Tag: #FOWC

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C is for Clade

Dinosaur clade with timeframe, graphic from Fossil Wiki.

It’s all about the family trees. Today’s dinosaur-themed post is about how the dinosaur world is organized.

I know some of you are thinking, geez, don’t you know the names of any dinosaurs? Why isn’t A to Z going to be about Ankylosaurus to Zupaysaurus? I will have a few posts dedicated to specific dinosaurs, especially my favorites. But you can look up tons of dinosaur lists A to Z. There are kid’s alphabet books that do that. I promised to give you “all about dinosaurs,” not all about 26 dinosaurs. We need to round out this paleontological survey a bit more in order to achieve that goal.

How paleontologists organize the dinosaurs is quite important because it helps us understand how dinosaurs did what they did. As I mentioned in post “A,” the ankle bone structures differing from those of crocodiles urged scientists to think about why, and why was because dinosaurs stood upright. Hip-bone differentiation helped identify the two big groups — wait until letter “H”! And then… the birds. But we’ll get to that.

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B is for Big

Brachiosaurus head at the Am Museum of Natural History. Photo from Am Museum.

Holy cow! Or, maybe I should say Holy Brachiosaurus … or Holy Argentinasaurus…. or Holy Breviparopus….

These dudes got big!

In today’s dinosaur B-themed post, I’m going to share a little bit (and it’s already three days late and I haven’t much time, so not too much) on what, how, and why about these big-a@@ed creatures.

How Big Was Big?

Think almost half the length of a football field (American or European). The longest and largest dinosaur where much of the skeleton was discovered is either Argentinosaurus huinculensis or Patagotitan mayorum. Both of them were in a group labeled “Titanosaurs” and both were identified from bones discovered in — yep — Argentina. They ranged in length from 30 to 40 meters… about 45 yards and may have weighed around 80 tons.

As soon as you get measurements, of course, you start wondering, well, how much is that? Football fields are handy just because many people have seen them. For reference, a 757 aircraft weighs around 100 tons and is about 40 m, so visualize a living, stalking creature that looks like a giant airplane. Walking around on a football field, waving its intensely long neck around and wondering where all the veggies went. Forty meters is also the world record (officially Guinness WR) for flinging a Frisbee, so imagine throwing a Frisbee as long as a dinosaur!

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A is for Antorbital Fenestra

Albuquerque museum, photo by kajmeister.

Dinosaurs had an extra hole in their head.

As we start this journey of 26 posts all about dinosaurs, you may have noticed that A does not start with a kind of dinosaur. This is not going to be about 26 different dinosaurs, although I promise I will throw in a few. So A is not for Apatosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Albertosaurus, or even Archosaur. This A is about how dinosaurs were grouped and identified as dinosaurs.

So one thing to know, even before I say more about what the ant-orbit-a-whatchamacallit, is that these posts are going to wrestle with questions about dinosaurs, such as:

  • What made a dinosaur a dinosaur?
  • Where did the dinosaurs come from? And where did they go?
  • What did they look like?
  • How did they behave?
  • And, most of all, how do we know?

In other words, I’m going to talk about the things that dinosaurs did. Their habits. Their loves and losses.. well, maybe not that. But the dinosaur ouvre, so to speak (i.e. their “body of work.” Body get it?) Since they lived 200 million years ago, it gets a little tricky trying to guess. But you would be surprised at what those clever scientists who study bones can figure out, just from the bones.

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