How the ankylosaur got its tail club

Ankylosaur tail clubs are odd structures, odder than they are usually given credit for. They represent substantial modifications to two different skeletal systems – the endoskeleton, in the form of the caudal vertebrae, and the dermal skeleton, in the form of the caudal osteoderms. The centra of the caudal vertebrae lengthen but stay robust, and the neural arches undergo huge changes, such that the prezygapophyses, postzygapophyses, and neural spine become a robust, V-shaped structure on the top of the centrum, and which creates a tightly interlocking vertebral series with almost no flexibility. We call this the handle of the tail club. The osteoderms at the tip of the tail smush together and two of them become huge: although the tail club knob is small in some species, there are colossal knobs exceeding 60 cm in width. The ankylosaur tail club represents one of the most extreme modifications to the tail in terrestrial tetrapods.

Look at that thing. That is a weird thing.

(This is UALVP 47273, a really nice club that I studied for my MSc work on tail club biomechanics.)

One of the questions I became interested in during my MSc research on ankylosaur tail club biomechanics was how the tail club evolved in the first place. Most ankylosaurs with tail clubs are known from a relatively narrow slice of time right at the end of the Cretaceous, but when and where did the tail club first evolve? Did the stiffening of the tail occur before the enlargement of the tail osteoderms, or vice versa? Or did both changes happen at about the same time? This was a fun question to address during my PhD research, once I had a fairly well resolved phylogeny of ankylosaurids, and once I had looked at tons of ankylosaurid fossils.

So, how did the ankylosaur get its tail club? Well, based on what we see in the fossil record, it looks like the changes to the vertebrae predate the changes to the osteoderms – in other words, the handle comes first and the knob comes later. There is at least one ankylosaur out there that seems to have a tail club handle but not a knob: Gobisaurus!

Hello Gobisaurus! Many many thanks to my friend and colleague Sydney Mohr for preparing this awesome illustration of Gobisaurus for me.

Gobisaurus, a shamosaurine ankylosaurid, has a really nice complete tail club handle that is indistinguishable from other ankylosaurid tail club handles, but does not have a knob. And it's not just because the knob is broken off – it seems as though the last vertebrae in the tail are preserved, because they look very similar to the terminal vertebrae in a CT scan of a tail club from the University of Alberta collections. It's likely that Gobisaurus had osteoderms along the sides of the tail like we see in most other ankylosaurs, but it doesn't appear that there were osteoderms tightly enveloping the tip of the tail.

An even earlier ankylosaur seems to show some changes towards acquiring a tail club handle, as well. Liaoningosaurus, a basal ankylosaurid known only from a very small juvenile, has distal caudal vertebrae where the prezyapophyses extend about 50% the length of the adjacent vertebra. This is what we see in ankylosaurid tail clubs, but not in more basal taxa like Mymoorapelta where the prezygapophyses are much shorter. Liaoningosaurus is missing the tip of the tail and also lacks osteoderms on most of its body because it's a juvenile, so it's harder to say whether or not it had a tail club knob based just on the fossil alone.

I also did a cool and relatively simple thing with my phylogenetic tree to see if I could better understand the likelihood that some ankylosaurs without preserved tail material had a tail club handle or full tail club with a knob. Unsurprisingly, all shamosaurine and ankylosaurine ankylosaurids probably had a tail club handle. Liaoningosaurus is part of a basal polytomy of ankylosaurids, and it was a bit more equivocal whether or not any of these taxa was likely to have a tail club handle or not, partly because another basal ankylosaurid in this region of the tree, Chuanqilong, does not have modified distal caudal vertebrae.

All ankylosaurine ankylosaurids more derived than Pinacosaurus (so including things like Tsagantegia, Saichania, Euoplocephalus, etc.) almost certainly had a tail club knob, and shamosaurine ankylosaurids probably did not. Crichtonpelta, the most basal ankylosaurine, may or may not have had a tail club – we'll need more data to know for sure. There is amounted skeleton of Crichtonpelta at the Sihetun visitor center in Liaoning, and it is shown with a tail club, but it isn't clear whether or not this is sculpted or original material belonging to this specimen, and a full description of this material is necessary.

