Dinosaur Fossil Friday

[LordTrilobite]

38 minutes ago, Al Dente said:

 

 

What is the purpose of the concavity near the front of this skull? Has there been any speculation? It is very odd.

That's just where the external nostril would be. Early reconstructions have the nostril up high. Modern reconstruction have it lower in that depression. This also applies to Hadrosaurs and Theropods, probably to other dinosaurs as well.

[oldtimer]

Here is my submission for this Friday.  While traveling to Salt Lake I was going down Hwy 70 and saw a sign for a local museum with fossils.  So I decided to whip of the interstate and have a quick look. It is in the Fick Fossil and History Museum in Oakley Kansas.  Nice place with some cool stuff.  This Fish Fossil is on display.  It is about 7 feet long.  It is known as Xiphactinu audex and was formerly known as Portheus molossus.

[oldtimer]

Another view.

 

[oldtimer]

Plesiosaur paddle from the Fick museum. Collected from the Kansas prairie by George Steinberg.

 

[Troodon]

Great adds thank you for your contributions @LordTrilobite. @oldtimer. 

Need to visit the Fick museum looks interesting.

[oldtimer]

The Fick museum is small but very interesting.  It is just a few miles from the Interstate but did have some nice displays.  Most were found locally.

I saw the sign for it and had just a short time before they closed. They had a lot of readings about the local fossils and collections.  Since it was a history museum too.  They had some displays about the local town and the pioneer days. They also had a lot of small fossils on display.  Not sure that all were labeled correctly.  It is also free.  So that was nice too. Well worth the stop for any fossil lover. There were signs for other museums along the I-70 route.  I just did not stop at them.

[Troodon]

A new week a new set of great images its Dinosaur Fossil Friday

 

Toe bones (pedal phalanges) of the foot of holotype of the theropod dinosaur Struthiomimus altus (Top).  When compared to the foot of an (ostrich/emu/rhea), it isn't surprising that ornithomimids are known as 'ostrich mimics'

 

 

The bones of Daspletosaurus torosus are delicate and complex, making it difficult to display. As a solution, Royal Tyrrell Museum technicians digitized each bone using photogrammetry. A cast of the specimen was then 3D printed.

 

 

Beautiful tooth ornamentation on this croc jaw from the Kem Kem, Morocco

 

 

Deinosuchus having a snack

 

 

"Yoshi's Trike," a Triceratops excavated in 2011 in Garfield County, Montana, on display MORPalo represents a cool stage in Triceratops evolution in the Hell Creek Formatiion thought to have the longest brow horns ever found

 

 

 

Two skulls of the early ornithischian Lesothosaurus, from the basal Jurassic of southern Africa NHM London

 

 

The pathological dorsal vertebra of the hadrosaur Gryposaurus notabilis

 

 

Thylacocephalan were crustaceans from the Jurassic Period found in France. They had more than 18,000 lenses in its compound eyes, surpassed only by the modern dragonflies. They possess three pairs of large raptorial limbs. Abdomen bore small swimming limbs

 

 

Check out this "glass" insect from the invertebrate paleontology collection, fossils of LA. It's about 14 million years old, and its organic structures have been replaced by minerals like quartz, giving it a translucent, glass-like appearance

 

 

 

[Troodon]

Early cretaceous bird from China that ate seeds Eogranivora edentulata just described

 

 

ROM collected this partly articulated duck billed dinosaur skeleton from the Oldman Fm Alberta in 2008. It was upside down, so limbs fell off. No skull, but awesome skin preservation including the midline ‘frill’ down the back

 

 

These chompers come from the mouth of a little cute Permian reptile

 

 

Did you know when carrying large objects on either end of your axial skeleton, it's important to take the strain off your muscles.

For an ankylosaur tail club, try tightly interlocking your caudal vertebrae it does the trick.

For Ceratopsians large head just fuse up your first 3 cervicals and life is good.

