In honor of World Dinosaur Day, I’ve decided to inaugurate the first ever annual World Dinosaur Day post. I’ll start by reminding you, dear reader, that I have written a book all about paleontology, The A to Z Dinosaurs, full of fun little tidbits about these magnificent reptiles. With that sponsor’s message out of the way, let’s talk about some of the latest dinosaur research. I’m going to call it DRAMA, INDUSTRY, MAGIC! That is, drama among the paleontologists, industrialists helping out their scientific friends, and magical new technology uncovering hidden secrets.
World Dinosaur Day was designated as such by cartoonist Joe Wos back in 2016. Wos is a well-known illustrator who helped found a small cartoon museum in Pittsburgh, had a website, was noted as a visiting cartoonist to the Schulz museum here in Northern California–the guy does a lot of things. Lots of ideas. Lots of projects. Museum now closed; website gone; lots of 404 links. He’s available for speaking events but has not, according to his personal site, said much about dinosaurs. However, his Dinosaur Day idea caught on, and museums and educators have enjoyed pitching a tent on it, even if Joe seems to have wandered away. Thanks anyway, Joe Wos! Who wouldn’t want another excuse to celebrate dinosaurs?
I Like Big Frills and I Cannot Lie
I have been nearly paralyzed with excitement for a week, knowing this day was coming. You can see it on my calendar, and yes, indeed, I have a dinosaur-themed calendar! I have spent the past few days sifting through the latest research to highlight what’s going on out in the “we found something bumpy in the dirt” world.
Up first: Lokiceratops rangiformis!
Ain’t he cool? This is not a case where the artist–not Joe Wos by the way–did not get all creative and invent that head frill. Artists do take imaginary leaps with coloration, since we rarely know what their skin looked like. In this case, though, they found most of the bony head frill, and it does look like that. Just for those few of view who haven’t browsed through the A-Z world of dinosaurs, this is a ceratopsian. You might be thinking, like triceratops? Indeed, yes!
Ceratopsians were large vegetarians with beaked noses and lots of teeth for grinding leaves. They were Cretaceous period creatures, meaning late in dinosaur evolution. Their primary protection was in the complex horn structures that evolved–three horns, five horns, neck frills, and even this guy, with the frill and horn combination. They nicknamed him “Frederick,” though I don’t think they knew for sure that it was male. Just sayin’.
Loki was uncovered near the Judith River in Montana, as so many late Cretaceous dinosaurs are, up near the Canadian border, The initially discover was back in 2019, but it does take years to painstakingly reconstruct the bones, then publish and announce the finding, which happened last December. Good fossil hunting up north, which is why the University of Montana is practically ground zero for paleontologists, along with the nearby Tyrell Museum grounds up in Alberta.
The discovery’s full holotype name of Lokiceratops rangiformis means “Loki’s horned face looks like a caribou.” The find is exciting because Loki has the largest frill horns ever seen in a ceratopsian, perhaps–to quote the scientists–“pushing the boundaries of known ceratopsian headgear diversity.”
However, there is some controversy and drama! Whenever new dinosaurs are discovered, those who found a similar dinosaur earlier often argue that the new one is not new, it’s just like theirs, and so what, who cares? The claim is that Loki is just a variation of Medusaceratops lokii, another horned dinosaur original discovered in the early 1990s. Part of the reasoning is that two such large, similar animals would not have easily shared space.
Here’s what fun and messy. Medusaceratops lokii was originally argued to be a variation of Albertaceratops, and that was controversial, according to the Albertaceratops discoverers. It took years for the discoverers of Medusaceratops to argue successfully that she (I don’t care if it was male, it was Medusa!) was a separate genus. When she was finally accepted as a separate genus, they gave her the species name lokii because of the decades of confusion about what to name her. As any modern fan of the Marvel universe or student of Norse religion, Loki was the Norse trickster god.
Which makes it the height of fun that the newest discovery was also named Loki, partly because it was found in the “Loki quarry” where Medusaceratops was found, and partly because the new specimen was given to the Knuthenborg Safaripark in Maribo, Lolland, Denmark, who advocated for a Norse name. I don’t know if “gave” is the right word; I suspect money exchanged hands. At any rate, if you want to see the dinosaur pushing the boundaries of ceratopsian headgear diversity, you need to go to Denmark.
Along the Dinosaur Superhighway, Between the M40 & B430
If you know your paleontology history, you know Gideon Mantell started a lot of the hooha in Britain by finding an Iguanodon tooth in a quarry near his medical practice. Actually, his wife probably found the tooth, and he was so much more into fossil hunting than being a doctor, that he moved his practice near Whiteman’s Quarry. (“I” is for Iguanodon. ) When you read in an article, then, that they found some dinosaur stuff in a British quarry, you just think, same old, same old.
