ITS TIME

FOR

DINOSAUR MARCH MADNESS 2k23!!!!!!!!!!!!

Starting NEXT WEEK, we begin the ultimate competition:

DMM: RISING STARS

These are ALL dinosaurs that have been discovered in the past five years!!! New friends from old times!!! Including such new fan favorites as Bajadasaurus, Jakapil, Meraxes, and Anachronornis - and that's only four of them!

From the weird to the wonderful, these dinosaurs are here to indicate that just because they were found recently, doesn't mean that they aren't destined to become icons like the names we already know and love. Get ready to learn about some new paleontological excitement - and debate angrily over which ones are better ;)

Round One will go from March 1st through the 7th

Round Two will extend from March 8th through the 14th

Round Three will then go from the 15th to the 21st

Round Four from the 22nd to the 28th

And the FINAL FOUR SHOWDOWN (Ornithischian Vs Sauropodomorph vs Nonavian theropod vs Bird) will occur from March 29th through April 4th!

Thanks to the new tumblr poll feature, reconstructions and mini factfiles for each dinosaur will be on the post with the poll itself! No need to leave tumblr, no personal research, no google quizzes - just rapid learning and immediate voting!

Get ready to vote! Get ready to debate! Get ready... for DINOSAUR MARCH MADNESS!

Round One Matchups under the readmore :)

The 50 million year old fossil site of London Clay preserves impressive fossils of early Eocene birds. Back then, during the PETM, the city of London was near a tropical shoreline, and the land was covered with forests of tropical trees and palm groves. In this hot house world, birds were diversifying rapidly, and lots of strange forms lived in London Clay.

Pulchrapollia: This pretty bird belongs to a lineage related to parrots and had parrot-like feet, but was not a close relative of them. This bird had a corvid-like beak and was likely an omnivore, like jays today.

Archaeodromus: A relative of swifts, potoos and nightjars that hawked after insects, catching them in its huge mouth.

Eotrogon: An early relative of the modern trogons and quetzals. It dove after insects and fruit from its high perch.

Ypresiglaux: Among the earliest known owls, and also one of the smallest. Despite its small stature, it was a fearsome predator of insects and small vertebrates.

Nasidytes: The earliest known loon (or diver). Like its modern relatives, it was an aquatic predator of fish and invertebrates, diving beneath the surface to catch its prey.

Dasornis toliapica: A species of pelagornithid, which were large pseudotoothed soaring seabirds. This small species had a wingspan of "only" three metres.

Nettapterornis: A wading waterfowl related to modern ducks that used its long legs and flat bill to filter food from the water.

Lithornis vulturinus: An ancestral palaeognath that was perfectly capable of long distance flight. It had a flexible beak to help catch its prey.

Charadriisimilis: A small wader that was related to the same group as oystercatchers, sandpipers and plovers. It used its long legs and beak to catch small animals from the sediment.

(Type specimen of Nasidytes ypresianus [scale bar = 10 mm] prior to being prepared out of the surrounding rock [A–B] and with most of the bones prepared out [C], along with an isolated carpometacarpus [fused wrist and palm bones, D], from Mayr and Kitchener, 2022)

Meaning of name: Nasidytes = nose [in Latin, referencing the type locality Walton-on-the-Naze] diver [in Greek]; ypresianus = from the Ypresian

Age: Eocene (Ypresian), 54.6‒55 million years ago

Where found: London Clay Formation, Essex, U.K.

How much is known: Partial skeleton of one individual including the lower jaw and most major limb bones. An isolated carpometacarpus (fused wrist and palm bones) has also been found.

Notes: Nasidytes was closely related to loons, a group of waterbirds from the temperate and polar regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It is the oldest and most completely known example of an early loon-like bird that has been discovered so far. (A few fossils from the Late Cretaceous have been suggested to belong to the loon lineage, but this is highly questionable.)

Modern loons are specialized for diving and hunting fish underwater, so much so that they are essentially unable to walk on land. Nasidytes, however, had a shorter, broader bill than living loons, suggesting that it did not feed mainly on fish. Although it was likely capable of swimming and diving, its hindlimbs also appear to have been less adapted to pursuing prey underwater. Instead, it may have foraged for aquatic invertebrates that did not need to be chased down.

