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Showing results for tags 'dinosauria'.
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The idea that sensory pits were present in Theropod dinosaurs is not a new one, but for some reason I can't find any information on them and chat GPT says the presence of these structures in dinosaurs lacks fossil evidence. Below I present sensory pits in the jaw of an alligator and in the jaw of Albertosaurus. These pits are also known to be present in the jaws of some birds. In birds and crocodilians these sensory pits are believed to be used to detect vibrations in different substrates ( water for crocodilians and wood/soil for birds) in order to enhance prey detection and capture. My idea for sensory pits in Theropod dinosaurs (the ones that had them) is that they may have been used to detect prey in rotting logs or in shallow burrows. Why would large theropods have them? It is generally believed that young theropods were obviously alot smaller than the adults and probably ate things like insects or small vertebrates. I believe it is very likely that young Theropods used these sensory pits to help them locate these small animals that would be in substrates like wood (rotting stumps?) or soil. It's possible they were able to detect vibrations in the ground from approaching animals as a defense mechanism while they slept. It seems probable to me that these sensory pits may have been retained into adulthood by animals like Albertosaurus, etc...and lost by others. Of course these are believed to be present in piscivores like Baryonyx and Spinosaurus as well, which probably would have used them to enhance their fishing abilities. I intend to do some research into this and see if these sensory pits appear to be more common in juveniles ( where available) and how wide spread they were among Theropods in addition to the implications for feeding habits, etc in these animals as they aged. I would be interested in hearing some of your ideas about this.
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Connecticut Dinosaur Print Specimen?
Maniraptora posted a topic in Is It Real? How to Recognize Fossil Fabrications
Hi all! I’m considering buying this specimen which is identified by the seller as dinosaur prints from Connecticut, but first I wanted to make sure it’s what it claims to be, and not an instance of pareidolia or similar. I also was curious whether anyone here could offer some additional info on the prints—any guesses on age, formation, more specific locality, ichnogenus, etc.? Thanks in advance. I’m very excited to buy this if none of you have any bad news to offer!- 19 replies
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From the album: My collection in progress
Spinosaurus aegyptiacus Stromer 1915 Location: Kem Kem Beds, Morocco Age: 95 Mya (Cenomanian, Upper Cretaceous) Measurements: 7x2 cm Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Subphylum: Vertebrata Class: Reptilia Subclass: Diapsida Superorder: Dinosauria Order: Saurischia Suborder: Theropoda Family: Spinosauridae -
Premaxillary tooth EDIT: Changed from Tyrannosaurus rex to Tyrannosaurid indet.
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Hello everyone, I am a Belgian student in biology, and I love paleontology. Last week, I was walking on a slag heap near my home in the town of Marcinelle, at the coal mine called "Bois du Cazier". My attention was mainly focused on fossils of carboniferous plants (sigilaria, cordaites, calamites, etc ...). But at one point, I picked up this pretty little pebble which seemed to me to be a fossilized archosaurian egg. The slag heaps do not really respect the order of the geological layers, so it is very difficult for me to pin a year on it. I wanted to ask you if it was possible to : - confirm / deny that it is a fossilized egg - date it approximately, in view of the material that composes it (in my opinion, it should belong to the Mesozoic area, because of the colour and the fact that it was necessary to logically pass through this layer when digging, before arriving at the carboniferous veins) - identify the order, maybe the family to which he may have belonged. Please excuse-me for my bad English, Thank you in advance for your answers !
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Today, instead of bemoaning the paucity of marine cretaceous rocks in my state, I reframed the situation as follows: "In the Cretaceous, most of Missouri was not ocean but land, with lots of exposed limestone that dinosaurs were likely walking around on." This led me to the following question: Do we have no fossil examples of dinosaurs that fell in sinkholes / caves / paleokarst and were preserved there, perhaps discovered during quarrying of the limestone? We definitely have such examples for fossil mammals, reptiles, etc., including Pleistocene (Ocala), Pliocene (Pipe Creek Jr.), and Miocene (Gray Fossil Site)... So why not earlier? Why not dinosaurs? Surely there were paleokarst processes in action during dinosaur times. As possibly useful information, there was definitely regional hydrothermal activity here in the Mesozoic, based on the Jurassic emplacement age of southern Illinois fluorite.
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- dinosauria
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So after following nizaar ibrahim's study in 2014 I learned that spinosaurus walked on four legs and it spend a lot of time in water being a good swimmer. But recently I saw that some new studies have been published and then some others and I have lost track so if someone could please inform me about the latest discoveries and tell me if spinosaurus was a good swimmer and if he walked on four it would be much appreciated.
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