FoxTrot by Bill Amend for March 05, 1993

Sauroposeidon is the tallest now

I’m actually interested by these facts. Jason should be a paleontologist like Ross Geller from the tv show Friends! :D

That dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent? Examples include:

1. Pachycephalosaurus (North America)

2. Amargasaurus (South America)

3. Heterodontosaurus (Africa)

4. Plateosaurus (Europe)

5. Mamenchisaurus (Asia)

6. Minmi (Australia)

7. Cryolophosaurus (Antarctica)

That Spinosaurus’s main prey was not Ouranosaurus, but the sawfish Onchopristis? Spinosaurus and Onchopristis lived about 30 million years after Ouranosaurus.

That like Ankylosaurus and several other thyreophoran dinosaurs, the sauropod Shunosaurus had a tail club?

That an alphabetical list of dinosaurs and other animals with whom they coexisted could look like this?

Ankylosaurus

Brachiosaurus

Compsognathus

Dinilysia (a snake)

Edmontosaurus

Fasolasuchus (a large, predatory archosaur; one of the largest-ever quadrupedal land carnivores)

Glacialisaurus

Herrerasaurus

Iguanacolossus

Jeholornis (a bird)

Kulindadromeus

Leptoceratops

Muttaburrasaurus

Neovenator

Ouranosaurus

Parapuzosia (an ammonite; one of the largest Mesozoic invertebrates)

Quetzalcoatlus (one of the largest pterosaurs)

Riojasaurus

Squalicorax (a shark)

Thalassomedon (a large, long-necked plesiosaur)

Utahraptor

Vieraella (one of the earliest true frogs)

Wareolestes (an insectivorous mammaliaform)

Xiphactinus (a bony fish)

Yangchuanosaurus

Zalambdalestes (an insectivorous mammal)

Actually, Spinosaurus was 45 feet long. It was 9 feet high at its hips, and its dorsal crest, formed from elongated neural spines, added another 6 feet. Spinosaurus had a mass of about 8 tons. Its mouth was about 3½ feet long and 8 inches wide.

Source(s):

•Paul, Gregory S. “Theropods”. The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs 2nd, 2nd edition, Princeton University Press, 2016, page 95.

•Molina-Pérez, Rubén and Asier Larramendi. “Prehistoric puzzle: The anatomy of theropods”. Dinosaur Facts and Figures: The Theropods and Other Dinosauriformes, edited by Robert Kirk and Kristen Zodrow, Princeton University Press, 2019, page 142.

That Mamenchisaurus was up to 110 feet long including its 50-foot neck, 60 feet tall, and 90 tons in mass? I found out about this in The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs , 2nd edition (©2016) by Gregory S. Paul.

That should be “some pterosaurs might have been pink like flamingos”. Jason’s right, though; one such pterosaur was Pterodaustro , whose fossils were found in early Cretaceous rock in Argentina. It was rather small for a pterosaur; its wingspan was about 4¼ feet, and its lower jaw was lined with keratinous bristles about an inch long; Pterodaustro may have used these for filter-feeding, as a flamingo does with its lamellae (the bristles along its bill). I learned about this from The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Prehistoric Flying Reptiles (©1991) by Dr. Peter Wellnhofer, and I learned what a flamingo’s bristles are called from The Big Book of Animal Records (©1984) by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor.