canadian Province of Alberta by Irene Vanderloh in 1974 and named by Hans-Dieter Sues in 1978, Saurornitholestes was a small dromaeosaur that is thought to have been similar to the Asian Velociraptor in form. In 2006 a second species called Saurornitholestes robustus was named by Robert Sullivan. The ‘robustus’ … Read more
In Depth Liopleurodon was an apex predator of the Jurassic seas. With a skull, and jaws taking up one fifth of the total length of the animal it had a powerful bite. The twenty centimetre teeth buried deep into the jaws further reinforce this idea. Liopleurodon had a typical pliosaur limb arrangement and although not … Read more
In Depth While only known from teeth, Uatchitodon is still a very interesting genus as at the time of writing it is the earliest known venomous reptile. The teeth of Uatchitodon are recurved and serrated, perfect for slicing through flesh, but grooves in the teeth seem to be for the transference of salivary venom from … Read more
In Depth The history of Galeamopus goes all the way back to 1902 when the first fossils were discovered in the US state of Wyoming. In 1906 the fossils were assigned to the Diplodocus genus, but in 1924 they were given their own species D. hayi, upon the basis that they were clearly different to … Read more
In Depth Yuzhoupliosaurus was an interesting find as it was the first rhomaleosaurid pliosaur to be discovered outside of Europe. Rhomaleosaurids like Yuzhoupliosaurus were long necked pliosaurs that looked somewhere between the plesiosaurs like Plesiosaurus, and the shorter necked, large skulled forms like Simolestes and Liopleurodon. Yuzhoupliosaurus itself would have likely been a predator of … Read more
In Depth Compsosuchus is considered to be a very dubious genus of dinosaur, not only due to the incomplete remains but the fact that Charles Alfred Matley and Friedrich von Huene also named two other dinosaurs, Indosaurus and Indosuchus that combined with Compsosuchus may actually represent the same genus. Compsosuchus has been considered to be … Read more
In Depth Neimongosaurus is a genus of therizinosaur that lived in Asia during the late Cretaceous. Like other therizinosaurs, Neimongosaurus was descended from meat eating theropods, though the teeth in the lower jaw of Neimongosaurus which have coarse serrations which indicate that Neimongosaurus were plant eaters. Neimongosaurus has occasionally been classed as a member of … Read more
In Depth Mierasaurus is a genus of turiasaurian sauropod dinosaur that lived in Western North America during the early Cretaceous. Mierasaurus along with the genus Moabosaurus represent at the time of writing some of the last known Turiasaurian sauropod dinosaurs to exist. Further Reading - Descendants of the Jurassic turiasaurs from Iberia found refuge in … Read more
In Depth Deltadromeus was a mid-sized theropod that lived in North Africa, but while the time period it is known from places it in the late (or alternatively upper) Cretaceous, it actually roughly lived during the middle of this period. The skull of this dinosaur is so far unknown but the recovered post cranial remains … Read more
In Depth Gengasaurus is a genus of ichthyosaur that lived in European waters during the late Jurassic. Further Reading - The first ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur from the Upper Jurassic of the Umbrian-Marchean Apennines (Marche, Central Italy). - Geological Magazine 154(4):837-858. - I. Paparella, E. E. Maxwell, A. Cipriani, S. Roncace & M. W. Caldwell - 2017.