Out in Oxfordshire, somewhat north of Oxford, east of Swindown, between the M40 and the B430 as the Brits would call it, you’ll find Dewar’s Farm Ardley Quarry. Plenty of decorative and landscaping materials folks, in business as Smith & Sons Bletchington. Lots of sand. Not especially concerned or interested that sciency people wandering around their quarry have uncovered hundreds of footprints crossing each other all along the bottom of one of the pits.
In America, we would label that a theme park, put up billboards and gift shops and build a giant set of dinosaur replicas around it, but in Britain, it’s just sort of meh. Yeah, it used to be all swampy like Florida up in these parts. Yeah, they found five trackways up there, buried in the mud, one almost 500-foot long. Sauropod tracks, maybe the two-ton Cetiosaurus, or the carnivorous Megalosaurus. But none of ’em were running. They’re all dead now. Oh, look, there’s some lovely crushed limestone and shingles over there, perfect for pipe bedding!
I can just see the paleontology researchers leaning in, delicately brushing off the footprints with a tiny tool like an eyebrow brush, while they’re hearing the grind and beep-beep of tractors and construction equipment close by. Careful Smedley, there’s a pipe-hauler behind you… Nevertheless, it was an amazing discovery, and the joint research team from Oxford and Birmingham have been hard at work since the new broke in January of this year, to document the finding. Well done, chaps!
Magic er Technology Newly Reveals Soft Tissue on Old Bones
The Museum rivalry heats back up! Back in the day of the 1870s”Dinosaur Wars”, rivalry among the Smithsonian, the Met (in NY), the British Museum, and the Carnegie Museum was intense. Fossil hunters were stealing samples, poaching each others’ territory, and slandering each other in public. While they stopped outright theft and nefarious shenanigans (“U” is for Unscrupulous), the competition to get bones is hitting back up. The Chicago Field Museum recently spent millions to acquire a Tyrannosaurus (yep, I tell that story, too), which brought tons of visitors to their museum. So isn’t not a surprise either to hear that they bought, i.e. “acquired,” one of the Archaeopteryx specimens originally found in Germany and are now calling it “The Chicago Archaeopteryx.”
Archaeopteryx is well known, not just for being a little hard to spell, but for being one of the primary pieces of evidence for evolution, for Darwin and his contemporaries. Discovered in the mid-19th century, these skeletons were identified as clearly reptilian by their hips and skulls, but there were visible imprints from feathers. Feathered reptiles? Dinosaur birds? (Yep, birds now are still dinosaurs, just keep repeating it to yourself).
What Chicago scientists were able to do, though, after getting a hold of one of these famous skeletons is to train Ultraviolet light and CT scan on the bones. New technology revealed–mon dieu!–evidence of the original soft tissue connections. A hundred million years old, but with the right magical devices, scientists can identify where the muscles and ligaments went. Some of those went to what can now be identified as tertiary feathers, the close-to-the-body feathers that help in flight.
There’s been a century-old-argument about whether archaeopteryx could fly at all. First, they thought it could, then they thought it was too big relative to the feathers it might have sports. A whole sub-section of paleontology was devoted to whether bird-dinosaurs developed flight because Archaeopteryx went into trees and jumped down, or whether it could run and jump up. This finding suggests that Archaeopteryx could definitely fly more than just a tiny bit because it had these special feathers.
Also key to the process was that this fossil was preserved in a thick layer of limestone, which had to be uncovered using UV light in order to avoid damaged as they scraped away with needle-like tools. It had never been “cracked open” before because the tools weren’t available, and the earlier owners didn’t have the time or knowledge to do it properly. Right time, right place, right people.
Right on, Archaeopteryx!
So there you have it. The paleontologists are jostling a little to find the latest, to acquire the most exciting, and to discover what could bring in fame, fortune, and enthusiasm by the dino lovers, such as yours truly. Regardless of the behind-the-scenes scientific elbowing of those in Montana, Chicago, or near the B430 close to Bucknell, these discoveries are exciting discovering pushing the envelope of paleo-research.
It’s a nice June Sunday, a great day to visit your local dinosaur museum. If you didn’t have that in your plans, summer is starting, and there are great dinosaur exhibits to see in Chicago AND Pittsburgh, New York, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and lots of hot spots overseas as well. We might as well call it World Dinosaur Month. The bones are waiting for you!