Episode 445: Dinosaurs in Swamps: That includes Prehistoric Planet 2

Episode 445: Dinosaurs in Swamps: That includes Prehistoric Planet 2. Pachycephalosaurus head-butting, Austroraptor fishing, T. rex stalking prey at evening, and extra dinosaur motion within the Cretaceous swamps

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The dinosaur of the day: Falcatakely

• Lived at similar time and place because the animals featured in episode 3 of Prehistoric Planet 2
• Enantiornithean that lived within the Late Cretaceous in what’s now northern Madagascar (Maevarano Formation)
• About crow-sized
• Had a deep, lengthy beak, about 3.5 in (9 cm) lengthy
• Beak appeared just like a toucan’s
• As an enantiornithine, in some ways, would have appeared like a contemporary chicken
• Had a excessive, lengthy face that appeared like a contemporary chicken
• However had tooth within the premaxilla
• Described by Patrick O’Connor and others in 2020
• Discovered a virtually full, nicely preserved cranium in 2010
• CT scanned the cranium in 2017
• Cranium is small, at about 3 in (8 cm) lengthy
• Elements of the fossil are paper skinny
• Maxilla is lower than 1 mm thick
• Had a slim preorbital area (in entrance of the attention socket)
• Sort and solely species is Falcatakely forsterae
• Genus identify means “small scythe”, and refers back to the form of the beak
• Species identify is in honor of Catherine Forster’s “contributions to work on Madagascan paravians”
• Surprising that it appeared superficially like a toucan
• Instance of convergent evolution (Falcatakely advanced the toucan-like beak tens of tens of millions of years earlier than toucans and different fashionable birds, and so they’re fairly distantly associated)
• Discovered a fancy collection of grooves on the bone that confirmed it had a big beak
• Had a beak form like a contemporary chicken, with a excessive, lengthy higher invoice
• Nevertheless, the face had related bones as Velociraptor and different non-avian dinosaurs
• Like non-avian dinosaurs, had a bone beneath its beak and a big higher jawbone (a big maxilla and small premaxilla), in contrast to fashionable birds the place there is only one bone beneath the beak (the premaxilla)
• Most likely used its beak for lots of functions, together with shifting objects, grooming, and feeding
• Lived in a swampy floodplain that had moist and dry seasons

Enjoyable Truth:

T. rex had the biggest eyes of any dinosaur. However a number of fashionable animals have bigger eyes than even the biggest T. rex.

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