Author: Patricia Bujard

Which One is the Dinosaur?

| Patricia Bujard

When it comes to prehistoric critters, it can be real easy to point at any large, scaly beast and call it a dinosaur.  But there are a lot of prehistoric critters that were not dinosaurs, even during their heyday.  In fact, dinosaurs are only a small fraction of the animals that walked around during the “Age of Reptiles”.

 

Unfortunately, sometimes even “educational” books and movies will lump in the other critters in the same group as the dinosaurs.  So how can you tell which is which?

Let’s have some fun with a little quiz. Can you tell me which critters are the dinosaurs, and which ones aren’t?

First off, a handy dandy dino checklist. 

  • Dinosaur hips make for straight, sturdy legs under their bodies, just like mammals.  Unlike other reptiles that walk with legs splayed out, dinos tend to walk with one foot in front of the other, just like we do.
  • Dinosaurs all lived in the Mesozoic period up to the present day.  Birds, of course, can be seen outside your kitchen window.  All other dinosaurs, or non-avian (not-bird) dinosaurs, appeared in the Triassic, reigned all through the Jurassic, and met their end at the Cretaceous.
  • All Dinosaurs share the same latest common ancestor- the great-great-great-grandaddy of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus.  Iguanodon is a giant, spike-thumbed plant-eater from Cretaceous England.  Megalosaurus is a meat-eating distant cousin of T-rex, from Jurassic England.

 

Fun Fact on that last one:

Sir Richard Owen coined the name Dinosauria based on Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus (a plant-eater built like an armored tank, but without the club-tail of more popular armored dinos.  Cretaceous England).

All three of these critters can still be seen today at the Crystal Palace in London, where sculptures were built based on the latest scientific knowledge of the 19th century.  It’s in a sad state compared to the grandeur of its golden years, but it’s still on my bucket list. 😀

Dinosauria is often translated from the Greek as “Terrible Lizard”, but it can also translate to “Fearfully Great Reptile”.  Owen seems to have named the creatures based on their awesome size and how majestic they must’ve looked in life.  Not on their “terrible” teeth, spikes, and claws.

Now that you know the features that make a dinosaur, let’s get started! 😀  I’ll leave the answers for the very end, so that you can test yourself.

ceratosaurus_dino

First up, Bowser the Ceratosaurus!  He’s big, and lived in Jurassic North America.  He has a nice beefy tail with the muscle power to move his legs forward, one foot in front of the other.

 

Plesiosaurus_not dino.jpg

 

Look who’s come out of hiding…Nessie the Plesiosaurus!  Those flippers are great for gliding through shallow Jurassic seas or paddling in murky rivers.  You’ll find her swimming around in Jurassic England.

 

camarasaurus_dino

Here comes Bella the Camarasaurus!  She’s a big girl, and proud of it, but she has no problem moving all that weight around.  Her legs are like pillars, strong and sturdy under her body.  You can find her in Jurassic North America.

 

dimetrodon_not dino.jpgWhy hello there, Dan the Dimetrodon is here for a special visit.  He came by all the way from Permian North America, an earlier time than the Triassic period.

compsognathus_dino.jpg

Twig the Compsognathus is a little guy, only as big as a turkey, but that just means he’s extra fast.  He runs like a roadrunner, and easily snatches up splay-legged lizards.  You can find him in Jurassic Germany.

(quick note: there are rumors of scale patches on the legs and tail for this little guy, but I haven’t been able to find the papers describing them.  So I’ve given him feathers based on a close cousin.)

Ichthyosaurus_notdino.jpg

Flipper the Ichthyosaurus comes in with a splash! But what is he?  You can find him cruising Asian and European waters during the Triassic and Jurassic periods.

 

archaeopteryx_dino

Tango the Archaeopteryx loves to sing and dance, and no lizard can dance like Tango can!  He’s got the finesse of a duck and the enthusiasm of a parakeet.  You can find him and his fancy feathers in Jurassic Germany.

 

Pliosaurus_notdino.jpg

Here comes Tigger the Pliosaurus with a big grin.  An apex predator in the water, this big guy would’ve made the Jurassic seas around Europe and South America a dangerous place to be.

 

turkey-1071392_640

Are those…Turkeys?  Why yes, yes they are.  They’re showing off their festive plumage by strutting with one foot in front of the other.  You probably see one at your dinner table on occasion.

Rhamphorynchus_not dino.jpg

Ron the Rhamphorynchus has dropped by to see you.  Those teeth look a bit vicious, but he’s just an excitable fuzzball really.  You can find him soaring through the Jurassic skies in Germany.

 

Think you got them all?  Let’s check and see!

