On a moonlit night in the early Carboniferous, two Pulmonoscorpius do a mating dance in the Lepidodendron swamp. Although the giant scorpions have little interest in prey right now, a Balanerpeton amphibian wisely decides to swim away, while several Casineria sleep through the night in the copious tree litter.
#Pulmonoscorpius #scorpion #Lepidodendron #Balanerpeton #Casineria #Amphibian #Amniote #Carboniferous #paleoart #MyArt
It’s a good time to be alive for those of us fascinated by things that no longer are. 🙂 Big #paleontology news today:
A new #Tyrannosaurus species. Unlike most of the other proposed new T. whateveri of the last few years, this one looks quite well-supported. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-47011-0
The earliest skin impressions ever found from any #amniote. Amniotes are #reptiles and #mammals, basically: animals which can lay eggs on land (or give live birth, in more derived forms) because the #embryo is protected from dessication. This is in contrast to #amphibians, the first #vertebrates to live on land, which absolutely require a long-term water source for reproduction. In that sense amniotes are the first true terrestrial vertebrates, and we wouldn’t be here without those distant ancestors. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01663-9
The first will no doubt get about a million times more attention, because Tyrannosaurus, but the second is at least as big a deal IMO. Links via Thomas Holtz. I’ll try to have my own relatively insignificant thoughts when I get time.
Tyrannosaurid dinosaurs dominated as predators in the Late Cretaceous of Laurasia, culminating in the evolution of the giant Tyrannosaurus rex, both the last and largest tyrannosaurid. Where and when Tyrannosaurini (T. rex and kin) originated remains unclear. Competing hypotheses place tyrannosaurin origins in Asia, or western North America (Laramidia). We report a new tyrannosaurin, Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis, from the Campanian–Maastrichtian Hall Lake Formation of New Mexico, based on a fossil previously referred to T. rex. T. mcraeensis predates T. rex by ~ 6–7 million years, yet rivaled it in size. Phylogenetic analysis recovers T. mcraeensis as sister to T. rex and suggests Tyrannosaurini originated in southern Laramidia. Evolution of giant tyrannosaurs in southern North America, alongside giant ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, and titanosaurs suggests large-bodied dinosaurs evolved at low latitudes in North America.
Researchers identify #molecular basis for #morphological #diversity of #amniote #skull
#osteogenesis #Msx2 #Runx2 #Sp7
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-molecular-basis-morphological-diversity-amniote.html
Vickysaurus
Daniel Dvorkin
CellBioNews