Gobisaurus and Liaoningosaurus both lived much earlier than the more familiar tail-clubbed ankylosaurs: Gobisaurus is no younger than 92 million years old, and Liaoningosaurus is about 122 million years old. The earliest ankylosaurid with a tail club in the fossil record is Pinacosaurus (from the Campanian), although there is a caveat to this: Talarurus, which is a bit older than Pinacosaurus, should have a full tail club based on its position in the phylogenetic tree, and while a tail club handle is known for this taxon, we haven't found a tail club knob for Talarurus. Talarurus is in kind of a weird spot phylogenetically, since it's from Mongolia but comes out as closely related to North American ankylosaurines, so I think it's worth keeping an eye on this taxon in the future – perhaps Talarurus is another taxon with only a handle and not a knob, which would fit a bit better with its chronologic position if not its phylogenetic position.

Regardless, the changes to the vertebrae of ankylosaurs, starting with Liaoningosaurus at least 122 million years ago and continuing on towards Gobisaurus about 92 million years ago, seem to have occurred long before ankylosaurs evolved a huge osteodermal knob at the end of the tail. Was a stiff tail as good a weapon as a full tail club with a knob? What drove the evolution of the knob so long after the evolution of a stiff handle? And why did ankylosaurs even evolve a tail club at all? Now that I've had fun investigating how ankylosaurs might have used their tails, and how the tail club evolved, the next question feels like it should be 'why'....so stay tuned for more tail club fun over the next year or so as I make an attempt at that question!


Read it for yourself! Arbour VM, Currie PJ. In press. Ankylosaurid dinosaur tail clubs evolved through stepwise acquisition of key features. Journal of Anatomy.

Know Your Ankylosaurs: Mongolian Odds and Ends Edition

I'm back in civilization, so let's get back to ankylosaurs! Ready Set Go!

Gobisaurus, Zhongyuansaurus, and Shamosaurus

Shamosaurus is a really interesting ankylosaurid from the Zuunbayan Formation of Mongolia. Unlike later ankylosaurids, it still has a relatively long snout like you see in basal ankylosaurs and nodosaurids, and it lacks the distinctive tile-like skull ornamentation of ankylosaurs like Euoplocephalus or Saichania, instead just having a granular, pebbly texture on the skull surface. Gobisaurus, from the Ulansuhai Formation of China, is nearly identical in appearance, and only a few features distinguish these two taxa, namely the length of the tooth row relative to skull length and the orientation of the pterygoids. (Indeed, I think you could make an argument for subsuming Gobisaurus into Shamosaurus as Shamosaurus domoculus, but I'm generally reluctant to start making new combinations given that generic separation is pretty arbitrary anyway.)

Shamosaurus and its too-cool-for-school cervical half rings, on display in Moscow.

Gobisaurus and Shamosaurus are sister taxa; the name Shamosaurinae was proposed at one point and there's no reason to discard it at present even though it only contains two taxa. Shamosaurinae is the sister taxon to Ankylosaurinae. I also identified one new character that links Gobisaurus and Shamosaurus together which isn't present in other ankylosaurids: both taxa have a distinctive groove on each premaxilla, the purpose of which is unknown but there you go. There have been some suggestions that Cedarpelta (from North America) is also a shamosaurine ankylosaurid, and while I find the overall morphology of Cedarpelta to be pretty compelling for placing it in a clade with Gobisaurus and Shamosaurus, I didn't recover it with those taxa in my analysis (it came out more basally-positioned). However, I wouldn't be surprised if Cedarpelta winds up in Shamosaurinae at some point in the future as we find more specimens of both it and Gobisaurus and Shamosaurus.

