Compact Thescelosaurus Year Ten

Twelve months have rolled along since our previous check on The Compact Thescelosaurus, now clocking in at a decade of existence. With Triassic and Jurassic pseudosuchians for the previous two years, the obvious addition was Cretaceous pseudosuchians, of which there were more than the previous two additions combined. The Cretaceous section wasn't quite so dominated by one group like the Jurassic was by thalattosuchians, but it was a great time to be a notosuchian.

Like this one, Simosuchus clarki. I took this photo when the traveling exhibit visited the Science Museum 11 years ago; Wikipedia is running a photo of the same mount from another stop on the itinerary.

The next step, logically enough, is to continue into the Cenozoic, although I haven't decided whether to do the entire Paleogene at once or take my time. As for the existing content, there were 96 entries on the update tab since our previous review, which is a relatively large number but didn't feel particularly impressive. Business was definitely "spurty"; there would be a stretch with few additions, then a week with a half-dozen (mid November, late February, late May), then another dry stretch. It would have been much less impressive had it not been for the past month, when 20 updates were made as if there were a quota that had to be filled. Overall, I doubt I'm going to remember the additions of October 2024–October 2025 with any great clarity or passion, but you try doing this in one form or another for a quarter century and see how many fragmentary azhdarchids you can recall from a specific year.

Of the 96 updates, 64 new species were added, 4 existing species were moved to new genera, 5 species were reinstated, 3 species were sunk, and something happened to Alwalkeria malerensis that does not work at all with the rules of nomenclature, so we'll have to be content with just reclassifying it as a lagerpetid.

As usual, the geologic time of the new additions skewed heavily Late Cretaceous, although the Late Triassic–Early Jurassic did very well. We had 1 Early Triassic newcomer, 2 from the Middle Triassic, 6 from the Late Triassic, 9 from the Early Jurassic, 2 from the Early Jurassic–Middle Jurassic, 2 from the Middle Jurassic, 7 from the Late Jurassic, 1 from the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous, 9 from the Early Cretaceous, and 25 from the Late Cretaceous.

Geography was pretty boring, dominated by the usual suspects (only 18 different countries), with no first-timers. 26 came from Asia, 12 came from Europe, 12 came from North America, 9 came from South America, 3 came from Africa, and 2 came from India. At the national level, China led the way with 19, followed by the United States with 9, Argentina with 7, Germany and Mongolia with 5, 6 with 2 (Brazil, Canada, India, Morocco, Portugal, and the United Kingdom), and 7 bringing up the rear with 1 (Austria, Egypt, Japan, Mexico, Romania, Russia, and Thailand).

Taxonomically, we had:

1 new aetosaur species:
Kuttysuchus minori

1 new crocodylomorph species:
Pattisaura gracilis

5 new ichthyosauromorph species:
Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis
Fernatator prenticei
Gadusaurus aqualigneus
Lentamanusuchus hubeiensis
Xiphodracon goldencapensis

1 new mosasaur species:
Carinodens acrodon

2 new plesiosaur species:
Plesionectes longicollum
Traskasaura sandrae

1 new basal pseudosuchian:
Taihangosuchus wuxiagensis

13 new pterosaurs:
Darwinopterus camposi
Eotephradactylus mcintireae
Galgadraco zephyrius
Garudapterus buffetauti
Gobiazhdarcho tsogtbaatari
Infernodrakon hastacollis
Makrodactylus oligodontus
Melkamter pateko
Nipponopterus mifunensis
Saratovia glickmani
Skiphosoura bavarica
Spathagnathus roeperi
Tsogtopterus mongoliensis
This was an outstanding 12 months for pterosaurs, with a decent spread in time, space, and phylogenetics.

1 new basal sauropterygian:
Carinthiasaurus kandutschi

And 39 new dinosaur species, broken down as follows:

1 basal saurischian species:
Maleriraptor kuttyi

12 theropod species:
Allosaurus anax
Duonychus tsogtbaatari
Huadanosaurus sinensis
Joaquinraptor casali
Khankhuuluu mongoliensis
Mexidracon longimanus
Shri rapax
Sinosauropteryx lingyuanensis
Tameryraptor markgrafi
Vitosaura colozacani
Yuanmouraptor jingshajiangensis
Youanyanglong bainian
These are all Cretaceous, avetheropodan, or both.

4 "prosauropod" species:
Ahvaytum bahndooiveche
Lishulong wangi
Wudingloong wui
Xingxiulong yueorum

7 sauropod species:
Astigmasaura genuflexa
Chadititan calvoi
Cienciargentina sanchezi
Huashanosaurus qini
Jinchuanloong niedu
Tongnanlong zhimingi
Uriash kadici
Utetitan zellaguymondeweyae (no, that's not a new article, but since the type is USNM 15560 you'll get the idea. I'll get to it shortly.)
That's 3 eusauropods from China, 3 titanosaurs, 2 Huincul Formation rebbachisaurids, and no points for guessing which is which.

2 basal ornithischian species:
Archaeocursor asiaticus
Itaguyra occulta

3 thyreophoran species:
Huaxiazhoulong shouwen
Tianzhenosaurus chengi
Zhongyuansaurus junchangi
After getting 3 stegosaurs and 1 ankylosaur in the previous update, this time it's 3 ankylosaurids from the Cretaceous of China.

2 basal neornithischian species:
Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae
Pulaosaurus qinglong

2 marginocephalian species:
Brontotholus harmoni
Zavacephale rinpoche
Surprisingly, no horned dinosaurs this year, just pachycephalosaurs.

5 ornithopod species:
Ahshislesaurus wimani
Cariocecus bocagei
Emiliasaura alessandrii
Istiorachis macarthurae
Taleta taleta

4 species were transferred to new genera, all in Dinosauria:
Ornithomimosaurian Archaeornithomimus bissektensis to Dzharacursor
Titanosaurian Magyarosaurus hungaricus to Petrustitan
Ornithopod Rhabdodon septimanicus to Obelignathus
Theropod Zanclodon cambrensis to Newtonsaurus

5 species were reinstated (or instated for the first time; I'm not sure if "Plateosaurus" ornatus had ever been included), all dinosaurs:
Drinker nisti
"Laosaurus" consors
"Nanosaurus" rex
Pachycephalosaurus spinifer
"Plateosaurus" ornatus

3 species were sunk:
Aerodactylus scolopaciceps into Pterodactylus antiquus
Aurorazhdarcho micronyx into Gnathosaurus subulatus
Psittacosaurus major into Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis

And it turned out there was no need to emend Pachysaurus ajax as Pachysauriscus. That wraps us up for another year!

(And yes, it's still National Fossil Day on the 15th! And we did get the Fall 2025 Park Paleontology News out just under the wire, although we'll need to fix some links when we get back.)