  • Bowser the Ceratosaurus is a dinosaur!  He stands upright with his legs under his body, he’s a theropod (who were the theropod dinosaurs?), and he lived during the Jurassic period- the middle of the Mesozoic era.
  • Nessie the Plesiosaurus is not a dinosaur!  She lived at the same time as many dinosaurs, and she’s big and scaly, so I can understand why she’s often thrown into the pile. She’s a marine reptile called a plesiosaur, and she’s actually the first discovered, so she got to name the whole group!
  • Bella the Camarasaurus is a dinosaur!  She stands tall and straight on legs like pillars, and she lived in about the same time and place as Bowser.
  • Dan the Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur!  Dan is quite a few million years too early, with the biggest mass extinction in Earth’s history between him and dinosaurs.  But if you don’t know what time he’s from, then you can see that his legs are sticking out like a croc, instead of underneath his body.  But he’s not a croc either.  He’s a synapsid.  Mostly that’s a fancy term about the skull.  I’ll get to that when I’m working on the Permian period. 😀  That said, I totally get why people would think it’s a dinosaur.  I mean, it’s everywhere!  It’s even on my kids’ favorite oatmeal, y’know the one with the hatching dinosaur eggs?
  • Flipper the Ichthyosaurus is not a dinosaur!  He’s also not a fish, dolphin, or prehistoric whale.  He’s a marine reptile called an Ichthyosaur, and he was the first of his kind discovered, so he got to be the namesake of his group.  Since the name translates to “fish lizard” or “fish reptile”, then there’s no surprise when people call him one.  The reason he looks like a dolphin is because the fishy/dolphin/shark body plan is so perfect.  For an animal that is born, lives, and dies in water, then his body shape is perfect.

Fun fact: Plesiosaurus was given that name because her kind is “nearer to dinosaurs” than Ichthyosaurs like Flipper.

  • Tango the Archaeopteryx is a dinosaur!  Few deny the birdiness of this critter.  Where some people get confused is the dinosaurness of birds…but this little guy is a lovely mix of both.  But now you’re getting to know the drill.  Feet underneath the body and supporting his weight.  Jurassic period, “golden age” of dinos…etcetera, etcetera… 🙂
  • Tigger the Pliosaurus is not a dinosaur!  It’s starting to look like there are no swimming dinosaurs. There are always exceptions to the rule of course *cough*Spinosaurus*cough*, but in general, you don’t really see dinosaurs getting specialized for a life in water.  Tigger is another that gets to name his own group.  The Pliosaurs.  They were marine reptiles that thrived in the Jurassic and into the Cretaceous, but died out alongside the dinosaurs.
  • A Turkey is a dinosaur! Yes, when you sit down for that turkey sandwich, or prepare for that Thanksgiving feast, you are about to eat a dinosaur.  All birds are members of the theropod group (take a look at Bowser up there).  Want more info?  I’ve got a post on birds over here.
  • Ron the Rhamphorynchus is not a dinosaur! Like the marine reptiles, his kind lived at the same time, and so are always being tossed onto the same pile.  Ron is a Pterosaur, a flying reptile that is actually in the same family tree as crocs and dinosaurs, but not so close that he’s mixed in with the dinosaurs.  Pterosaurs were usually pretty good at walking, but they didn’t have the same hip as dinos.

 

How did you do?  If you didn’t do very well, don’t feel too bad.  There’s a lot of misinformation out there, even from sources that are supposed to be educational.  And really, it’s a lot easier just to call them all dinosaurs, instead of having to remember all the different names for the different groups.  🙂

Quick Question:  What’s your biggest source of info about dinosaurs?  Jurassic Park?  The news?  Dino obsessed friend or kid?  Your own research?  I’d love to hear from you in the comments!  😀

Critter of the Week: Stegosaurus

| Patricia Bujard

Meet Steggy.  She might not have very much of a brain, but she makes up for that with the softness of her heart.  There’s not a whole lot that’ll surprise her (thanks to Pete’s training), and she’ll let just about anybody clamber on her back. 🙂

steggy

I say “just about” anybody, because there was that one time some kids wanted her to be their fortress in a water balloon battle.  That was a bit too much for Steggy.  But that class of preschoolers who came to visit were adorable.  Steggy just sat there and let them climb all over her (Pete stuck a few tennis balls on her spikes, so they wouldn’t be so sharp).  The kids had a great time painting stars and hearts on her big plates.

Steggy’s pretty mellow because of all the surprise games and “scary new things” Pete does with her.  Like horses, Stegosaurus tend to be nervous around anything new.  Like training a race horse to ignore the noise of the crowd and the track, Steggy here’s been trained to not freak out when she sees something new or something jumps out of the bushes.

That small brain (just one, and about the size of the average dog brain) means that Stegosaurus tend to be more reactive, you see.  More temperamental and aggressive when they’re surprised, nervous, or scared.  And they’re fast with that tail!

That tail is a spiked mace of pure muscle, and most Stegosaurus have a “swing first, don’t ask questions” sort of attitude.

But once Steggy figured out that Pete is just going to throw new stuff at her all the time, she learned to just not be surprised.