Zhongyuansaurus was originally described as a nodosaurid ankylosaur partly because of its long snout, but it's indistinguishable from Gobisaurus (except for being smashed and flattened). The holotype is also a subadult (or at least not fully skeletally mature), since some of the cranial sutures are still visible towards the back of the skull. There are some interesting things going on with the postcrania of Zhongyuansaurus, but that's a story for a few weeks from now so STAY TUNED NO SPOILERS IF YOU'VE READ MY THESIS.

Tsagantegia

Of all of the more obscure ankylosaurs I looked at during my PhD, Tsagantegia might be my favourite for being the most surprising in person compared to what I had read about it. Tumanova included a line drawing of the specimen in her original description, which has been oft reproduced, but interestingly it doesn't really do justice to the original specimen (despite being a pretty nice drawing). The line drawing shows a long-snouted ankylosaur with amorphous cranial ornamentation, not dissimilar to Shamosaurus, but with a wider premaxillary beak more typical of later ankylosaurs. In person, however, the skull has distinct cranial caputegulae like we see in Euoplocephalus and Ankylosaurus! It's a pretty cool ankylosaur and I think it's probably really important to understanding the dispersal of ankylosaurs from Asia into North America and the diversification of ankylosaurids in the Campanian-Maastrichtian of Asia, but it's really hard to pin down the age of the Bayan Shiree Formation, and we don't have any postcrania for this taxon. I'm sure I'll be revisiting this guy in the future.

Heck yeah Tsagantegia!

Here it is again but in a more different view!

Talarurus

Way back when I originally started this blog in 2010, I had travelled to Korea to spend some time working in the Hwaseong paleo lab preparing Talarurus material and generally studying the ankylosaur material they had collected from the Gobi. Talarurus, like Tsagantegia, is also from the Bayan Shiree Formation but is clearly distinct. The holotype skull has very subtle cranial ornamentation that takes the form of small cones, rather than flat hexagonal tiles like Euoplocephalus, or bulbous pyramids like Saichania. Weirdly, this configuration is also present in the North American taxon Nodocephalosaurus – either this ornamentation style has convergently evolved, or, as I recovered in my analysis, these two taxa are closely related despite being fairly widely separated geographically and temporally. This is another ankylosaur that I'm sure we'll talk about again.

Talarurus butt in Moscow. The skeleton on display is a composite of several individuals from the same locality, and the skull is totally sculpted and a bit out of date.

Here's the holotype skull, with its weird, weird ornamentation.

Saichania

I've talked about Saichania fairly extensively here last year, but there were a few new things added in this most recent paper: Tianzhenosaurus and Shanxia (both from China) are, most likely, junior synonyms of Saichania, making this the most geographically widespread of the Asian ankylosaurids. Tianzhenosaurus has a nearly identical cranial ornamentation pattern when compared to Saichania, and I couldn't identify any differences that were outside of the usual ornamentation pattern variation we see in something like Euoplocephalus. Shanxia is known from the same formation but from a less well preserved skull, but the morphology of the squamosal horn is consistent with that of both Tianzhenosaurus and Saichania and therefore it probably represents the same taxon.

Next up: what's the big picture here, anyway?

Know Your Ankylosaurs: China Edition

I'm in Utah digging up dinosaurs! But also, one of the last big chunks of my PhD thesis has just been published online at the Journal ofSystematic Palaeontology. They are generously allowing free access to the paper through the end of August, so head on over and grab a copy while it's free! This time, I'm taking all of the knowledge gained from my previous taxonomic revisions, adding in some more taxa, and doing a revised phylogenetic analysis building on previous analyses to see how everyone shakes out and to learn a little bit more about ankylosaurid biogeography. I'll cover some of the taxonomic stuff over the next few posts, and finish off with the big picture of ankylosaurid evolution.

Pinacosaurus!

