2019 in Review

It was a fairly quiet year here at Equatorial Minnesota. Although I don't particularly trust the statistics because of the miracle of referrer spam, none of this year's entries were unusually popular or unpopular. The local topics continued to dwindle, something I plan to look at.

Not enough of these lately.

Following the annual Compact Thescelosaurus post, 16 new taxa have been added and an existing species was moved to a new genus. Of the completely new additions, 13 were dinosaurs, two were pterosaurs, and one was an ichthyosaur. Leaving aside the occasional knotty case of "announced in 201X but really published physically in 201Y", 65 new taxa made their appearance on the spreadsheet this year: 48 non-avian dinosaurs, eight pterosaurs, three plesiosaurs, two basal sauropterygians, one choristodere, one dinosaur relative, one ichthyosaur, and one placodont. I haven't quite run out of groups to add, so there's another one in progress.

On to the predictions:

Doing predictions was fun the first time but was something that ran into steeply diminishing returns for me, so I'm not going to do one for 2020. On the other hand, I enjoyed researching and writing "Coming Attractions...", and with several of the entries having come off the board since September 2015, I think I'll prepare an updated version once a couple more drop.

Basal dinosaurs and dinosaur cousins:
Ornithoscelida still wasn't a major focus, so I lose a point. However, there was both a new silesaurid (Kwanasaurus williamparkeri) and, more importantly for the predictions, an anatomical monograph on a previously described silesaurid (Nesbitt et al. 2019, or 2020 if you want to be pedantic about it). Since the entry called for the loss of a point for no Ornithoscelida, I guess this works out to 0 for 1?

Non-coelurosaurian theropods:
I was calling for something of note out of the coelophysoids, basal tetanurans, and megaraptorans (which are here in case they're carnosaurs instead of coelurosaurs). Notatesserearaptor and Asfaltovenator fit the qualifications for the first two, and not simply as new taxa. Phuwiangvenator works for the megaraptorans, albeit not as impressively as the other two. 3 for 3.

Coelurosaurians:
Three oviraptorosaurs? I have pretty strong astigmatism, but Gobiraptor minutus and Xingtianosaurus ganqi still only look like two, and neither were YANOs. However, there were not one but three tyrannosauroids (Jinbeisaurus wangi, Moros intrepidus, and Suskityrannus hazelae), and there was a therizinosaur (Lingyuanosaurus sihedangensis). 2 for 3.

"Prosauropods":
The prosauropods didn't really show up this year, with only Ngwevu intloko, which is certainly not three taxa, so no credit for me. 0 for 1.

Sauropods:
Did we get a new "cetiosaur", a non-neosauropod from somewhere outside of Jurassic China? Weeeell... there's Wamwerecaudia keranjei, which technically fits but was described as a mamenchisaurid, so we didn't quite escape the magnetic pull of endemic East Asian eusauropods, we just expanded them to East Africa, making them not quite so localized after all. (I don't currently use Mamenchisauridae because Mamenchisaurus and Omeisaurus are liable to crumble like St. Peter Sandstone once someone gets around to looking at them, but you get the idea.) I called for at least four new titanosaurs, at least two of which had to be from South America and one of which had to be from somewhere or somewhen new. In terms of numbers, they came through with Kaijutitan maui, Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia, Nullotitan glaciaris, and Yamansaurus lojaensis. For the second part, Yamanasaurus is the first titanosaur and non-avian dinosaur from Ecuador, so it counts. I'm not sure I would count anything for the last prediction (a notable paleobiological paper), but if this was a publication and not a conference abstract I would. 2 for 3.

Thyreophorans:
Adratiklit boulahfa and Mongolostegus exspectabilis busted my prediction of no new stegosaurs. I was right that there was nothing new on Edmontonia and Panoplosaurus. There were, however, no new polacanthines, or any other ankylosaurs for that matter. 1 for 3.

Marginocephalians:
I picked ceratopsians for a quiet year (two or fewer new taxa), and this held, with just Ferrisaurus sustutensis and Psittacosaurus amitabha. The handlessness of pachycephalosaurs continued as well. 2 for 2.

Ornithopods:
I was looking for a new "hypsilophodont" this year, one which was not the Proctor Lake hypsilophodont. It was actually a pretty good year for hypsil-like things. Fostoria dhimbangunmal, Galleonosaurus dorisae, Isasicursor santacrucensis, Mahuidacursor lipanglef, Sanxiasaurus modaoxiensis, and Sektensaurus sanjuanboscoi all fall in that general neighborhood. However, the one that best fits also happens to the specifically excluded Proctor Lake hypsilophodont, Convolosaurus marri. Therefore, no point, but I'm happy to have missed this one.

For the rest of Ornithopoda, I predicted two new non-hadrosaurid iguanodonts and one hadrosaurid (no crest if a lambeosaur), plus at least one publication on hadrosaurid paleobiology. I didn't really cut it with the non-hadrosaurs, but there were three hadrosaurids (Aquilarhinus palimentus, Gobihadros mongoliensis, and Kamuysaurus japonicus) with nary a crest between them. The last part is in hindsight so broad as to be meaningless. Although there are several reasonable candidates, I'm going to omit shooting fish in a barrel and score this 0.5 for 1, for a total of 0.5 for 2.

Other predictions:
1) With 48 new non-avian dinosaur taxa, we easily cleared the minimum of 35.
2) We got two graduates from "Coming Attractions", and one was indeed "Lori", as Hesperornithoides miessleri. (The other was Convolosaurus marri, the Proctor Lake hypsilophodont.)
3) A new unexpected Triassic tetrapod? Aenigmaspina might count. However, in the spirit if not the letter of the prediction, I'd like to throw this one to previously described Eretmorhipis for the revelation that it had a comically undersized platypus head on its already ungainly body.
3 for 3

The total ends up being 13.5 for 21, which at least beats last year.

A gratuitous photo of the left hand and forearm of Leonardo, with cm scale bar. It can offer neither thumbs up or thumbs down, because like all hadrosaurs it has no thumbs.

References

Nesbitt, S. J., M. C. Langer, and M. D. Ezcurra. 2019. The anatomy of Asilisaurus kongwe, a dinosauriform from the Lifua Member of the Manda Beds (~Middle Triassic) of Africa. The Anatomical Record in press. doi:10.1002/ar.24287.