Here’s a peek into her thought process…

A giant stuffed bear in the crook of a tree?  Huh?  Weird.  Leaves are tasty…

Neon flags waving along the fence line?  What’s that! Ooh…pretty. (steps closer, takes a cautious bite out of a green one) Ooh, they taste funny.

A big, inflatable Halloween spider sitting in a corner of the pasture.  Monster?! Wait…monster? (stares at it for a while) Hmm…not coming closer…What’s for breakfast?

Making progress…

I’m clipping along at a pretty good pace.  Or at least a steady one (not really all that fast 😛 ).

  • On Monday I officially posted my 50th post.
  • I now have 19 amazing readers who also enjoy prehistoric critters.
  • The website is looking more like a furnished house than an empty lot.
  • The Critter Cards for six of the primary characters featured in the book are complete and ready as a set of free printables.
  • All the sign-up forms and follow-up pages for Pete’s Postcards from the Shop are done and ready to go (just need to purchase domain name and “email space” so I can send ePostcards from the Shop. 🙂

And all this over the course of almost 6 months. 😀  Amazing what you can do in 15 mins – 1 hour a day

Next step is completing a collection of mini-comics.  Critter Cam: What You’re Dinosaur is Doing When You’re Not Looking.

I’ll also be working on the next set of Critter Cards, and slowly updating some of the header images on the site.  Like the Homepage picture and Meet the Critters.

While I do this it’d be awesome to see a small trickle of income…so the comic-collection gets priority so I can put it up on Amazon. 😀

Thank you so much for spending your time with me.  You’re awesome, and I truly mean that.  I hope what I do can give you a few moments of joy, entertainment, perhaps learn a little something you didn’t know…I always love hearing from you in the comments, so if there’s any way I can make your stay better, please let me know! 🙂

Coming Next Week…

This shy giant will do anything for his special person, even if it means getting out of his comfort zone.

Share your guess in the comments! She’ll be one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂

The Art and Science of Alfred

| Patricia Bujard

Hello there!  Alfred is super excited to see you, and look at how curious he is.  Do you own a cat or dog?  Because he seems to think you smell good. (stay back Alfred, be nice).  Here we go, I’ve got a nice ball of cheese and bacon here.  He’ll love it.  Here Alfred, go get it!

 

as_alfred-copy

 

While Alfred gets the ball, I can share this lovely disclaimer.  Que elevator music…

I do the best I can with research, but I definitely don’t claim to be an expert.  I try my best to keep up to date, and all my illustrations reflect this. (thank you internets, and to all hard-working paleo-nerds who are kind enough to make your papers open source!) 😀

That said, all the drawings in the A&S post series are quick doodles to illustrate a point, with not as much reference as I usually use, so there are plenty of inaccuracies for you to point out for me. 😉

Thank you disclaimer, you can go bother someone else now. 😛 Elevator music fades out…Oh and here comes Alfred!  Looks like he wants more…

 

There we go, good boy Alfred!

Now Alfred here is an Allosaurus.  He’s young, so only about 12 feet long so far, but he’ll grow to be a lot bigger.  Not as big as his wild cousins though, a few of them could be as big as T-rex! (very few, gotta be old to get that big, and most dinos have a live fast, die young policy)

 

1. On Scaly Skin vs. Feathers

So you see Alfred here has these lovely bright yellow and forest green scales, the colors of youth. (They’ll mellow out a bit when he gets older, like monitor lizards do)

Also like a monitor lizard, you’ll notice that most of Alfred’s scales are quite small, with a rather pebbly texture.  They get a bit larger and thicker on his back, which is good since adult Allosaurus tend to get into quite a lot of tussles with each other.  But most of his scales have that nice cobblestone look to them.

Like this guy, remember him from last week’s post on feathers and scales?

komodo-dragon-58396_640

Short answer as to why Alfred has scales…there’s a young Allosaurus with preserved scales somewhere on it’s body.  (Unfortunately the report didn’t say where)

Long answer was so long I made a post out of it…To Feather or Not to Feather Your Dinosaur, That is the Question.  (The komodo dragon above was laying around in that post.  So was this gal, she’s a monitor lizard. 🙂 )

monitor-205101_640
“Hi!”

 

2. Getting Comfy…

lazy-alfred-copy
*happy sigh* Oh look…nom? -Alfred

Looks like Alfred’s all worn out from chasing after that giant, cheesy bacon-ball.  He hasn’t quite grown into his adult silhouette yet.  He’s still young enough to think he can chase after stuff, but he’s starting to get to an age where it’s getting hard to make those quick turns.

When he fills out his more barrel-chested adult figure, he’ll be spending quite a bit of his leisure hours (think energy-efficient) laying around.  Since his body is a bit taller than it’s wide (more lanky cat than double-wide gator), it’s more relaxing to be lounging on his side.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he can’t do other things to relax, even things that may surprise us (ever seen a large horse roll?  It’s hilarious 😀 ).

sit
Sit!
down
Down!
roll-over
Good boy! Roll Over!

