Pics of the AWESOMELY preserved Platecarpus at the @NHMLA for #FossilFriday. This nearly complete specimen even has skin and other soft tissue impressions!
Please excuse the kinda wavy panorama pgoto attempt.
I'm a choristodere fan. From tiny Cteniogenys, to resilient Lazarussuchus, to the croc-like champsosaurs, I celebrate their ENTIRE catalog!
It was kinda selfish of them to go extinct in the Miocene before we could study them in life...
On #FossilFriday, we celebrate the unsung heroes of the reptile world: the choristoderes! From the Triassic to the mid-Cenozoic, these rare aquatic critters prowled the waterways of the northern continents. COERULEODRACO JURASSICUS is a new species from Jurassic China!
Welcome back to the world, Antarctanax. Yet more archosauromorph diversity in the earliest Triassic, right in the wake of the PT Extinction.
Thanks to @_gondwannabe_ and crew for pulling this fellow from its Antarctic tomb! It was fun to review this one.
This cutie-patootie is ANTARCTANAX SHACKLETONI, an iguana-sized reptile from Antarctica. Antarctanax lived in a hothouse world in the Early Triassic, just after the Permian Extinction wiped out 90+% of species. Awesome discovery by @_gondwannabe_ and @burkemuseum!
Acresuchus is a new fossil caiman from the Miocene of Brazil. It's a contemporary and probable sister taxon of Purussaurus, although it's half the size of that behemoth. It's got a weird narrow skull table...whatever that means.
One month off the grid? Time to tell some fossil stories...
Meet 2019's newest crocodylian: the horned caiman Acresuchus from the Miocene Brazil! A new paper describes an amazing collection of skulls at Universidade Federal do Acre!
On this #FossilFriday, PastTime crosses over with @IKnowDino to discuss the latest and greatest in paleontology from the @SVP_vertpaleo 2018 conference! Pachycephalosaurs, American cheetahs, #dinosaur lungs! https://t.co/lMe667Iut0
@Salerno_Thomas@PastTimePaleo Eh...it's a great idea, and I really wanted that explored. It's been a few years, but I remember it getting lost in the weeds a LOT and forgetting that characters need to be interesting too.
Lavocatisaurus is a new rebbachisaurid sauropod from Early Cretaceous Argentina. YOU SHOULD ALL BE TALKING ABOUT IT! It's skull blew Adam's mind. It's got a giant extra hole in its face, ridiculously torqued adductor chambers, and is made of stick and paper-like bones! WHAT?
For the final #FossilFriday of #CROCtober I present Borealosuchus formidabilis from the Paleocene of North Dakota. @sciencemuseummn has a particularly incredible collection of these animals, for all you croc researchers out there.
@albertonykus You and me both, although I'm thinking they'll turn out to be pretty different. To my eyes, the proportions of an alvarezsaur forelimb are, if anything, weirder than a drepanosaur!