I've talked previously about the ankylosaurs of Mongolia, but I've also had the opportunity to study some of their friends from across the border in China. In particular, I got to see lots of specimens of Pinacosaurus, both from the Alag Teeg bonebed in Mongolia, and from Bayan Mandahu in China. Because Pinacosaurus specimens are relatively abundant and usually well preserved, there has already been lots of descriptive work on this taxon, including on the skull (and here, and here), hands and feet, and general postcrania. 

Baby Pinacosaurus are so teeny tiny! This one is from Bayan Mandahu and was collected during the Canada-China Dinosaur Project back in the 1980s.

I've discussed just a few new points about Pinacosaurus, especially about how we tell the two species of Pinacosaurus apart. Pinacosaurus grangeri is known from lots of specimens, almost all of which are juveniles; it has relatively short horns at the back of its skull, a constriction in the snout between its nose and its eyes, and a notch in the rough ornamentation above each nostril. Pinacosaurus mephistocephalus is known from just one specimen (also a juvenile), and it has long squamosal horns, no constriction in its snout, and no notch in the ornamentation above each nostril (it looks like it does on one side, but I think this is just damage given that it is not present on the other side). Both species are known from Bayan Mandahu, and so it is reasonable to ask whether or not these could represent the same taxon – given the differences in skull morphology, I suspect we're not looking at intraspecific variation here, although more specimens of P. mephistocephalus would be very helpful in this regard!

Crichtonsaurus becomes Crichtonpelta

Crichtonsaurus is another cool ankylosaur that has received surprisingly little attention given its Jurassic Park affinities. Two species have been named: Crichtonsaurus bohlini (the type species), and Crichtonsaurusbenxiensis. Crichtonsaurus bohlini is, unfortunately, a very incomplete jaw that does not bear any diagnostic features, and so we argue that Crichtonsaurus should be considered a nomen dubium. Crichtonsaurus benxiensis, on the other hand, is a great specimen with a really good skull and a fair bit of the postcrania, and the skull has some unique features that make it easy to distinguish from other taxa, most specifically the upturned quadratojugal horns. We've proposed the new name Crichtonpelta benxiensis for this material – Crichtonsaurus was a good name and we wanted to keep the replacement name similar, so now we have Crichton's shield instead of Crichton's lizard.

During the Flugsaurier symposium in 2010, while I was visiting Beijing and the IVPP, we took a field trip out to Liaoning and visited the Sihetun Fossil Site. It has a cool museum, including a mounted Crichtonpelta skeleton! I don't think this specimen has been described, but it does corroborate certain aspects of the holotype skull. Crichtonpelta seems to lack discrete caputegulae (tile-like ornamentation) on its skull, which gives it a similar appearance to Pinacosaurus. I don't think the osteoderms have been placed quite correctly on this skeletal mount – I think they've been tipped on their sides so that the keel forms part of the 'base', giving it a somewhat stegosaur-like appearance.

Liaoningosaurus and Chuanqilong

I'm going to talk more about Liaoningosaurus in a few months, but it is one cool little ankylosaur! At only about 30 cm long, the holotype is one of the smallest known ankylosaur specimens and probably represents a very young individual. There may be a few osteoderms in the cervical/scapular region, but that's about it. I've previously argued that the putative plastron in this specimen is more likely skin impressions, which is still pretty cool because we don't have a lot of belly skin for ankylosaurs. 

Liaoningosaurus! YAY!

I also wanted to give a shout out to here to Chuanqilong, a larger ankylosaur from Liaoning that was described last summer and which didn't make it into my thesis but which I did include in the revised phylogenetic analysis in the final paper.

Here's Chuanqilong, from Han et al. (2014).

