Cornelius says hello

Updated on July 8, 2015! 

"Cornelius" now has a scientific name - Wendiceratops pinhornensis! 

You can read the open access paper here:

Evans DC, Ryan MJ. 2015. Cranial anatomy of Wendiceratops pinhornensis gen. et sp. nov., a cnetrosaurine ceratopsid (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) from the Oldman Formation (Campanian), Alberta, Canada, and the evolution of ceratopsid nasal ornamentation. PLOS ONE 10:e0130007.

Say hello to Cornelius! I got to meet him during a brief visit to the ROM last week, and he seems like a pretty nice guy.

This cool new ceratopsian is on display in the Age of Dinosaurs gallery in an exhibit called "New Dino Discovered", and was also featured in Dino Hunt Canada, which aired earlier this year. It should have a new name soon, but for now Canada voted to nickname it Cornelius. The really nice skeletal mount was put together by Research Casting International based on about a 50% complete disarticulated skeleton.

Here's a close-up of that winning smile. This new dude is a centrosaurine ceratopsid with some pretty neat ornamentation going on at the back of the frill.

I really liked the inclusion of a quarry map on the floor, which highlights some of the bones that are on display. The skeleton was found in southern Alberta in the Milk River area, and comes from the Oldman Formation.

The mounted skeleton is a cast, but there are some original bones on display, like the radius and ulna shown here.

In particular, I liked this set of panels on the wall showing differences in frill ornamentation between centrosaurines, and how we identify different species. On the right is the original frill material for Cornelius, the bottom left is Centrosaurus, and the top left is Styracosaurus.

And look, there was even an ankylosaur osteoderm on display! These are some of the fossils found in the Milk River area, which tell us a bit about the ecosystem that the new centrosaurine lived in.

It's a cool new dinosaur and a nice exhibit, so definitely don't miss it if you're visiting the ROM anytime soon!

#MuseumWeek Retrospective!

Last week's #MuseumWeek tweetstorm was an awful lot of fun, especially following the #SciArt event just a few weeks earlier. I thought I'd share a couple of photos and thoughts for each day's theme – I didn't manage to post something for each day on Twitter, but I'll fill in some thoughts and photos here!

Day 1: Secrets

One of the nice things about working in the Paleontology & Geology Research Lab at the North Carolina Musuem of Natural Sciences is that "behind the scenes" is part of the scene. You can actually stare at me while I'm working away at my computer each day, if you desire to do such a thing. More interesting, probably, would be to watch our staff, students, and volunteers preparing fossils in the main lab space - secrets waiting to be revealed. But hey, whatever floats your boat!

If you're in Raleigh, stop by and say hi to Carnufex!

Day 2: Souvenirs

I am kind of a Stuff Person and also have a Thing for Museum Gift Shops. As such, I have loads of doodads from my various museum visits. One of the things I like picking up are postcards, especially those that have non-Tyrannosaurus dinosaurs featured on them. For a while, I had these up on my wall at my apartment in Edmonton. Those who have visited my UofA office will also be familiar with my embarassingly large collection of ankylosaur toys, or as I prefer to refer to them, 'scientific models for grown-ups'.

Recognize any museums from your own travels?

Day 3: Architecture

I had a lot of fun with this one on twitter because I LOVE interesting museum architecture. A couple of favourites:

Permian Hall at the Moscow Paleontological Museum:

...which also had custom door hinges, like plesiosaurs!

Dinosaur museum in an old castle in Lerici, Italy:

I wasn't sure about the ROM Crystal at first, but it's grown on me:

And I think the SECU Daily Planet at the NC Museum is pretty swell (on the inside, it's a theatre!):

Day 4: Inspiration

Some non-dinosaur stuff for inspiration day: I really like learning about Canadian art and its history, and one of my very favourite museums on the entire planet is the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. If you're in Vancouver, DO NOT MISS THAT MUSEUM. It's an emotional experience to step into the exhibits at this museum and be surrounded by so much creativity and history and skill. Here's a sample to sharpen your brain.

Day 5: Family

I'm lucky to have had great parents that fed my dinosaur obsession as a kid with trips to museums near and far. I'd love to dig out some photos from the before time, but for now, I'll leave this day for my own memories. What are some of your favourite museum memories from your childhood?

Day 6: Favourites

I like busy museums that are crammed full of stuff, especially when that takes the form of a Wall of Stuff or a Hall of Stuff. Here's a few of my favourites.

