Adam Yates

This is true, but in this case I think something more is going on. The tens of millions of years spent with smooth carinae when serrations could potentially pop-up in the evolutionary blink of an eye (see how quickly the Carcharodon lineage switched from smooth carinae to serrated) is kind of odd.

So the question is what are those serrations actually for?

Review of evidence that foxes and cats cause extinctions of Australia's endemic mammals Abstract. Over half of Australia's threatened and extinct endemic mammal species have been attributed to introduced red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and cats (Fel

A recent paper claims, opposed to what conservation science has known for decades, that there is no evidence that foxes and cats were a major driver of Australia's mammal extinctions. Turns out there are quite a few issues here. Strap in for a looong thread 🧪

academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Yes that's the one. Thanks.

I'd read it. I find them strangely fascinating. I'm trying to remember the name used by that particularly aggressive and racist sender of unsolicited emails from back in the 2000s. The one who thought every word that Von Huene wrote was gospel.

Aussie here, I didn't know the answer either and had to look it up. Shame on me, I know. And yes, Australian TV is dire.

Honestly, that would have to be the best ammonite reconstruction I've seen.

www.palaeonavix.org/index.php/pa...

Pretty excited to see what looks like a quadrupedal early sauropodiform (Antetonitrus or Ledumahadi perhaps?) stamping in front of what looks like a bipedal sauropodomorph. One of my dinosaurus making it to the screen!

Duckz Only!

#paleoart

Kinda wondered if the "T. rex species complex' was because a reviewer in the multiple Tyrannosaurus species camp complained and this was the easiest solution. Or perhaps there is more evidence for multiple Tyrannosaurus species that we've yet to see.

Here's an interesting thought: The new Xenovenator seems nested within Late K, North American troodontids and is along way in time and space from Yaverlandia. So maybe troodontids evolved dome heads TWICE.

New dinosaur Xenovenator espinosai, apparently a dome-headed troodontid: www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/18... 🪶🧪 (📷Rivera-Sylva et al.)

Interesting, so if the ceratopsian position for Zalmoxes finds more conclusive support, and the position of these European ceratopsian holds, then we have a case of the frill being lost through evolution. These rhabdodonts are pretty weird ceratopsians!

It's found to be a sister taxon to Zalmoxes & Ferenceratops in the Bayesian tree. Much of the skull rear is known from the former (the parietals and squamosals form a deep wedge, but don't extend into a true "frill"), allowing it to serve as the basis for the missing parts of the Ajkaceratops skull.

Lovely model, but given their deeply nested phylogenetic position in the paper what is the basis for this guy's frilless-ness?

Funkyceratops.mp4

Some days ago I made a thread on Pleistocene crocs in honor of Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age, and now I'm bringing it here too.
Let me prefice this by saying that I of course understand their absence, obviously more unique fauna takes priority and I don't begrudge the team their choice

I'm at a loss to explain why organisations that should be better keep doling out this muck

#3157 A helpful tutorial

some of the "written" passages are completely unhinged, "Its discovery highlights Australia’s unique role in reshaping the boundaries between myth and science."
is it an all-year april fool?

Agreed! Quinkana at the moment is a delicious mystery.

We don't really know very much about Quinkana's ecology since its remains are so incomplete and not one scrap of postcranium has yet been described. I'd say there is circumstantial evidence for some degree of terrestriality (remains in caves far from water bodies, ecomorphology of the skull etc.)

I probably shouldn't need to say this but 'drop-bears' are a joke and 'Thylarctos plummetus' is a fictional joke name, NOT a predator of prehistoric australian crocodiles. This should not appear on a museum's educational pages!!

The murgon eggshells referenced on the page were almost certainly laid by bog-standard semi-aquatic crocodiles (Kambara) as stated in the paper.

For those not up on ozzie croc palaeontology.
-There is no such thing as a drop croc.

Some have speculated that certain dwarf ozzie crocs (e.g. Trilophosuchus) might have been tree-climbing but the evidence is lacking. Drop predation behaviour is pure fantasy.

@jorgoristevski.bsky.social just alterted me to this absolutely horrible page of false AI slop being passed off as an educational page on the Queensland Museum website.
www.museum.qld.gov.au/learn-and-di...

1/n

A couple more reptiles I want to appear in PhP Ice Age are Paludirex and Quinkana. Megalania and the saltwater crocodile weren’t the only large predatory reptiles of Pleistocene Australia.

Here I’m going to focus on Paludirex.

doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
new paper out now with @royalsociety.org on limb structure & function of the #fossil #kangaroo, Dorcopsoides fossilis, from central Australia. The oldest known macropodine (subfamily of all but one of living roos) & a fun glimpse into the great Late Miocene kangaroo radiation