Mesozoic Miscellany #35

Research and Discoveries
Apparently, there once lived a spinosaur in Australia. If this pans out, and we'll have to wait for a formal description of the vertebra to see if it does, it will greatly increase the range of spinosaurids before pangaea's dissolution. Fellow LITC blogger Marc Vincent wrote about the way the story was botched by the Daily Fail. Also read Brian Switek's blurb about it at ScienceNOW and the coverage at LiveScience.

The new edition of the journal Acta Geologica Sinica includes the description of a new species of Darwinopterus, D. robustodens, based on a complete specimen that dramatically increases our knowledge about the genus.

Around the Dinoblogosphere
Brian Switek has been doing some dino-tourism in his new home state of Utah, and today at Dinosaur Tracking, he shares his visit to the College of Eastern Utah's Prehistoric Museum, home of the massive limb of the nodosaur Peloroplites.

ART Evolved points us to the group blog DrawBridge, which has featured some fine dinosaur cartoons and artwork.

Raptormaniacs has been featuring informative posts about dinosaurs and feathers. Check out all three posts from this week: one, two, and three. Excellent stuff from the mysterious Albertonykus.

At his blog, AMNH Senior Principal Preparator Jason Brougham also wrote about feathers this week, helping sort out just how fluffy feathered non-avian dinosaurs may have been.

Jurassic Journeys blogger Dr. Matt Bonnan calls attention to his new YouTube channel, which is shaping up to be a wealth of information for curious seekers of paleo knowledge. Here's his video about deep time, cleverly using his class's rail trip from Illinois to Utah as a scale.



Ichnology guru Tony Martin also uses video in his post this week at The Great Cretaceous Walk, The Dinosaur Tracks of Western Australia May Go Extinct. After describing dinosaur tracks around Broome, he shares the news that the area may be endangered by a new Liquefied Natural Gas processing plant.

The students of the Montana State University expedition to China also had dino tracks on their mind, braving the dangers of a landfill to see what they could find. The MSU crew has also been added to the SciAm Expeditions blog.

Ryan North, creator of the popular Dinosaur Comics webcomic, was interviewed at Dinosaur Tracking.

Mark Wildman writes about the limb morphology and ontogeny of plesiosaurs at Saurian, inspired by some new plesiosaur fossils that are proving difficult to identify.

Scott Hartman is back with more good material on the Skeletal Drawing blog, and this week wrote about the distinction between Schematic and Realistic skeletal diagrams.

Darren Naish declares Lurdusaurus the "stupidest looking Iguanodont."

Twit Picks
A bountiful bushel of links I shared on Twitter in the last week or so:

• A Pteranodon beaten "with the ugly stick," reviewed at the Dinosaur Toy Blog
• I don't like the way that pterosaur is eyeing Adam's grapes... H/T @cambrianexplode
• Cool class class from Brooklyn Brainery, Dinosaurs: Myths and Legends. All full, too! +1 for linking to LITC.
• “During the time when there weren’t dinosaurs on the screen, I thought, ‘When are they going to show more dinosaurs?’”
• “Did man tame the Dinosaur?” Fate Magazine, February/ March 1952. Shared by uk vintage at Flickr.
• Paleontologist ponders purchasing a Moroccan “Pterasaur Dinosaur Tooth”
• For Edward Drinker Cope fans, Ville Sinkkonen's dashing portrait.

Paleoart of the Week
Shared recently at the paleoart blog Dino-Art (not to be confused with Andrey Atuchin's similarly-named personal blog), here's MC Barrett's excellent rendering of a baby dromaeosaur.

Outrageously Off-Topic Indulgence
If you don't read the blog Science-Based Medicine, you should give it a shot. This recent post by Dr. David Gorski on the "cleansing" fad is typically on-the-mark.