Hall of Stuff at the Museo de La Plata

Wall of Stuff at the Natural History Museum of LA County

Day 7: Pose

I don't like posting pictures of myself very much, so I'll just include one here to finish off: here's Pinacosaurus (nee "Syrmosaurus") at the museum in Moscow, with me for scale.

That's it for now! What did you share for Museum Week?

The Great Canadian Dinosaur Hunt

Dino Hunt Canada is almost here! Starting this Friday, History Channel Canada will be airing a series of hour-long documentaries devoted to dinosaur expeditions all across Canada - and not just in the famous badlands of Alberta! The production crew visited field localities in Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, multiple places around Alberta, and British Columbia. It's going to be a real who's who and where's where of Canadian palaeontology.

I'll be in the second episode featuring work in Dinosaur Provincial Park, which we filmed in 2013. It was a fun if somewhat unusual experience to have such a large film crew with us, and I'm looking forward to seeing the whole shebang!

What was the crew filming in DPP? Tune in to find out!

There's also a really excellent website to accompany the show. You can learn more about some of the dinosaurs featured in the series (including wonderful new artwork by Danielle Dufault!), see interviews with some of the palaeontologists, and submit ideas for a nickname for a new dinosaur excavated during the show by the Southern Alberta Dinosaur Project. You can even submit questions and maybe have my weirdo face answer them via Skype! All in all, it's looking really good so far and I'm so happy to see the huge variety of dinosaur research being conducted across Canada by so many talented and hardworking people.

Scaling Up

Let's turn our attention from hadrosaur skin to ankylosaur skin, a topic which has received surprisingly less attention in the published literature than I would have thought. I should qualify that statement, however, by saying that by 'ankylosaur skin' I mean ankylosaur skin impressions, because ankylosaur dermal elements are well known and the focus of many a paper – I refer of course to osteoderms, which form within the dermis of the skin and which give ankylosaurs their spiky and armoured appearance.

For a couple of years now I've been keeping notes about occurrences of skin impressions in ankylosaurs, which eventually lead to a paper by myself, Mike Burns, Phil Bell, and Phil Currie. We reviewed the morphology of scale patterns in the few specimens that preserve skin, and found that there were some intriguing differences in scalation between different ankylosaurs.

The holotype of Scolosaurus cutleri, NHMUK R5161, has the best preserved integument for any North American ankylosaur, and has loads  of scale impressions lying overtop of the in situ osteoderms. In Scolosaurus, the scales form rosettes around the osteoderms. The largest scales are generally found closest to the osteoderms, but some large scales are scattered in between the osteoderms as well. Underneath the scales, small ossicles (little osteoderms less than 1 cm in diameter, but usually only 2-4 mm wide) fill the spaces between the larger osteoderms.

Scolosaurus is hard to photograph well, sorry!

In contrast, a very unusual specimen (ROM 813) has a completely different morphology. This specimen includes unusual long, rectangular osteoderms that aren't present in NHMUK R5161. The scales are on average much smaller, don't form much of a rosette pattern around any of the osteoderms, and are more uniform in size overall. ROM 813 is a little bit difficult to interpret because it is partially disarticulated (which is also intriguing given that such large portions of the integument are intact), but our best guess for the preserved portions is shown here.

Another super cool thing about ROM 813 is that it preserves the epidermal covering of an osteoderm, and it is the only example of this in an ankylosaur that I know about. In the photo below, the smooth side of the osteoderm is the epidermal scale, and the rough side of the osteoderm is the true bony part of the osteoderm.

Moving over to Mongolia, a specimen referred to Tarchiagigantea lacks the small pavement of ossicles seen in the Albertan ankylosaurs, and the epidermal scales are huge and more rectangular. In the portion of the integument preserved, osteoderms are separated by only one row of scales.

There's enough overlapping material between these specimens to allow us to compare scale patterns among different ankylosaurs, and the differences support the hypothesis that these are different taxa. Unfortunately, right now we can't assign ROM 813 to any known ankylosaurid taxon from Alberta – this could represent the postcrania of Euoplocephalus tutus, or Dyoplosaurus acutosquameus, or (less likely) a new taxon of ankylosaurid from the Dinosaur Park Formation. I think it's safe to say that the differences between Scolosaurus and ROM 813 represent true taxonomic differences, a finding that is in line with previous work by Phil Bell on scalation differences between Saurolophus angustirostris and Saurolophus osborni.

Illustrations by Lida Xing and via PLOS ONE.

