Murderers’ Row Late Cretaceous Style: Deinosuchus and Teratophoneus

The “newer school” #Deinosuchus (we are working on newest school :-)) cuts an imposing figure at the Natural History Musuem of Utah in Salt Lake City. Everyone’s favorite ultra-giant #alligatoroid, this #crocodilian competes for title of longest and heaviest sprawled-gait belly slider of all time. Named from incredibly scrappy material, and known from precious few articulated elements, in recent years a wealth of new bits and bops has been discovered, resulting in far better size constraints and morphological understanding, some of which are being written up as I type :-). I suspect it spent its days floating quietly, awaiting the perfect ambush moment. A max-sized adult could take down any #dinosaur of its day, though if it did stumble across a max-sized #sauropod it had best kill-in-one lest a veritable locomotive break its back (of course I show #sauropod bias :-)). #Teratophoneus “monstrous murderer” is known from Utah material, the holotype is down the road in Provo from this display. Named from not-fully-adult elements, this #Tyrannosaurus cousin would tell you it was the apex predator, but only when far from a body of water, as #Deinosuchus could take down even a full-sized adult drinking water. A recent Montana find looks startlingly similar to Terato, but as a full adult the animal is substantially larger than what is seen here. I am eager to learn if this new beast is actually Terato or a new genus of #tyrannosaurid. #Brachychampsa looks positively minuscule after those two bruisers. This cute critter confounds phylogenetic placement, being considered everything from a “basal #caiman” (I love that term, a BC ;-)) to an #alligatorine. If you look at Gilmore’s 1911 paper it sure looks like an #alligator to me, that massively broad snout being a dead ringer for today’s swamp monster, except than the fifth maxillary tooth is the most robust one in the front half of the skull, differing from ‘gators. Considering many can’t tell a #crocodile from an #dinosaur alligator in the wild, I wonder if we could tell a Brachy from a Deino same-sized beasts were floating. #FossilCrates

Видео Murderers’ Row Late Cretaceous Style: Deinosuchus and Teratophoneus автора Animal Awareness Advocates