Episode 570: The Dinosaur with the Widest Wingspan Ever. Bird expert Daniel Ksepka joins us from the Bruce Museum to discuss some of the most interesting extinct birds, dinosaur brains, and much more. Plus the new sauropodomorph Xiangyunloong with an extra sturdy tail.

News:

• There’s a new sauropodomorph dinosaur, Xiangyunloong fengming that had a sturdy, long tail source

Interview:

Daniel Ksepka, a vertebrate paleontologist who specializes in birds. His main research is on penguins, though he has studied everything from turkeys to albatrosses. He is also a research associate at several museums and curator of science at The Bruce Museum in Connecticut—an art and science museum that has an exciting exhibit coming up about Earth’s mass extinctions.

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The dinosaur of the day: Brasilotitan

• Titanosaur sauropod that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Brazil (Adamantina Formation)
• Small, walked on all fours, had a long neck and long tail, and a small head
• As a titanosaur, would have walked with its neck more upright
• Estimated to be 39 ft (12 m) long
• Had a squared-off snout
• Lower jawbone is L-shaped, so it has the squared snout
• Think, like Nigersaurus, but much less extreme
• Type and only species is Brasilotitan nemophagus
• Genus name means “Brazil giant”
• Species name means “pasture” or “wood” and “to eat” and refers to it being an herbivore
• Fossils found in 2000
• Found in reddish sandstone
• Bones found were broken but not really distorted
• Described in 2013 by Elaine Machado and others
• Holotype is a partial skeleton that includes a right lower jaw bone, two partial neck bones, parts of the hips, and a foot bone
• Also found an isolated tooth
• Likely was scavenged by theropods before it was buried
• Some theropod teeth found alongside the skeleton, and the fossils have puncture marks
• Puncture marks in the hips
• Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include sauropods such as Antarctosaurus and Gondwanatitan, and theropods such as abelisaurs and enantiornithes like Navaornis
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place include amphibians, turtles, fish, mammals, and crocodylomorphs

Fun Fact:

Dinosaurs were like “latchkey kids” and mammal parents were/are more like “helicopter parents”. source

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