Dongyangopelta, Taohelong, and Sauroplites

Let's finish off this post today with a triad of interesting but enigmatic ankylosaurs. Dongyangopelta and Taohelong are relatively new entries to the world of ankylosaurs, with both taxa appearing in 2013. Neither are particularly complete, but they are interesting because both species possess chunks of fused osteoderms, which would have been found over the pelvis and which are most commonly encountered in nodosaurids and 'polacanthids/polacanthines', and are presently unknown in ankylosaurids – and indeed, Yang et al. described Taohelong as the first example of a polacanthine from Asia. Nodosaurids (including 'polacanthines' as basal taxa within this clade) have been tentatively identified from Asia previously (an interesting but fragmentary specimen from Japan may be a nodosaurid), but to find a Polacanthus-like animal in Asia is unexpected and very interesting. The two species can be differentiated based on the morphology of these pelvic shield pieces. Dongyangopelta comes from the Chaochuan Formation, and another ankylosaur, Zhejiangosaurus, had been named from that formation in 2007; it may eventually shake out that Dongyangopelta is a junior synonym of Zhejiangosaurus, but in the absence of overlapping diagnostic material we opted to keep these taxa separate for now.

Pelvic shield fragments - Dongyangopelta redrawn from Chen et al. (2013), Taohelong redrawn from Yang et al. (2013), and Sauroplites redrawn from Bohlin (1953).

Sauroplites, on the other hand, is a very old name that has been largely overlooked in recent assessments of ankylosaurs. The material was originally described by Bohlin in 1953, but sadly the whereabouts of the original material is unknown today (although there are casts at the American Museum of Natural History). I think Sauroplites was overlooked for a while because it's based off of osteoderms alone, and it's hard to assess diagnostic characters in osteoderms sometimes because they vary so much along the body. This is partly why I like cervical half rings and pelvic shields – in these structures, you can understand the positions of the osteoderms on the body and directly compare patterns and morphologies across different taxa. Supposedly, the osteoderms for Sauroplites were preserved in their original positions when the specimen was excavated, and if so, it's a bit surprising that more of the skeleton was not preserved. Bohlin correctly identified some of these pieces as elements of the sacral armour, and the morphology of these pieces can be used to differentiate Sauroplites from Taohelong and Dongyangopelta, and we consider Sauroplites to be a valid, but poorly known, taxon. It's good to revisit poorly figured and fragmentary taxa from time to time, because new discoveries might help put those pieces in context.

Next time: we head south! See you then!


Arbour VM, Currie PJ. In press. Systematics, phylogeny and palaeobiogeography of the ankylosaurid dinosaurs. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

Dinosaurs Unearthed!

Growing up in Nova Scotia, despite its many excellent and significant palaeontological treasures, meant that there weren't many dinosaur fossils for me to gawp at regularly. The Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History (which I loved) had only a few small fossils on display, and besides an exciting appearance by the Dinosauroid when I was small, did not have any big traveling dinosaur exhibits come through. But when I was in Grade 1 or so, DINAMATION came to town and seared its robotic dinosaurs all over my brain forever. And so I think I will forever have a soft spot in my heart for animatronic dinosaur displays.

Mike Burns and I ran into some of the old Dinamation robots puffing away at the New Mexico Museum back in 2012!

Like Jurassic Forest and Dino Dino Dreampark, the traveling exhibit Dinosaurs Unearthed (at Telus World of Science in Edmonton for the summer) mostly features large animatronic dinosaurs, as well as some casts and interactive displays.

One of the main focuses of the exhibit is showcasing Chinese dinosaurs and fossils, and talking about recent research on the evolution of birds from dinosaurs. Probably one of the best parts of the exhibit is the large number of casts of feathered dinosaurs from China, including Sinosauropteryx, Caudipteryx, Microraptor, and Confuciusornis. These are still not particularly household names, so it's nice to see these on display, especially given the lack of feathers in Jurassic World's dinosaurs!

Just past the casts we have a diorama of Jehol Biota feathered dinosaurs, including (from left to right) the dromaeosaur Microraptor, the compsognathid Sinosauropteryx, the tyrannosaur Dilong, and the bird Confuciusornis. Some of the animatronics are better than others, and all are kind of weirdly oversized, but I think if there was a sign that said this was a diorama at 4x life size or something like that, that it would work pretty well.