Nasidytes

Nasidytes — вимерлий рід гагар (Gaviiformes), який мешкав у ранньому еоцені на території сучасної Великобританії. Він містить один вид, N. ypresianus. Nasidytes є найранішою однозначно ідентифікованою гагарою в літописі скам’янілостей.

Повний текст на сайті "Вимерлий світ":

Factfiles:

Annakacygna hajimei, A. yoshiiensis

Artwork by @otussketching, written by @zygodactylus

Name Meaning: Swan from Annaka (Hajime’s or of Yoshii-machi) 

Time: 11.5 million years ago (Tortonian stage of the Miocene epoch, Neogene period)

Location: Haraichi Formation, Annaka, Japan

Annakacygna was dubbed during its research “the ultimate bird”, and honestly, I don’t even blame the scientists for doing so - I may have even done the same. Both large species of swan, A. hajimei was about the size of a black swan, and A. yoshiiensis was larger than even the mute swan. They were weird in so many ways it boggles the mind: they were adapted for filter feeding in the water, their wings and tails were so flexible they could form a cradle for their young on their backs like modern mute swangs, said tails and wings were probably great and flashy display structures, its head was extremely large weird looking and had a slightly spoon-like bill, they had wide and heavy vertebrae but still had long and flexible necks, it may have even been a flightless bird or at least a poor flier based on its sternum and coracoids, though its scapula is extremely strong and unlike flightless animals - more research is needed to better understand this aspect of its mobility. That said, it did have very short wing birds, weirdly curved and short among birds, with weirdly shaped finger bones coming together to create weirdly formed curved wings. Its hips were arched up, creating a dip in its back, and it had narrow leg bones, allowing for efficient movement in the water like living *grebes and loons*. So while it had this whole weird display structure with its wings and tail going on, and its robust but long neck, and that strangely boat-shaped body (what the actual f-), it was zooming through the water like a grebe or loon. It had a similar beak to living shovelers, possibly, and it could move its jaw back and forth in a seesaw like motion, not like any living swans. It could then filter food through its jaws via this motion, eating a variety of plankton through soft lamellae within its bill. It was probably very social, given its display structures, and communicated both vocally (imagine the power of those calls with that robust neck) and visually. Annakacygna also took care of its young, extensively, keeping them on their back protected in their wings, to the point that they may not have spent much time on land (like living loons and grebes). It wasn’t a deep diver, but was stable at sea while foraging on food and moving along the surface of the water, living primarily in the ocean. Found in a marine environment, Annakacygna lived with sharks, seals, many kinds of whales, and desmostylians.   

Nasidytes ypresianus

Artwork by @otussketching, written by @zygodactylus

Name Meaning: Ypresian Diver of Naze

Time: 55 million years ago (Ypresian stage of the Eocene epoch, Paleogene period) 

Location: Walton Member, London Clay Formation, England 

Nasidytes is the earliest known loon known via the fossil record, similar to other early fossil loons known from later times. It had a shorter and wider beak than living loons, and it had pleurocoels like most birds but unlike modern loons. It already had the weird wing proportions found in modern loons, and it had webbed feet similar to many water birds. Nasidytes probably wasn’t an aquatic pursuit predator, like its living relatives. Instead, it probably fed on marine invertebrates, making short foot-propelled dives for food. It lived near the coast, in a vibrant habitat filled with a wide variety of other early birds emerging right after the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. The London Clay Formation was an early tropical coastal forest, much like those found in Southeast Asia today. Some of Nasidytes’ neighbors included Danielsavis, a weird duck-screamer; diurnal raptors including the masillaraptorid Danielsraptor; early relatives of owls, trogons, paleognaths, and tropicbirds; the pseudotoothed bird Dasornis; and a wide variety of parrot-passerine relatives. Crocodilians, snakes, turtles, fish, sharks, and a few mammals also lived in this environment, including an early primate Platychoerops.