 

 

 

Sull of the dinosaur Ornithomimus affinis

 

 

This is the palate of an acid prepped Anhanguera skull displayed in NHM_London - very fragile despite lots of consolidant!

 

 

 

From the Triassic, the armor-plated, shovel-snouted, shoulder-spiked Desmatosuchus– not a dinosaur.   This distant relative of crocodilians is thought to have rooted for underground vegetation

 

 

 

Skull of the metoposaurid Koskinonodon perfectus from the Late Triassic of Texas as part of a composite mount on display at the AMNH

 

 

 

Collections staff catalogue and preserve over 160,000 specimens for future research in storage area of Royal Tyrrell Museum

 

 

More evidence that T rex exists

 

[Troodon]

Fragment of a fossil jaw, showing three replacement teeth. Dinosaurs replaced their teeth throughout their life. This fossil belongs to Patagosaurus fariasi, a sauropod dinosaur found in Chubut Province.

 

 

Vintage photo of Triceratops and the uncertain Rubeosaurus from the Two Medicine Fm

 

 

 

Toes of the Nanotyrannus Jane - a good reference if you might have some

 

 

Hadrosaur tail Cleveland Museum Natural History.  Good view of the tendons.

 

 

Definitely the most beautiful ankylosaur specimen in the world, the fabulous Borealopelta RoyalTyrrell Museum

 

 

 

This huge limb bone is from one of three contenders for Britain’s biggest Jurassic dinosaur, Duriatitan, meaning ‘Dorset giant.’ 

 

 

Some fossils are snarge. Literally. Here is some fossil DINOSAUR POO for you!! Found in South Carolina....believe it or not..

 

 

Hadrosaur Jaw Specimens from North America

 

Brachylophosaurus Jaw  MOR1071

 

 

Juvenile Hypacrosaurus Jaw, MOR548

 

 

Prosaurolophus Jaw MOR454

 

 

Probrachylophosaurus Jaw MOR2919

 

[LordTrilobite]

Time to highlight another dinosaur.

 

The Romanian Balaur bondoc! Originally described as a stocky weird Dromaeosaurid with two fingers and a double killing claw on each foot. As it turned out later, this is actually a flightless bird. So it's still a dinosaur, but just not non-avian.

 

What was found.

 

Two fingered hands

 

Hand of Balaur on the left(A).

 

Left foot with double killing claws.

 

Balaur foot in the middle(B).

 

Very bird-like hips. A and B are Balaur.

[JohnBrewer]

Wow, some stunning stuff the Frank & Olof. Thanks again for sharing!

[Tidgy's Dad]

Wow! 

Another great Friday so far! 

It's impossible to pick a favourite this time. 

Thanks for posting chaps! 

[Troodon]

Thank @LordTrilobite for his postings from last week.   Appreciate any input for this week

[Troodon]

Composite skull of juvenile, hadrosaur "duck-billed" Hypacrosaurus! Specimen (s) were collected in the Late Cretaceous (approx 75 mya) Two Medicine Formation of Montana

 

Coelophysis fossil from NHM London.  This individual had eaten a small crocodile particular to its death, and the bones of the latter are clearly visible in the stomach region.

 

 

he Iraqi ichthyosaur Malawania anachronus, discovered in Kurdistan region of Iraq in 1952

 

 

Type specimen of the ichthyosaur - Excalibosaurus costini from UK

 

 

Mass mortality of the porolepiform fish Holoptychius trapped in a drying pond 370 million years ago in what is today Scotland.. must have been that scotch 

 

 

Newly discovered galaxy a dinosaur bone cross-section.  Pretty cool

 

 

Montanaceratops! On display at the RoyalTyrrell

 

 

Sweet Silurian 'sea lily'! Macrostylocrinus ornatus with hitch-hiking snail ROM Toronto

 

Osteolepis macrolepidotus is a freshwater rhipidistian, having a number of features in common with tetrapods (land-dwelling vertebrates). Found in the Sandwick fish beds, Orkney - Scotland. Middle Devonian, 387-359 million years old

 

 

 

 

[Troodon]

Cretaceous reef made of rudist bivalves (not corals!) Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, German

 

 

The small, Triassic cynodont Thrinaxodon from the Karoo Basin, South Africa. On display at the HarvardMuseum

 

 

 

Growth stages of Triceratops 

 

 

 

Specimen of part of a giant deer antler, from Derriaghy, Co. Antrim, Ireland. The giant deer (or Megaloceros) is sometime incorrectly referred to as the Irish elk, for it is neither exclusively Irish nor is it an elk.