My favourite cluster of dinosaurs was the set of Mongolian dinosaurs, including the first time I've ever seen Gigantoraptor anywhere! There's also a pretty dapper Alxasaurus in the front there.

I would have liked to see more cast fossils rather than sculpted reconstructions, and perhaps more fossils overall and a couple fewer animatronics. But generally the information presented in the exhibit was pretty good and had been recently updated, with references to the new research on Brontosaurus, and lots of recent behavioural, biomechanics, and ecology facts as well. Here's a nice display showcasing some of the cool imaging work done by the WitmerLab!

Until next time...watch out for that Shantungosaurus as you leave! 

On Surprises

I love surprises. Which is unfortunate for me, because I am extremely bad at being surprised. And it's hard to be surprised by things as you get older, and as easier access to more and more information becomes available to us every day.

But boy, when a surprise comes along that actually takes me by surprise, what a thing to be able to savour.

An extraordinary painting of Yi qi by Emily Willoughby, CC-BY.

So, enter Yi qi. In many ways, it's hardly a surprise at all – numerous artists produced wonderful speculative art about scansoriopterygids predicting membranous wings and/or gliding abilities, and there was even this neat hypothetical Archaeopteryx ancestor that I found in a paper a few years ago. At the time, I wrote on Facebook: "I had not realized that a bat-winged proto-bird was an idea that was on the table!"

(I also wrote, "I like his smirk, lack of neck, and skinny skinny tail", and I agree with Past Victoria about all of those things.)

While Yi qi might not really be a proto-bird, it's still an amazing discovery that shows there was a lot of experimenting with flying and gliding going on back in the Mesozoic, which is perhaps unsurprising, given that lots of disparate groups of animals use gliding to their advantage today – fish, frogs, rodents, marsupials, dermopterans, you name it. And yet, even though there's lots of precedent for gliding vertebrates, and others had predicted something kind of like Yi qi before, I was still genuinely shocked when I saw the paper and press images. What a great feeling.

What I love best about Yi qi, apart from it's extremely meme-able name, is that it's a great example of maybe what I'll call an 'expected surprise'. A surprise that, as soon as you see it, it seems so obvious and like it should have been there all along. It's like the opposite of a failure of imagination. Surely there is a long German word that captures this specific emotion? What other expected surprises are lurking out there in our futures? What things have we speculated on today, dismissed as being way too out there to take seriously, and yet will pop up as really-for-real things later on?

I guess I need to get to work on some ankylosaur speculative biology! Maybe we'll find the real Yee?

Augh!

.....doing a PhD is busy sometimes!

I promise there will be more interesting blog content soon.

Flying away again...

I arrived in Ulaanbaatar last Saturday and am heading out to the Gobi Desert tomorrow morning. I’ve got a few blog posts that will appear while I’m away, but emails and facebook will be on hiatus until I return in late September.

However, I will leave you with a few palaeo notes and photos before I disappear for four weeks. During the Flugsaurier Symposium Scott and I had the opportunity to go on a field trip to Liaoning province to visit Jehol group outcrops and museums. Yesterday I posted a few photos of the Chaoyang Geopark. Today I’ve got some pictures of the Sihetun Fossil Museum and Darwinopterus field locality.

Outside the Sihetun Museum was this great expanse of Jehol Group outcrop. We all got to try cracking open some rocks, and many conchostracans and insects were found.



The Sihetun Museum had several very nice Psittacosaurus specimens, like this rather squashed fellow.



A particular treat of the trip was to visit the locality where Darwinopterus was collected, in the middle of a bunch of corn fields. It was interesting to see how Jehol rocks are typically quarried – the farmers find a productive level and then tunnel into the hillside. Unfortunately, this isn’t a very safe method for collecting.