 

Oh, and here’s that horse… 😀 I can totally picture some “duckbill” dino doing this.

 

3. Where are His Teeth?!

Show us your teeth copy.jpg
Clearly I need more practice drawing people.  Thank you for volunteering Pete. 🙂

 

I hear ya, I wondered the same thing when I looked up pictures of Komodo Dragons and monitor lizards.  But wait, what does that have anything to do with it?

Pete will help us out here.  I know Alfred looks a little awkward, but he’s actually quite comfy.  Ah- I’ll let Pete tell you the rest…

“Thank you.  Yes, Alfred is quite at ease here.  I’m not heavy to him at all, and he weighs at least a good 300 pounds at this age.  So he doesn’t mind a bit.

I’m tilting his head back very gently- show us your teeth there Alfred, that’s it, nice and easy.

See this is the biggest difference between a domestic Allosaurus like Alfred here and a wild one.  Look how completely relaxed he is.  He’s not fighting me at all, and even his eyes are closed, look at that. (Alfred makes a gurgly, kinda purring sound in his throat)

Anyhow, I’m holding onto his lips here so I keep my fingers out of his mouth.  My fingers can look a bit like treats, so I’ll be sure to keep them right at the edge here, at the gums.

All this, the lips, the gums, the saliva- it all keeps his teeth nice and moist.  Dinosaurs have a healthy coat of enamel on their teeth, same as your teeth, and the key to healthy teeth is to keep them moist.  Even better if you can give your teeth a constant bath of saliva.

Yes, drool is essential to healthy teeth!

Now Alfred will lose his teeth and grow new ones, just like crocodiles and alligators do, but if you look closely at these teeth-they’re serrated.  They’re like steak knives- not like the cone-like teeth of crocodiles.

Thank you Alfred, you’ve been quite patient.  Here’s some jerky. 

But crocodiles don’t need serrated teeth.  They’re eating different things, they have a different habitat, and different diet, they’re eating in a completely different way.  Alfred has teeth like a bone saw.

Ever cut a roast turkey with an electric knife?  That’s what Alfred’s teeth are doing when he eats, so they need to stay sharp, and they need to be strong in his mouth.  So the gums hold his teeth, and his lips keep them nice and moist so they stay strong and don’t get brittle.”

Thank you Pete, and Alfred.  Just for comparison, here is a crocodile monitor lizard.

home_4.jpg
Looks friendly doesn’t he?  Image not my own, but I couldn’t find who to credit.  If you know who I should credit, please let me know. 🙂

My first thought, “Where are the teeth?!”  Then I noticed those sharp white triangular things inside the lip.  Also interesting is that it looks like there are pockets for the bottom teeth to slip into. 🙂  Here’s the skull of the same animal…

croc-monitor-skull-500
Image not mine.  If you know who I should credit, I’d love to give credit where credit is due.  Thank you. 🙂

They look quite different from the other picture don’t they?  Almost, shall I say, dinosauresqe?  Take a look at an Allosaurus skull. 😀

amnh-allosaurus-skull-entrance-hall.jpg
Image copyright to Jason R. Abdale.  

The one and only skull I could find that doesn’t have its teeth halfway falling out of their sockets (it happens when the dead critter decays).  Jason has many more pictures of the Allosaurus mounts at the American Museum of Natural History, and I’d highly recommend you check out his blog post.  You’ll also discover all my errors and where I need to fix Alfred. 😀

 Quick Question: Help me find what I need to fix!  If you wouldn’t mind checking out this blog post on Allosaurus, you’ll get to see some great pictures of excellent mounts, and you’ll see what I have to correct in my illustrations of Alfred.  

I’d love to hear from you in the comments!  I’ll be posting a comment on how many I find, and let’s see if we come up with the same ones or more. 😀

P.S.- You can always hop over the the A&S page to pick out who you want to see next! 🙂

Critter of the Week: Diplodocus

| Patricia Bujard

Meet Dippy!  A giant with a heart of gold, life is never boring when this big guy is around.  Nothing is out of reach!  He’ll stick his nose into everything until every mystery is solved.

Dippy.jpg

Looks like he’s found a very, very big ball to play with.  That ball is pretty much indestructible, and something that comes in handy when you have curious giants like Dippy around.  He loves food just as much as your average sauropod, but Dippy is…how shall I say?  Easily distracted. 😛

Dippy here loves investigating anything new.  He’s not the sharpest rock around, but when you’re this big, brains aren’t a requirement.  I wonder what he plans to do with that ball?  Pete found his old one flattened out in the pasture a couple weeks ago, so we’ll see how long this one lasts.

What’s that you say?  An accident?  Oh no, I’m sure the ball was squished on purpose.  These guys have an amazing sense of touch.  Dippy doesn’t like stepping on certain things, and he’s very careful where he puts his feet (elephants are like this too).

