Lentamanusuchus hubeiensis was a small marine reptile that lived during the early Triassic, about 248 million years ago, in shallow tropical seas covering what is now southwestern China.
It was part of a group known as hupehsuchians, early cousins of ichthyosaurs that had toothless jaws, paddle-shaped limbs, eel-like tails, and distinctive bony armor along their backs.
Around 1.2m long (~4'), Lentamanusuchus had particularly broad flippers with extra bones in its hands, a transitional state between its ancestors and later polydactylous hupehsuchians.
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References:
Qiao, Yu, Masaya Iijima, and Jun Liu. "A new hupehsuchian (Reptilia: Ichthyosauromorpha) with widely spaced autopodium from the marine Lower Triassic of South China." Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 23.1 (2025): 2560884. https://doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2025.2560884
Wikipedia contributors. “Hupehsuchia” Wikipedia, 25 May. 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hupehsuchia
Wikipedia contributors. “Lentamanusuchus” Wikipedia, 10 Oct. 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentamanusuchus
A new study published just a few days ago (https://peerj.com/articles/20794/) has completely changed our understanding of the facial anatomy and biology of one of Australia’s most famous dinosaurs. It shows that Muttaburrasaurus langdoni, which rivaled Iguanodon or even T.rex in size, didn’t possess a resonating chamber in its nose but a much narrower snout than traditional media depictions, a strong sense of smell, wide-ranging vision, low-frequency hearing similar to that of elephants, as well as a specialized teeth and beak for consuming tough vegetation.
420 Million years before the reign of Mamdani, two Acutiramus wake up from their daylight slumber as thousands are Eurypterus begin to invade the shallow, warm waters of New York. This is the Fiddlers Green or Bertie Formation, a Silurian lagerstätte known for its eurypterids
The research history of this formation unfortunately causes much confusion here because what was once the Bertie Formation is now the Bertie Group which includes the Fiddlers Green Formation, but certain authors, especially on the Canadian side still call it the Bertie Formation
This caused a little bit of a headache during the research phase for this piece but I think we have it now figured out and the Wikipedia page also got already some updates. Beyond that Fiddlers Green is rather straight forward. These near shore waters were home to many critters
most prominently the eurypterids which most likely gathered here to molt, away from large open water predators, but other animals like weird oncoceratid cephalopods and even some interesting marco-algae can be found here as well.
The most common large eurypterid from is Acutiramus, which might have been a largely nocturnal predator of softer prey. Interestingly no vertebrates have been described so far! Size charts by Discord member Montana.
Although ceratopsian dinosaurs were widespread around the northern continents during the Cretaceous, for a long time they appeared to have been completely absent from Europe. A few possible fragments were found – but their identification as ceratopsians was highly disputed, with some paleontologists instead identifying the remains as belonging to ornithopods.
But this year some new fossils have given more support to the ceratopsian interpretation, suggesting that a whole diverse European branch of these dinosaurs was there the whole time. They'd just been misidentified as rhabdodontids due to the convergent anatomy of their teeth, jaws, and limbs.
One of these newly-recognized ceratopsians was Ferenceratops shqiperorum (previously known as Zalmoxes shqiperorum), which lived during the late Cretaceous (~72-66 million years ago) on the subtropical Hațeg Island, in the region of what is now Romania.
It was a small species, about 2m long (6'6"), and seems to have lacked the elaborate frills and horns seen in many other ceratopsians, despite being closely related to both protoceratopsids and stem-ceratopsids.
Its new genus name references Ferenc, the birth name of Baron Franz Nopcsa, the gay Transylvanian paleobiologist-adventurer-spy who originally found some of its fossil remains.
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References:
Ashworth, James. "Europe’s missing ceratopsian dinosaurs have finally been found." Natural History Museum, 07 January 2026. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2026/january/europes-missing-ceratopsian-dinosaurs-have-finally-been-found.html
Csiki-Sava, Zoltan, et al. "Island life in the Cretaceous-faunal composition, biogeography, evolution, and extinction of land-living vertebrates on the Late Cretaceous European archipelago." ZooKeys 469 (2015): 1. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.469.8439
Maidment, Susannah CR, et al. "A hidden diversity of ceratopsian dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe." Nature (2026): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09897-w
Wikipedia contributors. “Ajkaceratops” Wikipedia, 25 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajkaceratops
Wikipedia contributors. “Ferenceratops” Wikipedia, 17 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenceratops
Doedicurus: the glyptodont that came equipped with serious defensive hardware and an attitude to match. This paleoart by Emily Higgs is now on merch over at 252mya.com/doedicurus. If you’re into Ice Age megafauna with actual personality, this one’s for you.
gummygunk
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
dededos
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
