Udelartitan celeste Soto et al., 2024 (new genus and species)
(Type tail vertebrae of Udelartitan celeste, from Soto et al., 2024)
Meaning of name: Udelartitan = UdelaR [acronym for the Universidad de la República] titan [in Greek]; celeste = sky blue [in Spanish, referring to the nickname of Uruguayan teams in international sport competitions]
Age: Late Cretaceous (exact age uncertain)
Where found: Guichón Formation, Paysandú, Uruguay
How much is known: Multiple tail vertebrae and some limb bones. It is unknown how many of these bones belonged to the same individuals.
Notes: Udelartitan was a titanosaurian sauropod and one of the few Mesozoic dinosaurs known from Uruguay. Most known specimens of Udelartitan had been briefly described in 2012, but were left unnamed at the time. It may have been closely related to Alamosaurus from the southwestern United States, Baurutitan from Brazil, and Pellegrinisaurus from Argentina, with which it shares the feature of having a frontmost tail vertebra that is convex on both ends.
(Schematic skeletal of Udelartitan celeste with bones known from the type specimen in green and those known from other specimens in red, from Soto et al., 2024)
Reference: Soto, M., J.L. Carballido, M.C. Langer, J.C.G. Silva Junior, F. Montenegro, and D. Perea. 2024. Phylogenetic relationships of a new titanosaur (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of Uruguay. Cretaceous Research advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2024.105894
Two male and one female Pteranodon longiceps soar over the heads of a pair of Styxosaurus browni 85 million years ago in what is now the Niobrara Formation of Kansas
Famous for being the sister species to Tyrannosaurus rex, Tarbosaurus bataar is often easily written off as being the Mongolian T-rex. The reality is that Tarbosaurus was quite different; besides being slightly smaller, it was also slimmer, with a narrower back portion of the skull, meaning it's vision was less directly binocular. This is due to the animals it hunted being different from those found in North America; whereas Tyrannosaurus went after hadrosaurs and ceratopsians, Tarbosaurus went after hadrosaurs and SAUROPODS, the latter apparently not needing as much binocular vision.
This is Parapuzosia seppenradensis, the largest known species of ammonite in the world.
They are 1.8 m or 5.9 ft across and that that one wasn't even complete! The living chamber was missing a chunk so it's even bigger!
It lived during the Campanian Epoch of the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now Europe and North America where the Western Interior Seaway was located.
They were pelagic predators, probably feeding on fish,
squid,
other ammonites,
and even marine reptiles if they could catch them
all while evading adult mosasaurs who definitely had them on the menu.
Abditosaurus, the first non-avian dinosaur that was described this year. A large sauropod from Spain, with fossils known for more than 50 years, was finally published this year. It is known from a locality that also bears numerous remains of dinosaur eggs, suggesting that this might have been a nesting site.
Jaculinykus yaruui Kubo et al., 2023 (new genus and species)
(Type specimen and schematic skeletal of Jaculinykus yaruui, with preserved bones in white on the skeletal, from Kubo et al., 2023)
Meaning of name: Jaculinykus = jaculus [small dragon in Greek mythology] claw [in Greek]; yaruui = speedy [in Mongolian]
Age: Late Cretaceous (Campanian–Maastrichtian?)
Where found: Barun Goyot Formation, Ömnögov, Mongolia
How much is known: Nearly complete skeleton of one individual.
Notes: Jaculinykus was an alvarezsaurid, a group of unusual small theropods with short but powerful forelimbs, each tipped with an enlarged thumb claw. Their other fingers were highly reduced, and in at least one case (Linhenykus), probably lost entirely. Jaculinykus appears to exhibit an intermediate stage in finger loss, having lost one of the smaller fingers on each hand. This makes it the first known example of an alvarezsaurid with two-fingered hands.
Jaculinykus is also one of the most completely known alvarezsaurids. Most of the bones in the type specimen have probably remained close to the original positions that they were held in when the dinosaur died, and they suggest that Jaculinykus slept in a very bird-like posture with the head turned back and tucked close to the body. A similar sleeping pose had previously been found in the troodontid theropods Sinornithoides and Mei, but Jaculinykus provides the first strong evidence that alvarezsaurids (which were more distant relatives of modern birds than troodontids) adopted the same behavior.
Reference: Kubo, K., Y. Kobayashi, T. Chinzorig, and K. Tsogtbaatar. 2023. A new alvarezsaurid dinosaur (Theropoda, Alvarezsauria) from the Upper Cretaceous Baruungoyot Formation of Mongolia provides insights for bird-like sleeping behavior in non-avian dinosaurs. PLoS ONE 18: e0293801. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0293801
Some more paleoart - two pterodactyloid pterosaurs (perhaps Mimodactylus or something similar) play along a forested clifftop during the late Cretaceous. This one took a bit longer than usual, glad to have it finally finished!
So, my brother and I watched Dinosaur (2000) relatively recently, and besides the fact that it's a bad movie with horrendous character design, one thing pissed him off more than anything else: the movie's use of the word "carnotaur".
Now, to him, this word was just an infuriating attempt at saying "carnivore", which in context, makes sense. What neither he nor I knew at the time is that this is not the case. Carnotaurs are real dinosaurs. And they're really cool.
Carnotaurus sastrei, the only one of its genus, is one of the few dinosaurs we have with some of its skin preserved. We know from those preservations that it had scales, which is one of the things we assume generally about dinosaurs that we have very little evidence for. Carnotaurs also were the only known carnivorous dinosaurs with horns, which is why it's named after a bull. The other half of its name (carno-) means "meaty", and even just looking at the skeleton, you can tell that it was one THICC ASS BOI.
I'm at least 90% certain this motherfucker looked like a sausage with teeth and thighs. We all clown on the T-Rex for its tiny arms, but look at this motherfucker. We're talking whale pelvis levels of vestigial here.
Another cool thing is that geographically, the movie having these as the main hunters makes more sense than having Tyrannosaurs. T-rex lived in what is now North America, whereas these death bratwurst lived in South America. We know that the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs landed in the Gulf of Mexico, and given that we see in the movie that very asteroid hit the earth, I don't think it takes place in what would one day become California.
All this to say, Elliot, I know more about dinosaurs than you. Suck it.
Super quick and messy ankylosaurus doodle. They have weird heads I’m really not used to drawing so pardon if the proportions are a little…all over the damn place lol. Think this is more of a practice that anything