Dippy seems to like the smooth bounciness.  But who doesn’t like to play every now and again? 🙂

To get an idea on how big the ball is, check out the super-sized balls these horses are playing with. 😉

 

Making progress…

Dippy’s official page is up! 😀

And it looks like I can purchase a domain name (like PaleoPetshop.com instead of PaleoPetshop.wordpress.com) and be able to forward emails from the site for less than $100!  So that’s awesome. 😀

With that in mind, I’m working on the next step- finishing the first collection of mini-comics for an eBook.  This eBook will be available for 99 cents, but you can purchase a physical copy for a few more bucks.

Once this collection is finished, then I’ll purchase the domain name and you’ll get to download and print those free collectible Critter Cards I showed you a couple weeks back. 😀

Dippy.jpg
Here’s Dippy, since he’s the Critter of the Week. 🙂

 

Just a friendly reminder.  If you’re seeing this in your email right now, it would be awesome if you’d click on the post title.  That will take you to the actual page, which helps the Paleo Petshop get noticed by Google, which is a good thing if you like what you read and want to share it with others. 🙂 Thank you so much for being here with me.  I truly appreciate it when we can chat a little together.

If you don’t mind spoilers, here’s a preview for one of the comics- Dippy vs. Ball. 

 

dippyvsball

 

 

Coming Next Week…

A real sweetie who’ll tolerate just about anything, even dress up.  Just be careful not to spook her.

Share your guess in the comments! She’ll be one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂

 

To Feather or Not to Feather Your Dinosaur, That is the Question.

| Patricia Bujard

Every time I turn a corner, there’s a new feathered dinosaur to join the line up of “enfluffened” critters.  T-rex, Velociraptor, Gallimimus…iconic dinosaurs from movies like Jurassic Park have bonified proof of some sort of floof covering their bodies.  Even the plant eaters are getting floofy with critters like Hypsolophodon and Kulindadromeous.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love feathery dinosaurs, and I’m a pretty big fan of a huge, fluffy, grizzly-hawk T-rex (that’s just epic 😀 ).

But sometimes artists can take this idea a little too far.  “Woolly” Arctic ceratopsians (“three-horns” & cousins), and spike-tailed stegosaurus with porcupine quills is going a bit far on the speculation even for me.

There’s a fine line between reasonable speculation, and downright fantasy.

But let’s pause for just a moment.  I know that a lot of paleoart is speculative, a way of illustrating hypotheses proposed by paleontologists, but there’s also a surprising amount of stuff we do know.

What I mean to say is…

The stuff you see in paleoart is not some wild guess, and just because the critters are long dead doesn’t mean anything goes.  I’ve described the process of reconstructing prehistoric critters in my blog post series, Fleshing Out the Bones.  You can click this link to read more on that if you’re interested.

So how do you decide if you’ll give your dinosaur feathers or scales?

Alfred
“Butterfly!”  Silly Alfred is just going to get worn out.  He’s about the size of the young Allosaurus described below.  About 12 feet long from nose to tail-tip.

Let’s take Allosaurus and my illustrations of Alfred as an example.  How do I know if he should be covered in feathers or scales?

Step 1: What’s the evidence?

Are there any fossils of skin impressions or feathers?  In Alfred’s case, yes, yes there is. 😀 I don’t know if there are any published papers on this, but here’s a link that describes the preserved skin on a juvenile Allosaurus.  It was discovered during preparation of the fossil.

Based on the fossil, the young Allosaurus had small scales about 2-3 mm in diameter.  So tiny, pebble-like, non-overlapping scales, rather like the sort you see on gila monsters and monitor lizards.

monitor-lizard-425165_640
“Yo, ‘sup?”

But What if I didn’t Have Fossil Evidence?  And for some, a patch of skin in one part of the body is not enough.  Afterall, in some dinosaurs you get quite the mixture of feathers and scales.  Compsognathus, for example, has close relatives with evidence of “full floof”, but the critter itself has scale impressions on its tail and legs.

Step 2: Look at Their Relatives. 

Like we just did with Compsognathus up there, we can look at close relatives in the same family to figure out the scale/feather thing.  In the case of the compy, the possibilities can get even more confusing, but let’s go back to Alfred.

If you go back to last week’s post on Theropods, you’ll see that Allosaurus is in the family Carnosauria.  One rather infamous member of this group is Concavenator.  It has what looks like quill knobs on its arms, which in modern birds are small bumps on the bone where ligaments for flight feathers attach.

The “quill nobs” of Concavenator are a subject of much discussion.  Duane Nash has a particularly interesting interpretation over at his blog, Antediluvian Salad.  I’m not a fan of how monstrous he illustrated the poor critter, since I tend to see the beauty even in Earth’s homeliest of creatures, but the article is a very interesting read, and I’d recommend you check it out. 🙂

Step 3: Where is it in the Family Tree?

