Vectipelta barretti

Last week we had a look at almost-hadrosaur Gonkoken nanoi. This week we're hopping over to another branch of Ornithischia for the ankylosaur Vectipelta barretti. I'm always up for ankylosaur news, and took particular interest in this case because I've long had a deep and irrational fondness for Polacanthus, going back to the 1980s.

Gonkoken nanoi

The Great Dinosaur Drought of 2022–2023 persisted from mid-December 2022 to early June 2023, nearly six months with three new dinosaurs and one silesaur, but with five showing up in the past few weeks, it looks like things have gone back to business as usual. Obviously that calls for some recognition, so this week and next week (pending anything else) I'll look at a couple of new arrivals, starting with the not-quite-hadrosaurid Gonkoken nanoi from the south end of Chile.

Figure 2 in Alarcón-Muñoz et al. (2023), showing a reconstruction of Gonkoken nanoi and an assortment of bones (CC BY 4.0).

Uŋčí Makhá Park Revisited, Part 2: Further Fossils

We're now up to the fourth entry in a completely unexpected series on the Platteville–Decorah rocks and fossils of Uŋčí Makhá Park. We've already seen the common fossils from the site, so for this go-round I'm focusing on rarities.