Telmatosaurus Transsylvanicus

Comrades,

Listen once again, to the story of the dinosaurs.  Great beasts who walked the Earth, slayers of kings and terrors of the mead hall benches!

What have I done.

As you can see, I don't have access to photoshop at the moment. So until I have it again, everything will be made in microsoft paint! HOORAY.  That means I might not be able to rely on visual gimmicks as much and might actually have to give you guys useful information! I can already tell this post is a mistake...


ANYWAYS. As you guys may have noticed, I haven't been around for a while (this is, in fact, the first post since SUMMER), so I thought I'd do a really exciting dinosaur. Telmatosaurus!

I lied. It's not an exciting dinosaur.  It's a hadrosaur.  But it was the dinosaur the book selected for me, so we're gonna do it.

Telmatosaurus has a rather interesting story relating to its discovery.  In Romania, circa late 1800's, several farmers presented their monarch with a skull they had found while tilling the fields. Intrigued, the son of the village's lord left to the University of Vienna, where he learned that the skull belonged to an unknown species.  Recognizing it as a hadrosaur, he decided to name it after the hadrosaurs presumed habitat, a swamp, with the name Lemnosaurus (Swamp Lizard).  This name was short lived, however, because it was soon realized that Othniel Charles Marsh (dude ruins everything) had already given a crocodile the name.  Looking for a similar name, Telmatosaurus was decided upon, meaning "Marsh Lizard," but not "Othniel Charles Marsh Lizard," because that would be Othnielia, which is horrible. Just like Marsh.

Now you probably want to know what makes Telmatosaurus unique.  I mean it is a hadrosaur after all, what is there to make it unique? I'll be honest with you.  Not very much.  It was small in hadrosaur terms, being only about 16 feet long.  It lived in the Late Cretaceous, and was pretty similar to most other hadrosaurs, but a few things set it apart.  For one, it had unique humeri.  These upper arm bones were different from other hadrosaur's because, to quote the book, "the delto-pectoral crest is small, projecting only half again the diameter of the humeral shaft."  Perhaps this will make more sense with a picture.

It was also different because of its teeth. It had the usual leaf-shaped battery like all hadrosaurs, but it also had strangely curved teeth, more like those of a carnivore. Here's a visual aid.

Personally I'd like to think of it as a cannibalistic hadrosaur. That, although unlikely, would be super terrifying.  In some ways it would be worse that a Tyrannosaurus, I think. You know, a huge awkward quadrupedal animal hurling itself forward to eat you. Anyway just a thought. Looking at you Jurassic World.


The next post will probably be something to celebrate 10000 views!! I mean we're not there yet (still like 9300), but we should be soon.  Suggest a dinosaur to celebrate and I'll do it.

-Athos

Sources:
Weishampel, David B., Peter Dodson, and Halszka Osmólska. The Dinosauria. Berkeley: U of California, 1990. Print.

Dalla Vecchia, F.M. 2009b Telmatosaurus and the other Hadrosauids of the Cretaceous European Archipelago: an Update. Natura Nascota, 39. 1-18.

Kaijiangosaurus Lini

         Hail comrades! Today's post isn't a special anniversary one cause I didn't do it. It is however about a theropod, and everyone loves theropods, so you get a theropod.

        Our topic today is the little-known Kaijiangosaurus Lini, pronounced Ky-jee-ang-o-saurus. Kai was a Bathonian/Callovian Jurassic theropod from Sichuan, China.  Like all theropods it was a predator, and likely fed on the sauropods of the time, which were first starting to gain a substantial ecological foothold, and so were plentiful and easy prey. Fossils of Kaijiango are exceedingly fragmentary, so little is known about the body as a whole.  The specimens known to science include 5 neck vertebrae, a femur, shoulder blades, and several foot bones.

        Tragically, there's like no information about Kaijiangosaurus in existence. However, many scientists speculate that the imaginatively named Gasosaurus (it's name literally means gas lizard, a gasoline company owns the quarry it was discovered in), is in actuality one and the same as Kaijiangosaurus. Since Kaitiang was found before Gasosaurus, the official scientific name would be Kaijiangosaurus, certainly saving this genus from the ever-present threat of embarassing nomenclature. All the cooler named dinosaurs would have made fun of it.

You have to imagine Kaijiangosaurus with a really whiny voice.

         Kaijiangosaurus was roughly 3-4 meters long, which even with information about Gasosaurus added in isn't for certain, since finds of both have been relatively fragmentary.  The most defining feature I've read about in both is the fact that their shoulder blades were significantly larger around the joints then the rest of the bone, so I guess they had pretty big shoulders. What these might have been used for seems unclear to me, since their arms (from what is known) probably weren't too long, but who knows? I doubt they could have acted as much defense, since as the illustration shows, the weaponized sauropods of the time had some pretty deadly spikes. Kaiji would certainly be better off hunting the more familiar un-thagomizered sauropods, which were also around at the time, but I guess the battle makes for a more interesting picture.
         What else is there to say about Kaijiangosaurus? I don't know. It existed, for one thing. It had limbs. Um, it was a dinosaur, that one's for certain. It was charming, yet repugnant. Wise yet foolish, honestly what isn't there to say about Kaijiangosaurus? In seriousness though, little is known about Kaiji so there isn't much to say. It's a pretty underground dinosaur. See cause "underground" because their fossils are still undiscovered, and also cause no one knows about... I give up.

Hipster Kaijiangosaurus, because other dinosaurs are too mainstream. 

        There is hope however. There have been more recent finds of this species that are still yet to be described, so while she maybe currently absent from the field of scientific investigation, Kaiji will certainly return when new papers are published on these discoveries. Why did I pick a dinosaur that there's virtually nothing to say about? I have no idea. The great book makes all decisions for me now.

It is the book's will that I write about Kaiji.

I must obey the book.

Next time will be something else. I'm thinking Scipionyx.

-Athos


Weishampel, David B., Peter Dodson, and Halszka Osmólska. The Dinosauria. Berkeley: U of California, 1990. Print.

Martin, Anthony J. Introduction to the Study of Dinosaurs. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2006. Print.