Pterosaurs are about as closely related to dinosaurs as alligators and crocodiles are.  Neither are dinosaurs, but they’re all in a much larger group called Archosauria.

Because of this relationship, it’s a pretty big deal if the fuzzy pycnofibers on pterosaurs are the same as the fur-like fluff on certain dinosaurs (like Compsognathus & cousins).

Why?  Because it’s much simpler to assume that the great-grandmother of dinosaurs & pterosaurs had the fuzzy feathery fluff.

Much more complicated to assume that dinosaurs & pterosaurs developed the same fuzzy feathery fluff each on their own.

What’s easier?  Learning with a friend from a teacher, or each of you studying on your own?  Not exactly the same, I know, but I think you get my drift. 🙂

With this in mind, let’s see where Alfred is on the family tree, and how far away he is from the main branch or outlying branches.

neotheropoda_cladogram
Image not my own. Cladogram copyright to Tom Holtz. Sourced from the University of Maryland Department of Geology website.

Alfred is on the branch labeled Carnosauria.  This is quite a ways away from the base of the branch, with many critters in between that are known to be scaly.  So feathers from that direction are very unlikely.

Once proof of scales appears we don’t see any real evidence of feathers until we get to the branch labeled Coelurosauria.

Final Verdict: Allosaurus is More Likely to Have Scales, Based on Current Knowledge.

So what would that look like?  The scales are small and non-overlapping in our sample, so let’s look at Komodo Dragons and Monitor lizards. 😀

komodo-dragon-58396_640
“Nothin’ better than a warm rock on a sunny day…Zzzz” – Komodo Dragon
komodo-1203482_640.jpg
“Hey.  Nice day ain’ it?” – Komodo Dragon.
monitor-205101_640.jpg
“Hi! You wouldn’t have a snack handy would’ya?” – Monitor Lizard

Bonus Question: With this research, I think Alfred could use a bit of a makeover!  What would you prefer to see?

  • A much needed nap after chasing that butterfly
  • Curious Alfred is curious
  • Is that the dinner bell?
  • Playtime!

Which scenario should I use to revamp his profile picture?  I’d love to hear your answer in the comments! 🙂

Critter of the Week: Allosaurus

| Patricia Bujard

Meet Alfred.  The lion of the Jurassic!  The prince of the Mesozoic! The…oh, there he goes after another butterfly.  All he needs to be happy in life is his food, his chew toy, and a nice long nap.

 

Alfred

Looks like Alfred has found something to chase.  No worries though, that butterfly has nothing to fear, and he’ll give up soon enough.  Allosaurus (ah-low-saw-rus) wasn’t very fast, but he can’t help it- if it runs off, he’s got to chase it!  After a quick sprint, Alfred loves to settle under the shade of a tree and take a nice nap.

What’s that you say?  He’s a fearsome predator?  Well yes, yes he is.  Take a quick look at lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my!), and most of the time you’ll actually catch them napping.  Crocodiles and eagles, Alfred’s closest living relatives, also do a lot of nothing.  Once you have a full belly, why not enjoy a siesta in the sun?  🙂

You can find out more about Alfred at his critter page.

Fun Fact: This guy is the first critter that I kinda found my style.  All the ones I drew before him were very inconsistent, but this one had the sketchiness and detailed painterly mixture I was looking for.  All other critters after him I’ve been refining my technique and getting better.

Now I have to practice on my people!

 

Making progress…

I had a big surprise planned.  The goal was to have Pete’s Postcards from the Shop all set up by my birthday (that’s today.  I just set it as a convenient goal date. 🙂 )

The Critter Cards were done, I got the PDF file sorted out, Mailchimp all set up and ready to go…I run through the motions to test it out for myself and…

Nothing.

I wasn’t really surprised, since I can’t really use my personal email account to send you emails from the Paleo Petshop.  But it was worth a try.  I’m trying to spend as little money as possible until I start earning a little.  This can turn into a really expensive hobby really fast if I’m not careful.

Not exactly what I’m going for. 🙂

So now I’m figuring out the best place to purchase a domain name, so that PaleoPetshop.wordpress.com can turn into PaleoPetshop.com.  Only problem is that so many places offer so many different packages with bells and whistles I’m not ready for just yet.  Like webhosting.

All I need is an official domain name, and the email address I can use with Mailchimp.

Wish me luck!  I’ve got a couple of options I’m looking at, but it’s just a matter of figuring out which one’s a better fit. 🙂

In the meantime, here’s the Critter Card chart with all dinosaurs colored in. 😀

chibi-critters-progress-copy4

 

Coming Next Week…

A giant with a heart of gold, life is never boring when this big guy is around.  Nothing is out of reach!  He’ll stick his nose into everything until every mystery is solved.

