Concerning an Isotelus and its acquaintances

Here we have a big ol' rock.

New Pages: Geologic Time Scale and Classification Diagrams

So far the year has been quiet (well, up until Friday), so I thought I'd address a couple of nagging things, which I've done by adding two pages. The first page is a geologic time scale figure, from one I worked up for National Park Service reports. It's the kind of thing I thought would be handy to have on hand here for reference, instead of having a link to an external site. It'll be updated from time to time as dates are refined. The Quaternary is rather cramped, although I don't feel particularly apologetic for shortchanging Homo sapiens.

The second page is a sort of "map" to the classifications used in the various sheets over at The Compact Thescelosaurus, made with classic ASCII cladograms. (I contemplated drafting them in other ways, but none of them were as amenable to updating.) I thought this would be useful for visualizing the mess of classification columns. The process also forced me to look at the positions of a few clades, as you may have noticed from the updates sheet.

It's not connected to either topic, but I've also added a paragraph of new information to the post on the "Kweichow sauropod" after coming across a mention of it in Averianov and Sues (2017).

Finally, so as not to leave the post without an image, here's one attached to a quick story:

Back in spring 2001 I was on a field trip to the Badlands/Black Hills area of southwestern South Dakota. We were stopped along a road near Deadwood for lunch. One of the professors said something to the effect that "there are fossils in this formation." I looked down at the chunks of rock at my feet and said "You mean like this?"

Yeah, like this.

From my notes the source is the Whitewood Formation (or Dolomite, or Limestone), fittingly enough an (surprise, surprise) Upper Ordovician unit. More on its cephalopods can be found in Miller and Furnish (1937).

References

Averianov, A., and H.-D. Sues. 2017. Review of Cretaceous sauropod dinosaurs from central Asia. Cretaceous Research 69:184–197. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2016.09.006.

Miller, A. K., and W. M. Furnish. 1937. Ordovician cephalopods from the Black Hills, South Dakota. Journal of Paleontology 11(7):535–551.

Your Friends The Titanosaurs, part 8: Bonitasaura, Borealosaurus, and Brasilotitan

And so we reach Part 8, otherwise to be known as "Bonitasaura and these other two." Bonitasaura is one of the best-known sauropods, even if it isn't quite a household word, and also has some unusual jaw features going for it. Brasilotitan has some of the same jaw features, but is not known from nearly as much material and came along several years later. Borealosaurus has an uncertain grip on Titanosauria, and gripping things takes some creativity when you have either no fingers or just nubs.

Crystal Ball for 2019

So we've come to 2019. I didn't do so well last year trying to apply a system, so that's gone. I'm trying to mix it up beyond "X# of new taxa"; the problem is "X#" is so easy to define and score.

Will the coming year bring, for no obvious reason, a photo of Simosuchus? (yes)

2018 in Review

Five years in and I still can't say all that much about what people will like. I know that dinosaur posts attract more attention than posts on other topics. "The secret identity of 'Agathaumas'" was comfortably the most viewed post of 2018, although from my point of view as the writer, I thought it was only going to be a little historical goof. "Dryosaurus elderae and the revenge of Nanosaurus agilis" attracted the most comments (side note: I noticed at SVP that several Morrison posters had Nanosaurus where Othnielosaurus or other names might have been used, so it's something that has spread quickly.) The two titanosaur posts early in the year got a good reaction ("Titanosaurs all the way down" and "Titanosaurs in time and space"), inspiring the dive into "Your Friends The Titanosaurs", which may well kill me one of these days, but it's not like I was doing anything important otherwise. On the other hand, I thought "Tracking sloths and people at White Sands National Monument" would have attracted more interest; I mean, come on, giant sloths, human tracks, it sells itself! A couple were better ideas in concept than in writing ("Fossil Bison of the National Park Service" and "'Prorichthofenia': brachiopod horn corals" come to mind), and "Decorah gastropods (and some things that look like gastropods)" was definitely more work than reward. Something else: I'm sure I've said this before, but I think I've rather thoroughly mined Twin Cities geology for topics by this point.

Your Friends The Titanosaurs, part 7.5: Baalsaurus mansillai

So now someone has gone and published a new titanosaur that would fit in the part of the alphabet we've already covered. We'll just have to kind of wedge it in, if you can buy the idea of wedging a titanosaur into anything.

When the news that a dinosaur named Baalsaurus had been published broke Monday on the Dinosaur Mailing List (thanks to Ben Creisler for keeping us all up to date!), I immediately wondered what the connection was with Baal, the Phoenician fertility god moonlighting as an Abrahamic heavy. (Spoiler: it's secondhand—"Baal" is the name of the locality.) I wasn't expecting a medium-sized, square-jawed, seemingly inoffensive South American titanosaur. Still, it works in a certain theological sense. Looking at it from a Phoenician point of view, titanosaurs clearly were doing something right with regard to fertility, so it's entirely appropriate for Baalsaurus to be a titanosaur. From the demonic usage of Baal, if you were thinking Baalsaurus would be something a bit more "heavy metal album cover", sure, you'd be disappointed. On the other hand, if you accept the proposition that forces of evil and suffering in the world are generally much more mundane than supernatural humanoids, a titanosaur is more fitting than a slavering theropod.

Your Friends The Titanosaurs, part 7: Barrosasaurus, Baurutitan, and Bonatitan

We come now to a sauropod that acts as a titanosaurian frame of reference (Baurutitan britoi), a sauropod that gets overshadowed by another sauropod with a very similar name (Bonatitan reigi), and Barrosasaurus casamiquelai, which is kind of stuck waiting for the rest of Titanosauria to get sorted out.