Episode 453: Who destroyed the Central Park Dinosaurs? Boss Tweed has lengthy been blamed for vandalizing New York Town’s model of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, but it surely seems somebody else was once responsible.
Information:
- There’s a brand new neornithischian dinosaur, Minimocursor supply
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The dinosaur of the day: Anchiceratops
- Anchiceratops, request from Victrix by means of patreon/discord
- Chasmosaurine ceratopsid that lived within the Past due Cretaceous in what’s now Alberta, Canada
- Appeared very similar to Triceratops
- Had two lengthy forehead horns and a brief nasal horn
- Frill was once lengthy and oblong, with triangular projections alongside the sides
- Stout and muscular, walked on all fours, had a brief tail, and a beak (which is what makes it a ceratopsian)
- Medium-sized
- Estimated to be as much as 14 feet (4.3 m) lengthy
- Estimated to weigh 1.2 tonnes
- Fossils first present in 1912 by way of Barnum Brown, alongside the Purple Deer River (discovered 3 partial skulls)
- Described in 1914 by way of Barnum Brown
- Holotype comprises the again part of the cranium, and the lengthy frill
- Brown in 1914 wrote: “But even so appearing a novel form of crest this genus provides yet another hyperlink within the morphological chain during which the ceratopsian crest has been evolved”
- Additionally made a solid of the mind, “that during accuracy of element has hardly been equaled in fossil crania”
- Kind and best species is Anchiceratops ornatus
- Genus identify way “close to horned face” or “close to Ceratops”
- Brown concept Anchiceratops was once a transitional dinosaur carefully similar (and in between) Monoclonius and Triceratops
- Species identify refers back to the ornamentation on its frill
- Charles M. Sternberg discovered a whole, extra slim cranium in 1924, which he described in 1929 as the second one species Anchiceratops longirostris (however now Anchiceratops longirostris is regarded as to be a junior synonym of Anchiceratops ornatus)
- Maximum fossils discovered within the Horsehoe Canyon Formation, some discovered within the Oldman and Dinosaur Park Formations (is also early Anchiceratops ornatus or a 2d species), and a few discovered on the St. Mary River Formation, however too fragmentary to consult with a species
- Fossils additionally in all probability discovered within the Almond Formation in Wyoming, U.S.
- One or two imaginable bonebeds present in Alberta, however hasn’t been described
- Ten skulls discovered
- Skulls display particular person variation, although previously paleontologists concept the variations had been because of sexual dimorphism (the bigger skulls with longer horns had been men)
- Variation within the skulls (dimension of horns and frill) may well be because of ontogeny (modified because it grew up)
- One specimen had 30 tail vertebrae (maximum chasmosaurs have 46 tail vertebrae), a protracted pelvis, and lengthy neck. On the other hand, this specimen (NMC 8547) might if truth be told be Arrhinoceratops. If that’s the case, there hasn’t in point of fact been any Anchiceratops skeletons described (best skulls)
- Mallon in 2010 stated the skeleton Sternberg gathered in 1925 was once entire and articulated and Sternberg attributed it to Anchiceratops, “even though he didn’t give a reason why for his identity”
- Lived in a subtropical local weather
- Different dinosaurs that lived round the similar time and position integrated maniraptorans comparable to Epichirostenotes, ornithomimids comparable to Ornithomimus, pachycephalosaurids comparable to Sphaerotholus, hadrosaurs comparable to Edmontosaurus, ceratopsians comparable to Pachyrhinosaurus, and tyrannosaurs comparable to Albertosaurus
- Anchiceratops fossils present in marine sediments, so could have lived in estuaries (the place rivers meet ocean or higher our bodies of water)
- In 1959 Wann Langston Jr. advised Anchiceratops was once semi-aquatic, with its lengthy snout serving to it to stroll thru deeper swamps and its frill to assist it counterbalance and level its beak upwards so it might take breaths, and that its brief tail, huge frame, and stocky limbs made it slow and it could have “loved relative seclusion and coverage of a swampy surroundings”
- Maximum paleontologists didn’t agree, however Jordan Mallon advised NMC 8547 was once like a contemporary hippo, and that’s why it was once so tough and muscular (although the small tail didn’t assist). Its frame sort could have helped it transfer thru muddy, lowland swamps
- Mallon wrote: “It’s imaginable that different ceratopsids had been additionally tailored to semi-aquatic lifestyles, because the clade stocks a number of options in not unusual with the hippo. You will need to restrict hypothesis by means of connection with circumstantial sedimentology, on the other hand, as a number of ceratopsids are recognized from well-drained alluvial settings”
- Anchiceratops ornatus species lasted about 1.5 to two million years
- Different ceratopsid species lasted a very long time (Triceratops horridus for 1.5 million years and Pentaceratops sternbergi for two.5 million years) however within the Dinosaur Park Formation the place Anchiceratops was once discovered, maximum species lasted about 700,000 years
- Species lived for a very long time, in all probability as a result of there wasn’t as a lot dinosaur variety within the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, and there wasn’t as a lot pageant for meals. Or may well be for the reason that Western Internal Seaway was once shrinking, so there wasn’t as a lot habitat fragmentation so Anchiceratops turns out to have lasted longer. Or it may well be Anchiceratops was once just right at coping with environmental adjustments
A laugh Reality:
Boss Tweed wasn’t the perpetrator in the back of the smashing of the Central Park dinosaurs.
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