Kholumolumo ellenbergerorum and "Thotobolosaurus"

With the twin unofficial missions of Equatorial Minnesota to cover Elliot Formation "prosauropods" and find out what happened to unpublished dinosaurs of the past, it was imperative that Kholumolumo ellenbergerorum receive a post. Before we get into the actual science of K. ellenbergerorum, though, let's step back through the mists of time. First we'll stop off in the far-off world of 1985.

You've just gotten the Normanpedia (Norman 1985) and are busy committing it to memory. On page 97, in the "Dubious" section of the list of prosauropod genera, is Thotobolosaurus. It doesn't ring a bell, so you pull out "A Field Guide to Dinosaurs" (Lambert 1983). It shows up on page 104, as a "roccosaurid" with Riojasaurus and something called Roccosaurus, which wasn't in the Normanpedia. "Roccosaurids" apparently have "unusually sharp fangs and an especially strong joint linking hips with the backbone", but might actually be melanorosaurids. This last bit just ends up being confusing because (stepping outside of 1985 for a moment) "A Field Guide to Dinosaurs" was caught up in the contemporary fad for lumping all kinds of prosauropods, so Melanorosaurus is sunk into Euskelosaurus. Anyway, Thotobolosaurus is "a big prosauropod that lived in early Late Triassic Lesotho, southern Africa." Okay, sure. Does "The New Dinosaur Dictionary" (Glut 1982) have anything more, and can it explain what exactly is a Roccosaurus?

Your Friends The Titanosaurs, part 23: Patagotitan, Pellegrinisaurus, and Petrobrasaurus

It's an all-Patagonia show this time with Patagotitan mayorum (Chubut Province), Pellegrinisaurus (Río Negro Province), and Petrobrasaurus puestohernandezi (Neuquén Province). By now Patagotitan needs no introduction; Pellegrinisaurus and Petrobrasaurus are easily overshadowed by it, both literally and figuratively.

Trilophosaurus and Ophthalmothule

For this post, we highlight two extinct reptiles that have been the subjects of publications in the past few days. Other than that, they don't have much in common. One is a short-necked terrestrial herbivore less than three meters long that lived during the Late Triassic in what is now Arizona, the other is a long-necked marine carnivore between five and six meters long that lived at about the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary at what is now an Arctic island (not quite so arctic at the time).