 

 

A neat comparison The skull of one of the more basal iguanodontians (Tenontosaurus, top) and the skull of one of the most derived iguanodontians (Edmontosaurus, bottom). 

 

 

A  preserved frog is 22 million years old from the Mush Valley in Ethiopia.  Looks like Mush

 

 

Radius of Acratocnus., pleistocene ground sloth from hispaniola with extra bone growth after a severe limb break. A reminder that prehistoric life was rough but most challenges are surmountable

 

 

A hadrosaur forelimb, with beautiful skin impressions, from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation on display at the RoyalTyrrell

 

[Troodon]

The holotype and only specimen of Owenodon, a small iguanodontian from the earliest Cretaceous of the Isle of Purbeck jurassic_coast at NHM London

 

 

Permian displays from the Arizona Museum of Natural History: Inostrancevia and Estemmenosuchus

 

 

Plesiosaur skull in floor exhibit at the Nebraska State Museum, Thalassomedon haningtoni

 

 

Soon some of us will be walking the badlands and you look down and you see skull spikes from a Pachycephalosaurus.  Just a dream

 

 

Pterodaustro is a genus of Cretaceous pterodactyloid pterosaur from South America, which lived 105 million years ago.

 

 

Delorhynchus, the skull of that goes with the teeth I shared last week.

 

 

A juvenile Platecarpus skull UW Geology Museum

 

 

What an amazing vista of extinct xenarthrans (sloths, armadillos & their relatives) The Argentina of 15,000ya would have made an extraordinary photo safari destination.   You've got to consider a trip to museo de la plata in argentina

 

 

May even learn something today ...The jaws of mosasaurs have hinged joints, similar to those seen in snakes, which would have allowed them to capture large prey. This has led some palaeontologists to suggest that snakes and mosasaurs might be closely related.

 

 

And finally my continued effort to prove to everyone that T rex is still around...photos don't lie

 

[PFOOLEY]

14 minutes ago, Troodon said:

Cretaceous reef made of rudist bivalves (not corals!) Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, German

...

Awesome. 

[LordTrilobite]

Time for another Dinosaur spotlight! The first described non-avian dinosaur. Megalosaurus bucklandii.

When it was discovered not a whole lot was know about this animal, let alone dinosaurs as a whole. And even now we still don't have a lot of fossil material of this beast. So it's still quite enigmatic.

 

A wonderful reconstruction by Scott Hartman.

 

The holotype

 

Front part of the right dentary.

 

Great plates of the rib bones. I think that's also the ischium on the left.

 

Various bones.

[doushantuo]

Yeah

I thought i recognized something from the Benson piece

 

 

 

balaur,apologies if repost

 

 

 

[Haravex]

Only a quick one for this Friday

Staurikosaurus (a personal favorite of mine)

 

 

[doushantuo]

The Grillo paper is in Fruitbat's library,BTW

[oldtimer]

Another excellent Friday.

There are so many today I will have to take an hour or two just to look at them in detail.

Friday is my favorite day now. Thanks you for sharing such wonderful pictures and specimens.

[Tidgy's Dad]

I love Friday's! 

Thanks again, everyone! 

[Haravex]

2 hours ago, doushantuo said:

The Grillo paper is in Fruitbat's library,BTW

Grillo?

[JohnBrewer]

19 minutes ago, Haravex said:

Grillo?

White Italian wine. Very nice stuff. Enjoyed a bottle or two when was in Milan last month