One more comment about ankylosaur skin: In 2010 I had the opportunity to study the holotype of Liaoningosaurus paradoxus, and very interesting little ankylosaur from the Liaoning Formation of China. The original authors described Liaoningosaurus as possessing a ventral plastron (bony shield, like that found in turtles), which would have been a highly unusual anatomical feature given that no other ankylosaurs possess a plastron. Having looked at this specimen, I think a better interpretation for the plastron is that this is a segment of skin impressions from the belly region – there didn't seem to be any bony texture around the edges of this area, and the pattern is more consistent with scales than any osteoderms in other ankylosaurs.

Belly scales for Liaoningosaurus. The scale bar is in millimetres.

Papers!

Arbour VM, Burns ME, Bell PR, Currie PJ. 2014. Epidermal and dermal integumentary structures of ankylosaurian dinosaurs. Journal of Morphology 275:39-50.

Arbour VM, Lech-Hernes NL, Guldberg TE, Hurum JH, Currie PJ. 2013. An ankylosaurid dinosaur from Mongolia with in situ armour and keratinous scale impressions. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 58:55-64. Many thanks to Dr. Hurum for inviting me to help describe this specimen!

Bell PR. 2012. Standardized terminology and potential taxonomic utility for hadrosaurid skin impressions: a case study for Saurolophus from Canada and Mongolia. PLOS ONE 7:e31295.

Xu X, Wang X-L, You H-L. 2001. A juvenile ankylosaur from China. Naturwissenschaften 88:297-300.

Who-oplocephalus: Everything old is new again.

Over the last few posts, I've talked about why Euoplocephalus tutus is a valid genus and species, how the Horseshoe Canyon Formation ankylosaurid is really Anodontosaurus lambei, and how the headless and clubless holotype of Scolosaurus cutleri is most likely the same species as the ankylosaurid from the Two Medicine Formation. Here's a diagram summarizing some of the key points from the paper.

One ankylosaur I didn't talk about in the previous posts was Dyoplosaurus acutosquameus, an ankylosaurid long synonymized with Euoplocephalus tutus but resurrected by me and my colleagues Michael Burns andRobin Sissons back in 2009. 

ROM 784, holotype of Dyoplosaurus acutosquameus, from Arbour et al. (2009).

The holotype of Dyoplosaurus, ROM 784, is another really nice specimen, consisting mostly of the back half of the animal (although a fragmentary skull is also preserved). Dyoplosaurus differs from Euoplocephalus in the shape of the hooves on the hind foot (which are more triangular than in other ankylosaurs), and in some aspects of the pelvis. The tail club knob is very narrow compared to almost all other tail clubs from the Dinosaur Park Formation, although it's not entirely clear how much of this is related to ontogeny versus taxonomy. Do tail clubs start off narrow and become increasingly wider as the animal grows? Or do they maintain approximately the same proportions and just increase in size? The sole tail club knob for Scolosaurus is about the same width as in ROM 784, but the knob is round and about as long as wide. If knob proportions changed as they got bigger, we'd expect knobs of the same width to have about the same length:width ratio, but that isn't the case between TMP 2001.42.9 and ROM 784. We'll need more specimens in order to really test this hypothesis, but for now I'm tentatively considering the narrow tail club knob of Dyoplosaurus to be a characteristic of that genus. And because of that, there is one other isolated tail club that may be referable to Dyoplosaurus – UALVP 47273, a specimen I CT scanned and used in my biomechanics of tail clubbing project.

Digital model of UALVP 47273 from CT scans, made using Mimics. 

Going from one to four species is a big increase in diversity. Is this a reasonable conclusion based on the patterns of diversity in other dinosaurs? I think so. Euoplocephalus was already kind of weird for dinosaurs from Alberta because it occurred in the Oldman Formation, throughout the Dinosaur Park Formation, and throughout the Horseshoe Canyon Formation. Few dinosaur species are found in all three formations, and even within the Dinosaur Park Formation there are three faunal zones with distinct sets of species. Based on my research, there is now good evidence to suggest that Euoplocephalus tutus was primarily found in Megaherbivore Assemblage Zone 1 (sensu Mallon et al. 2012), which represents about the lower 30 m of the formation. Anodontosaurus lambei is almost exclusively found in the Horseshoe Canyon, with only one specimen, TMP 1997.132.1, found in the upper part of the Dinosaur Park Formation. Scolosaurus is mostly present in the Two Medicine Formation, and the holotype is either from the lowest Dinosaur Park Formation, or perhaps from the Oldman Formation. Finally, Dyoplosaurus is from the lowest Dinosaur Park Formation as well.