Share your guess in the comments! He’ll be one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂

Who Were the Theropod Dinosaurs?

| Patricia Bujard

Dinosaurs are such a diverse group of animals that it can be a challenge to sort out who’s who.  Theropoda, sauropodomorpha, ornischia…just what does it all mean?  For now let’s talk about the group everyone knows and loves (but might not know it), the theropods.

 

For your convenience and entertainment, here are a couple of helpful Youtube videos I found.  These two clips are part of a much longer course about dinosaurs, taught by paleontologist Benjamin Burger.  Enjoy! 🙂

 

Who Were the Theropod Dinosaurs?

 

How Do We Group the Theropod Dinosaurs?

Warning: This one is much longer, about 30 minutes, so grab your popcorn (theropods are a ginormous group 🙂 ). If you don’t have time (because we’re all busy these days), then just scroll down for the Cliffnotes version.

 

Here’s the Cliffnotes version.  Start from the bottom of each picture and work your way to the top.

neotheropoda_cladogram

 

Fun Fact: the three earliest groups here- Tawa, Coelophysidae,& Dilophosaurus, are proposed to have some sort of fur-like feathers because they are so young in the family tree.  Then you don’t see very many feathers at all until Coelurosauria at the top there.  Notice how we have critters like Ceratosaurus & Allosaurus here.

Since a number of critters in the middle groups have scaly skin impressions, it’s more likely that these groups were generally scaly, with limited (if any) feathering.  There are one or two exceptions, but for the most part there are only bones and a few scaly skin impressions.

 

104Coelurosauria.png

Coelurosauria, anything defined as more closely related to birds than Allosaurus.  Pretty much everything in this group is more likely to have some sort of feathered integument.  Anything from quills, hairlike filaments, or full blown assymetrical flight feathers and “peacock tails”.  Yes, even T-rex, those tiny Compsognathus, and Velociraptor. 🙂

 

104eumaniraptora

 

Eumaniraptora- if you saw these walking around, your first thoughts would be “bird” or “very strange bird”.  Yes, Jurassic Park franchise, your “velociraptors” are supposed to be very, very birdy.  We also get Archaeopteryx here, right at the base of the branch with “true birds” on it.  Troodontidae are often considered a sister clade to birds.  Think birds with longer tails, and teeth, and you’ve got a troodon.  Possibly a bit like an owl, since they’re nocturnal, and have asymmetrical ears like owls do.

These cladograms can all be found at the University of Maryland Department of Geology website, and here’s where you can see the online lecture describing these cladograms in more detail. These cladograms are all copyright to Tom Holtz.

 

Bonus Question: Do you see any of your favorites here?  What’s your take on the “enfluffening” of dinosaurs?  I’d love to hear your answer in the comments!  

PS.- I know the idea of feathered T-rex is quite the hot point for some people, but if that’s you, please remember to be kind.

I’d like to avoid the ALL CAPS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS PLEASE!!!!!1! Nobody likes to be yelled at.

Thank you for understanding. 🙂

Critter of the Week: Archaeopteryx

| Patricia Bujard

Meet Tango. This bird likes to party, and loves being the center of attention even more!

tango_update

Tango is a pretty good example of when you should check with your neighbors before you choose your pet.  Of course, if you live out in the sticks like I do, then it doesn’t matter so long as you don’t mind going deaf.

Ok, ok, I exaggerate.  But really, unless you like a whole lot of this going on, I’d reconsider a quieter critter.

 

Making progress…

I’ve got profile pictures for all the critters on the critter page!  (I’m super super excited, because that’s the most obvious sign of my progress so far XD )

Speaking of profile pics, notice how Tango got a shiny updated one? (hint hint, nod nod)

Now I’m starting on their official character pages.  You can go to the critter page and click on Tango (or if you’re lazy, just click here 😛 )  It’s pretty basic, and not very shiny yet, but hey, it’s a start. 🙂

I also got Tango’s card done.  One more dinosaur to complete the series, and I’ll open up the official sign up for Postcards From the Shop!

chibi-critters-progress-copy3

 

Coming Next Week…

This guy will chase after anything that moves, or smells good… 😉

Share your guess in the comments! He’s one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂

The Art & Science of Tango

| Patricia Bujard

Tango is excited to see you!  Say hello Tango (Weeooh! Chip-chip!).  He gets pretty excited when he meets new people, so we’ll see if he’ll let us talk for a little while. (weep-weep!)

 

 

as_tango-copy

 

A rude (but necessary) disclaimer interrupts this post to say…

I do the best I can with research, but I’m a stay-at-home mom who’s always had a passion for all things prehistoric.  I’m not a paleontologist, and I don’t have access to all the scientific papers available.  But I try my best to keep up to date, and all my illustrations reflect this.

That said, all the drawings in the A&S post series are quick doodles to illustrate a point, with not as much reference as I usually use, so there are plenty of inaccuracies for you to point out for me. 😉

Thank you disclaimer, you can go bother someone else now.

