Metazoica

(An interpretation of the site by UTA artist Clinton Crowley) As long as we are talking about new/unknown and fascinating dinosaur sites in the U.S., I might as well bring up the new Arlington Archosaur Site in Arlington, Texas. This site has garnered a bit of attention in the last few days, and is rather interesting to quite a few people, myself included. One reason the Arlington Archosaur Site has been given so much attention is because it is in Arlington, Texas. Arlinton is smack dab in the middle of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, a huge urban area. Most of the time, cities tend to be built on sites that do not contain dinosaur fossils, but Dallas and Fort Worth are exceptions. Like twin magnets, these cities seem to just draw dinosaur fossils to them, resulting in many fantastic dinosaur finds. There have even been dinosaurs found in the DFW airport! The Arlington Archosaur Site itself is situated in the Woodbine Formation, a strata of rocks dating back to aproximately the Early ...

With all the interesting dinosaurs coming out of China, the western U.S., South America, the Sahara, and other such areas lately, some other interesting finds have been rather overlooked. However, I find this one site quite fascinating, for a variety of reasons. The site is the Chronister site in Bollinger County, Missouri. Since 1999, the site has produced many fossils of animals from the Late Cretaceous, including fish, turtles, and the dinosaur Hypsibema missouriensis . What exactly is Hypsibema missouriensis ? Well, in short it is a hadrosaur trying very hard to be a sauropod. I have read in some texts (though I cannot, for the life of me, remember what they were) that Hypsibema was one of the largest hadrosaurs, while probably not as big as Shantungosaurus , certainly big enough to rival many of the other largest hadrosaurs of all time. In fact, it was so large that on its discovery it was mistaken to be a small sauropod. It was probably one of the largest dinosaurs of Eastern Nor...

This is a story almost too zany to be true. Since the discovery of feathered theropods and the quilled Psittacosaurus , paleontologists have had the sneaking suspicion that all dinosaurs were feathered to some extent, even if not fully feathered as adults somewhat partially feathered instead, or else fully feathered as juveniles. For a while, suspicions have just been that, but now, we have clinching proof! Meet Tienyulong confucusi (there is some debate on whether the name is acceptable following the ICZN), a new Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid from China. While Cretaceous heterodontosaurs are weird, but not unknown (the dinosaur Echinodon is oftetimes thought of as a heterodontosaur), the really shocking feature of this animal is the coat of quilly feathers it has running down its back and tail! These are definitely protofeathers too, as they resemble the protofeathers found in other dinosaurs, such as Bepiaosaurus , to an extent. What's even more interesting is that the qui...