Campanian-Maastrichtian ankylosaurids from Alberta and Montana, from Arbour and Currie (2013).

So, where do I go from here? Well, for my PhD dissertation I'm trying to better understand the evolution of ankylosaurid dinosaurs, and so knowing who all of the players are is really essential for constructing a revised phylogenetic tree. Understanding variation in cranial ornamentation in Euoplocephalus will also help me understand which other ankylosaur species are valid or need to be synonymized, or maybe even identify some new species. I also now know that tail club shapes are at least somewhat taxonomically informative, and this leads to questions about function and behaviour. If there really are three ankylosaurid species in the lower Dinosaur Park Formation, what does that mean for niche partitioning among similar large herbivore species? Why does Scolosaurus appear in the geologically older Oldman Formation, disappear, and then reappear in the younger upper Two Medicine Formation? Does this reflect habitat preferences in ankylosaurid species? As usual in science, answering one question leads to many more.

I've also had some people asking if there's anything going on with the Albertan nodosaurid ankylosaurs. My fellow grad student Mike Burns is currently working on the nightmare of taxonomy that is Edmontonia longiceps, Edmontonia rugosidens, Panoplosaurus mirus, and various combinations thereof. I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with! And of course, don't forget that the Royal Tyrrell Museum collected an astonishingly good nodosaurid (probably) fossil from Early Cretaceous marine sediments near Fort McMurray, Alberta, in spring 2011. If you're visiting the Tyrrell this summer, you can see parts of it being prepared in the lab.

Tomorrow I am off to Dinosaur Provincial Park for a brief bit of fieldwork, including, hopefully, a search for the Scolosaurus quarry. Wish me luck, and hopefully there will be even more ankylosaur news over the next couple of months.

Papers!

Arbour VM. 2009. Estimating impact forces of tail club strikes by ankylosaurid dinosaurs. PLOS ONE 4:e6738.

Arbour VM, Snively E. 2009. Finite element analyses of ankylosaurid dinosaur tail club impacts. Anatomical Record 292:1412-1426.

Arbour VM, Currie PJ. 2013. Euoplocephalus tutus and the diversity of ankylosaurid dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada, and Montana, USA. PLOS ONE 8:e62421.

Hill SR. 2012. An unconvential discovery from an unconventional resource: recovery of an Early Cretaceous ankylosaur fossil from an oil sands mining operation, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Search and Discovery Article #70121, adapted from poster and extended abstract presented at AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Long Beach, California, April 22-25, 2012.

Mallon JC, Evans DC, Ryan MJ, Anderson JS. 2012. Megaherbivorous dinosaur turnover in the Dinosaur Park Formation (upper Campanian) of Alberta, Canada. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 350-352:124-138.

Who-oplocephalus?

Today I published a revision of the North American ankylosaurid genus Euoplocephalus. I'd like to take some time to go through some of the major points of the paper over the next few days here, but today I will give a brief introduction to the motivation behind this study.

Euoplocephalus is one of those 'classic' dinosaurs. Named in 1902 (as Stereocephalus, which was preoccupied by...a beetle! of course), it wasn't known from very much material. All that Lambe had was a chunk of the snout/forehead region, and an unusual structure called a cervical half ring. Cervical half rings are totally bizarre structures that seem to be unique to ankylosaurids. They're made of an underlying yoke of fused bone segments, and topped by fused osteoderms like you see on the rest of an ankylosaur's body. 

Canadian Museum of Nature 0210, holotype of Euoplocephalus tutus. On the left, the skull chunk. On the right, the first cervical half ring. Images modified from Arbour and Currie (2013).

Over the next couple of decades, three more ankylosaurid species would be identified from Alberta (besides Ankylosaurus): Anodontosaurus, Dyoplosaurus, and Scolosaurus. Anodontosaurus is known from a complete but somewhat squished skull and a half ring, Dyoplosaurus is known from an articulated pelvis and tail, plus hindlimb and other assorted bits, and Scolosaurus is known from an exquisitely preserved skeleton with in situ osteoderms and skin impressions, but without a skull or tail club.

In the 1970s, Walter Coombs, Jr. undertook a large and important study of the ankylosaurian dinosaurs, which formed the foundation for many subsequent studies of ankylosaur anatomy and systematics. More specimens had been collected by that point, and subtle variations in the skull ornamentation among these specimens led Coombs to conclude that either every specimen must be its own distinct species, or they all represented the same species: Euoplocephalus (because it was named first). That's a pretty reasonable conclusion to have drawn with the available evidence at the time.