Oh, and one more thing, before you start seeing the name Archaeopteryx everywhere (and trying to pronounce it in your head), here’s a quick pronunciation guide.  I wasn’t sure myself, so I thought I’d share it!

 

1. Ok, So What is He Really?

 

You probably recognize Tango from just about every book on dinosaurs out there.  They tend to announce him as the “first bird” a lot, and 8-year-old me would think, “then what’s a bird doing in a dinosaur book?”

So what is he, a dinosaur or a bird?

Well if you read last week’s post on birds, then of course you might say he’s a dinosaur, since all birds are dinosaurs anyway.  But we’re being more specific this time. 🙂

So let’s get into something called cladistics.

To put it simply (partly for my own benefit because I’ve just started getting my hands dirty with this stuff)…

cladistics is how scientists determine where an animal goes on the family tree, and how we explore animal’s relationships with each other.  Animals in any particular group are determined to have shared traits and characteristics, and must therefore have a common ancestor.  

For example.  All cats, wild and domestic, have a number of traits that are the same, so then they must have a single common ancestor that gave them all those traits.  Very much how your great grandmother passed down her characteristics to her daughter, grand daughter, and great-granddaughter. 🙂

I’ll start off with a group of dinosaurs called Theropods.  They’re the ones we typically think of as walking on two legs, and generally meat-eaters, like T-rex. 🙂

theropods-copy

Nestled inside the Theropod box are many groups.  You can think of them as smaller boxes inside the big box.  The box that we’re taking out of the Theropod box will be a group called Coelurosaurs (seel-ooh-row-saurs).

Most of the critters in this group are possibly feathered, and include the “ostrich dinos”, “velociraptors”, T-rex, and mostly all the animals we would think are birds at first glance.

coelurosaurs-copy

Inside the Coelurosaur box are other boxes, including the one with T-rex inside it.  But as much as I like T-rex, we’ll be ignoring his box for now and looking at a box labeled “Maniraptora”.

This box has animals that are more obviously bird-like.  If we were to see them in life (vs. the Jurassic Park version) we would think “bird” or “very strange bird”.  Very strange (and giant) when it comes to Therizinosaurus, but that’s a subject for another day. 🙂

maniraptora-copy

Inside the Maniraptora box there are more boxes.  These boxes get reorganized about twice a year, because now things start getting a little difficult when it comes to separating true birds from non-avian dinosaurs.

We’ll find Archaeopteryx in a box labeled Avialae.

This box includes all modern birds and their direct grandparents and great-great-grandparents.  It also includes the toothy birds, and sometimes Troodontids (think mini raptors, but even more “birdy” and kinda like owls).

avialae-copy

Whew!  Thank you for sticking with me for all that. 🙂

The final verdict according to the family tree…

Archaeopteryx is a bird. 😀

And yes, it’s a dinosaur too, because birds fit in the “Dinosaur” box.

 

2. But is He the First?

diggletango-copy

Tango’s gotten a lot of press over the years as the “first bird”, but is he really the first?  It depends on if there was another dinosaur as closely related to modern birds as possible, but earlier in the timeline.

And it turns out there’s another one that’s earlier in the timeline…

Aurornis xui is a bird from Jurassic China, in sediments that are older than the rocks Archaeopteryx are typically found in Europe.  Pascal Godefroit et al. write in their paper on Aurornis that their studies determined it as the…

  • Earliest bird
  • It confirms that Archaeopteryx was indeed a bird

‘Nuff said. 🙂

3. Can He Fly?

flying-tango-copy
Flying, or falling with style?

Most of us may look at Tango and see a birdy critter with big wings- of course he can fly!  But wait, not so fast.  Flight, as you know, is a very difficult skill to master, and just because an animal has wings doesn’t really mean it has all the other things it needs to fly.

So poor Tango’s been in the middle of an argument.

Can he fly, or is he stuck clambering up into the branches to jump off and glide?  Here’s why many paleontologists believe he can fly…

  • A few amazing specimens have a wishbone (check out pictures of almost all 11 here!)
  • The wing feathers are asymmetrical, just like modern birds.  This gives the wings a more aerodynamic shape, which is useful for flying.

 

Tango’s muscles are a bit weak, and his tail is not the best for flying, but in nature, whatever you’ve got is good enough to thrive where you’re at.  Tango may’ve been just good enough a flyer to get across the river, from one branch to the next.  Landings were probably not his strong point.

I’d be really curious to see what paleontologists would find if they compared Archaeopteryx flight muscles with those of a hoatzin. 🙂

Hoatzin_in_Peru.jpg
Photo Courtesy of Kate from UK – HoatzinUploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org

 

That’s all for now folks!  Say goodbye Tango…:D

 

 

Quick Question: Do you remember your first “encounter” with Archaeopteryx?  How has the media, books, and maybe your own research affected your thoughts of birds as living dinosaurs?  I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

P.S.- You can always hop over the the A&S page to pick out who you want to see next! 🙂