In Depth Of all the pterosaurs Laopteryx probably has the least amount of fossil material attributed to it, only a rear portion of the skull. When Othniel Charles Marsh named it he thought that he was actually dealing with a prehistoric bird. This thinking held true until 1986 when John Ostrom found it to be … Read more
In Depth Analysis of the Lacusovagus fossils indicates that it is a member of the Chaoyangopteridae family of pterosaurs. This is significant as it up until the discovery of Lacusovagus, the members of this group were known only from Asia. Further Reading – A new azhdarchoid pterosaur from the Crato Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Aptian?) of … Read more
In Depth Nycteroleter is the type genus of the Nycteroleteridae, and is a procolomorph anapsid that lived in Russia during the Permian. Further Reading Some New Permian Reptiles of the USSR. Comptes Rendus (Doklady) de l’Acad�mie des Sciences de l’URSS 19(9):771-776. - I. A. Efremov - 1938. - Anatomy of Emeroleter levis and the Phylogeny … Read more
In Depth The Tatankaceratops type specimen was pieced together from partial remains before it was named in 2010, and soon after there were murmurings that it was actually a juvenile Triceratops. This stems down to a 2011 study by Nicholas R. Longrich which noted a mix of juvenile and adult characteristics in the skull. Since … Read more
In Depth Mirischia is a genus of compsognathid dinosaur that lived in what is now Brazil during the early Cretaceous. Mirischia means ‘wonderful ischia’, and this dinosaur acquired this name because the two ischia (bones of the pelvis) show an oval foramen (opening) in the left bone, and a notch in the same position on … Read more
In Depth Kulceratops is a very interesting genus of ceratopsian dinosaur as the holotype has been dated to coming from a fossil deposit Albian of the Early Cretaceous in age. This makes Kulceratops a candidate for being one of the first ceratopsian dinosaurs to appear. Unfortunately Kulceratops is only known from a partial maxilla (upper … Read more
In Depth Shuvosaurus was described from the discovery of a skull that had no teeth but a well-developed beak-like anterior portion. Because of this, Shuvosaurus was at the time considered to possibly be an ancient ancestor to the ornithomimosaurs, a group of dinosaurs that at the time of writing are only known from Cretaceous era … Read more
In Depth Orientognathus is a genus of pterosaur that lived in China during the mid Jurassic. Further Reading - A new rhamphorhynchid pterosaur (Pterosauria) from Jurassic deposits of Liaoning Province, China. - Zootaxa 3911(1):119-129. - J. Lu, H. Pu, X. Wei, H. Chang & M. Kundrat - 2015.
In Depth For well over a hundred years Proganochelys was regarded as the oldest known turtle, a title the genus held until the 2008 description of Odontochelys, a slightly earlier genus that lived in the Carnian stage of the Triassic. Proganochelys had a developed carapace and plastron, the upper and lower parts of the shell … Read more
In Depth The dinosaur genus Titanosaurus is a bit of a paradox. As the first titanosaur named it is treated as the type genus of the Titanosauria, a group of more advanced sauropod dinosaurs that began to appear at the end of the Jurassic and later established themselves as some of the most common types … Read more