For my MSc thesis at the University of Alberta, I studied the biomechanics of tail clubbing in ankylosaurids, and specimens referred to Euoplocephalus formed an important part of that research. This is where I became interested in the variation that I saw in tail clubs referred to Euoplocephalus – some were small, some were large, some were skinny, some were round, some were pointy. What did it all mean? Were all of these the same species? Was I looking at ontogenetic changes? Were tail clubs just really variable in Euoplocephalus? What would this mean for how the tail clubs were used?

Wow, 2007 was a long time ago. Anyway, here's me at the Royal Ontario Museum holding the smallest tail club referred to Euoplocephalus, ROM 7761, and standing next to the largest, ROM 788. I CT scanned ROM 788 for my finite element analysis research, and you can now see it on display in the ROM's dinosaur gallery.

This was ultimately what led me to pursue my current line of research into ankylosaur systematics and evolution. I hoped that by understanding variation within Euoplocephalus, I would be better able to assess the validity of other ankylosaurid species, and perhaps identify new species. Over the next couple of posts, I'll talk about how I did this study, and what makes a Euoplocephalus a Euoplocephalus. Stay tuned!

The title for this post was shamelessly stolen from Collin Vanburen, because it is hilarious and perfect.

(But you don't have to take my word for it...: Arbour VM, Currie PJ. 2013. Euoplocephalus tutus and the diversity of ankylosaurid dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada, and Montana, USA. PLOS ONE 8: e62421.)

Crystal ROM

 

Now that I've talked about the ROM's current offerings of temporary special dinosaur exhibits, I thought I'd turn my attention to the permanent fossil galleries. The ROM has long been one of my favourite museums, and as a student of palaeontology the only museum I have visited more often for my research is the Tyrrell. The last five years have seen some major renovations at the ROM, including the construction of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal.

 

The former entrance to the museum was grand and ornate and ushered you into the entrance hall known as the Rotunda, which featured a mosaic dome ceiling. The last time I visited the ROM's previous dinosaur galleries was in 2003, before I had a digital camera, so I'm afraid I don't have any photos of the old exhibits. Although I was fond of the dinosaur skeletons in fake-foliage jungle setting, it was clear that the fossil halls were in need of updating to reflect current ideas in palaeontology.

 

In 2007, the ROM opened a new addition to the museum, called the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, which houses (among other things) the Mesozoic and Cenozoic fossil halls. Although at first I had mixed feelings about the crystal, I've come to really like the way it sprouts from the original museum building, and it certainly attracts attention.

 

The most recent iteration of the dinosaur galleries are housed within the bright, white rooms of the crystal. A lot of specimens are on display, in particular the ROM's large collection of Cretaceous Albertan dinosaurs.

The dinosaur exhibit does not overwhelm with a lot of text, but there is good information about each specimen (what's cast, what's real, etc.) provided nearby. In particular, I like the display of ontogenetic changes in the hadrosaurs Corythosaurus (shown here) and Lambeosaurus.

 

The ROM has one of the more extensive collections of ankylosaurid material, and a little bit is on display. The skull on display is the very nice ROM 1930, and the tail club, ROM 788, at 59 cm wide, is the second largest tail club referred to Euoplocephalus. I CT scanned this club before it was put on display, for my research on ankylosaur tail club swinging and impacts, and it only just fit through the aperture of the scanner.

 

 

The ROM also has a very nice collection of fossil mammals, including this really unusual Desmostylus....

 

...and wonderful South American megafauna, like this giant armadillo (foreground) and glyptodont (towards the back).

 

Another thing that is much appreciated about the ROM's new galleries is that extra care was taken to make sure that all of the specimens that are on display are accessible to researchers! One of these days I'll try to dig out some of my photos of the old galleries for comparison...

Remarkable ROM

The ROM has another temporary dinosaur exhibit on display right now, Dinosaur Eggs & Babies: Remarkable Fossils from South Africa. It showcases nests and embryos of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus, which were described by ROM and University of Toronto scientists in 2005 (with a subsequent paper in 2010).

 

 

 

The nests were found in Golden Gate National Park, South Africa.

 

 

 

Preparation of the eggs revealed wonderfully preserved embryos! In addition to the nests, eggs, and embryos, there is a nice set of cast skulls showing growth changes in Massospondylus, and a very cute sculpture of a hatchling.

