Alvaro Garza

Student Paleontologist who shares anything dinosaur related!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Helicoprion: What if, like, teeth,

Mesosaurus: Yeah?

Helicoprion: but WHEEL

Mesosaurus: No don't -

Helicoprion:

(Image by ДиБгд)

[esmaniottoart]

Sketch Drawing_Juvenile Chasmosaurus. Pencils, 2020.

References

Philip J. Currie, Robert B. Holmes, Michael J. Ryan & Clive Coy (2016) A juvenile chasmosaurine ceratopsid (Dinosauria, Ornithischia) from the Dinosaur Park Formation, Alberta, Canada, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 36:2, DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2015.1048348

[tsunflowers]

crying bc I’ll never be able to buy giant bagels off a kentrosaurus

[tsaagan]

Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum from Heureka’s The Giant Dinosaurs exhibit

[thisbloghasapurposeiswear]

There’s not NEARLY enough cephalaspis content on this website. What an absolute shame.

[aquaticpaleo]

REBLOG to support this cool guy

IGNORE to break his heart

[usik-paleo-illust]

Retro style

Dinosaur coloration

[dinodanicus]

The seldom seen spirit of the forest.

[alphynix]

Synapsids just keep evolving saber teeth.

Both proto-mammals and true mammals have independently evolved oversized fangs quite a few different times in a lot of different lineages over the last few hundred million years (even in some modern ones), and one of the first to experiment with such a feature was Tiarajudens eccentricus.

Living in southern Brazil towards the end of the Permian period, about 265-260 million years ago, Tiarujudens was an early member of a group of known as anomodonts. These chunky herbivorous synapsids weren’t directly ancestral to modern mammals, but were instead evolutionary cousins, and their lineage eventually included tusked dicynodonts like the world-conquering Lystrosaurus.

Tiarajudens was around 1-1.2m long (3'3"-3'11") and sported a pair of very long blade-like canine teeth in its upper jaw. Since the rest of its teeth were clearly adapted for eating plants – with one of the the earliest known examples of flat grinding molars that would have allowed it to chew up tough vegetation – these fangs probably served more of a display or defensive function.

The saber teeth may even have been a sexually dimorphic feature like in modern musk deer. Another anomodont from South Africa, Anomocephalus africanus, is incredibly similar to Tiarajudens except for a lack of fangs – and since South America and Africa were connected as part of Pangaea at the time, it’s possible that these two actually represent males and females of the same species.

Without finding a larger number of fossils we can’t know for certain, but it’s an interesting possibility at least.

———

Nix Illustration | Tumblr | Pillowfort | Twitter | Patreon

[verybadpaleontologyjokes]

happy palentines day paleontology edition

bonus

geology one

[palaeoverse]

Do you love the Eras of the Earth?

Which One?

[kheironomos]

Wulong bohaiensis, a newly described microraptorine dinosaur whose name translates from Chinese into “dancing dragon,” referencing the pose of the exquisitely preserved holotype.

The Wulong specimen was determined to have been a juvenile, which implies drastically different growth and maturation rates for dinosaurs than for their avian descendants. The juvenile Wulong had more or less mature feathers rather than the down or not-quite-flight feathers characteristic of adolescent birds.

We do not know the coloration of Wulong, but I decided to model it off its close relative, the shiny, crow-sized Microraptor. This was my first time experimenting with iridescence and I’m not quite sure how I did.

[jurassicsunsets]

emojidex has a bunch of dinosaur emojis no other platform has in its dinosaur tag

holy crap what

THESE ARE SO GOOD WHY ARE THE OTHERS SO BAD

[i-draws-dinosaurs]

Is that a hALSZKARAPTOR I see??????

[apsaravis]

Poposaurus and some unfortunate shuvosaur :(

[paleontologymemes]

It always feels so sore when there’s whispers of some new dinosaur film project. when in reality we end up with either mediocre action films or content so childish it feels like a joke

[dinodanicus]

Stegosaurus and … friends …

[alphynix]

Much like how hyraxes were once far more diverse than their modern representatives, some ancient members of the tapir lineage were similarly weird.

Lophialetes expeditus was one of these odd tapir-relatives, living in Mongolia and China during the mid-Eocene about 48-37 million years ago. Standing around 50cm tall at the shoulder (1'8") it had a build more resembling a deer or a horse than its pig-like modern cousins, and it was adapted for fast running in open plains, with long slender legs and three-toed hoofed feet that bore most of its weight on the middle digit.

Its skull had a nasal region similar to both modern tapirs and saiga antelope, suggesting the presence of a short trunk-like nose – but since some of its closest relatives didn’t have nearly such well-developed snouts, it seems that Lophialetes evolved its trunk separately to modern tapirs.

———

Nix Illustration | Tumblr | Pillowfort | Twitter | Patreon

[your-posts-are-schist]

*Slaps my own ass* This geologist can fit so much love of rocks in it.