I leave you with a final photo of my fine fangly friend Zhenyuanopterus, a huge boreopterid pterosaur from the Jehol.

Take care everyone and I’ll see you in September.

Chaoyang Geopark

During the Flugsaurier Symposium I went on a field trip to Liaoning Province, which was a great opportunity to see different parts of China and visit Jehol group outcrops and museums. We first visited the Chaoyang Fossil Bird Geopark, which included a museum, in situ exhibits, parks, and lots of interesting statues. This is Nurhachius, an istiodactylid pterosaur from the Jiufotang Formation. The model has too many teeth, but he’s still pretty fun.



One of the best parts of the visit was this great in situ display exposing Jehol Group rocks. It had fairly good descriptions of the geology, and even marked on faults and other interesting features. Fossils discovered during the excavation were left in place, and included Cathayornis, Shenzhouraptor, and lots of fish.


Inside the museum proper were literally hundreds of Liaoning fossils of every sort – insects, plants, fish, turtles, champsosaurs, theropods, birds, pterosaurs – the list goes on and on. Here’s just a single display case showing off various fossil birds - I think they are all Confuciusornis, but may be mistaken.


It was easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of fossil material in the geopark. After we finished in the museum we entered the fossil forest full of enormous petrified stumps. Incredible!

The museum and geopark had a few glitches - some specimens were mislabelled or in the wrong hallway, and there may have been a few 'plussed' specimens on display - but it was a really cool place that certainly has a lot of potential if a few of these errors are fixed up.

Chinese Food Adventures

My food adventures did not end when I left Korea – I have had many opportunities to try new things while in Beijing in Liaoning province, and have added several new meats to my ‘animals consumed' list, including donkey, pigeon, and crocodile. Here are a few of the more memorable dishes that Scott and I tried.

Thousand year egg is an egg that is buried in clay and lime and left to sit for several weeks. The yolk turns a dark greenish-brown, and the white becomes a brown jelly. It looks awful, but it mostly just tastes like egg, surprisingly.


All the guidebooks say you have to try Peking duck while in Beijing, so we did. It’s really tasty! Slices of crispy duck are brought out on a little duck platter (and sometimes the head is thrown in, just for fun as well), and you wrap up duck, leeks, cucumber and sauce in a little flatbread. Quite nice!


At a little street market off of Wangfujing Street, we saw lots of interesting things for sale, including skewered scorpions and starfish. The scorpions on these skewers were still alive and wiggling away...

We were not brave enough to try these.

Another real treat was this delicious spiced garfish!

Name that specimen, IVPP edition.

The IVPP’s public galleries are quite a lot of fun, and Scott and I spent a lunchtime wandering around. We saw many famous fossils! Can you guess the identity of the following close-ups? Answers at the bottom!




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1. This scaly appendage is the lobe-fin of a preserved Latimeria.
2. A delicious meal of Psittacosaurus can be found inside Repenomanus.
3. This friendly fangly smile is that of the pterosaur Haopterus.
4. The delicate toes and feathers of Microraptor.
5. The perfectly placed plastron of Odontochelys.
6. A Pachyrhinosaurus wannabe, the nose of the rhino Coelodonta.

China #1

Scott and I have arrived in Beijing - and the first thing we did was go over to Dino Dino Dream Park near Olympic Stadium (in fairness, it was late in the day and still open, and we knew how to get there).

Dino Dino Dream Park was both ridiculous and well done. There were some very nice animatronic dinosaurs, but sometimes in somewhat ridiculous poses. The Wuerhosaurus was trapped in a cage!

The IVPP lent some very nice mounts to the park consisting exclusively of Chinese dinosaurs. As such, there were many dinosuars I have never seen on display before, which was very cool.

I liked the presentation of active mounts near packing crates from the IVPP, in front of either a nice life restoration of the animal or a large photot of the field locality. In particular, I really liked the nice pair of Psittacosaurus.

Also, *heart*.