 

 

 

There's a nice mount of the related prosauropod Plateosaurus (shown here in correct bipedal posture!).

 

I've always loved prosauropod hands. Check out that thumb claw!

 

 

 

It's always fun to add new dinosaurs to my list of stuff I've seen - here is the snout of a juvenile Dracovenator, a Dilophosaurus-like theropod that lived alongside Massospondylus. The exhibit also has some adult skull fragments, and a panel-mounted Dilophosaurus skeleton.

 

I'm not sure how long this exhibit is on display, but it's well worth checking out if you're visiting the ROM for Ultimate Dinosaurs. It's located between the Jurassic and Cretaceous galleries.

Ultimate ROM

This summer, the Royal Ontario Museum unveiled a brand-new exhibit all about the dinosaurs of Gondwana. When Pangaea rifted apart during the Triassic, it split into two continents - Laurasia, represented by the modern northern continents of North America, Europe, and Asia, and Gondwana, represented by the modern southern continents of South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, plus India, Madagascar, and New Zealand. The dinosaurs and other extinct terrestrial vertebrates of Gondwana differed from their northern neighbours, and we don't often see them in exhibitions in North America.

 

Ultimate Dinosaurs: Giants of Gondwana features lots of interesting and sometimes obscure dinosaurs, some really great artwork, and some neat technological things (of which I am sometimes skeptical, but can wholeheartedly endorse here).

 

 

 

After a brief but informative introduction to plate tectonics, we're introduced to some of the earliest dinosaurs, like Herrerasaurus, Eoraptor, and the early ornithischian Pisanosaurus. In an exhibit that is definitely dominated by saurischian dinosaurs, it was neat to see this little fellow! Take note of the beautiful murals in the background, painted by Canadian palaeoartist Julius Csotonyi.

 

 

 

Ah, Cryolophosaurus. My second favourite dinosaur from Antarctica! ;)

This restoration of Cryolophosaurus definitely seems to have a more Dilophosaurus-y look to the skull, perhaps a result of recent phylogenetic analyses recovering a close relationship between the Antarctic taxon and other early, crested theropods.

 

 

 

As we move into the Cretaceous, the dinosaurs are arranged by geographic area on platforms. First off are African dinosaurs, including Malawisaurus, Nigersaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and (shown here), Suchomimus.

 

 

 

I was super excited to see a mounted skeleton of Ouranosaurus, a bizarre sail-backed iguanodontian.

 

 

 

Ok, hands-down my favourite critter featured in this exhibition was one of the smaller skeletons, and not a dinosaur! I am sorry, dinosaur colleagues! But his adorable stubby tail and marvelous coat of osteoderms stole my heart. This is Simosuchus, a herbivorous crocodilian from Madagascar.

 

 

 

 I'll perhaps also add that the Madagascar 'pod' of Majungasaurus, Rapetosaurus, Masiakasaurus, and Rahonavis was probably my favourite part of the exhibition, just because I've never seen any of these taxa as mounted skeletons before, and because they're just so, so weird. Also, Majungasaurus just wants a hug, WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME, RAPETOSAURUS?

 

 

 

I was very fortunate to get to see a lot of Patagonian dinosaurs last November during my visit to Argentina, but I'd never seen Austroraptor before. He is BIG! This 'pod' also features Buitreraptor, Carnotaurus, and Amargasaurus.

 

 

 

 

Although the dinosaurs are the main attraction, the main take-home messages of the exhibition are 1) continents move and 2) evolution happens. The dinosaurs are just the vehicle for delivering an exhibit that is actually all about the effects of plate tectonics on evolution, and I think that's awesome. Palaeogeography is prominently featured throughout the exhibition, and there's even an interactive team puzzle where you reassemble the continents into Gondwana. However, one of the most incredible things in the exhibit were the two giant Blakey palaeomap globes, animated to show the drifting of the continents. As you enter the exhibit, Pangaea breaks apart, and as you leave, the continents assemble into their current positions, and then keep going into the future! The video projections are staggeringly beautiful.

 

Honestly, I think this is one of the best dinosaur exhibits I have seen. It is bright, colourful, up to date, and packed with really good information not just about dinosaurs, but about broader themes in geology and evolution as well. Ultimate Dinosaurs is at the ROM for a limited time (I think until the end of 2012) and then it (hopefully!) goes on tour. GO SEE IT!