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CMIPalaeo — Sonorasaurus
#dinosaur #brachiosauridae #archosaur #brachiosaur #cretaceous #palaeoart #palaeontology #sauropod #sauropodomorpha
Published: 2017-04-18 03:13:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 1421; Favourites: 60; Downloads: 5
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Description
Mid-sized brachiosaurid from Arizona, North America's last sauropod before the Great Sauropod Hiatus.Related content
Comments: 22
Covered in fat for life in the desert, and yeah, probably pretty warm too
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i can see sauropods having fat on them but now i can only picture this sweating horribly
unless it is an arctic/antarctic sauropod
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Nope, it's from Arizona, in an environment that's pretty desert-like. Many desert reptiles haul around quite a lot of fat, which is why this fella has the chubby tail base and the jiggly neck-boobs. I dunno if dinosaurs sweat... but sauropods were certainly warm-bodied creatures... I'm sure that they must have had strategies to keep cool. That's one thing I was trying to suggest by the pinkish midline neck flap - loose, veiny skin that could shed heat like an elephant's ears.
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oh yeah fat can be used for deserts too
my mind just naturally goes to fat = burning in heat so i didn't think of it
they probably didn't but when i see fat folds my mind goes to sweaty grossness, yet again if they were that large it would make sense to sweat a bit some how, who knows maybe they didn't need that much fat as the shear size of them would make them warm
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I'm sure sauropods probably would've mud bathed like most big animals do, but being in a desert might make that kind of tricky...
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mud bathing does sound like a neat idea but yet again i doubt they could get in the mud when they were THAT massive
my theory is their air pockets also acted as a ventilation system if that makes sense
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"The great sauropod hiatus" is the perfect name for it.
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It's certainly an interesting event, and I'm quite curious to see if it is real or just an artefact of sampling. I'm inclined to think that it was real, and North America just didn't have any sauropods til Alamosaurus (and kin?) showed up at the end of the Cretaceous.
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I'd agree with you because there are some truly spectacular fossil sites from the Late Cretaceous of North America (such as Dinosaur Park). It would be unlikely for such giant animals to disappear from a fairly well-known fossil record.
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Yeah, the Late Cretaceous is pretty well-sampled in WESTERN North America... although some sort of European immigrant titanosaurs in Appalachia actually wouldn't shock me...
There's one sauropod, the poorly-known presumed dicraeosaurid Dyslocosaurus from Wyoming that was thought to have potentially come from the Hell Creek Formation (Fred Loomis was not the best at making especially useful field notes). I don't know that it's ever been pinned down exactly, but the general (and by far most likely) thought is that the specimen was just reworked from Morrison sediments. This specimen was collected by my college and is housed in the museum where I work, which is pretty cool, but it's not currently on display - I'll have to get a look at it soon...
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I think that a North-South American interchange is more likely, because when large titanosaurs came up from Mexico, Texas, and New Mexico, hadrosaurs start to show up in South America. However, that doesn't rule out the possibility of a few European titanosaurs migrating to Appalachia and subsequently Laramidia.
After looking it up, its pretty unlikely that he actually found a late surviving dicreasaurid that had no prior evidence of existing... I just find it more likely its just from the Morrison where there is evidence dicreasaurids existed.
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I don't think any Laramidian sauropods originated from European>Appalachian immigrants; just that it's possible Appalachia might've had its own sauropods from the nearby European archipelago, potentially via the Arctic which still connected Eurasia and Appalachia. Alamosaurus is definitely either a South American or Asian invader. If it's an opisthocoelicaudiine, as it has been regarded, it's probably an immigrant from Asia by way of Beringia, but if it's a lognkosaur as has recently been suggested it's probably from South America.
And yeah, Dyslocosaurus is almost certainly from the Morrison, or at least a similar formation. It just doesn't make sense for it to be from the Hell Creek Formation. Although it's still interesting, as the only other putative dicraeosaur in the Morrison is Suuwassea. Perhaps there are more of them out there, or perhaps the North American ones are doing something odd.
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Yeah, misinterpreted your appalachian sauropods part, but I got it now.
For the reasons stated in my last comment, I'm still inclined to believe that Alamosaurus is a South American lognkosaur. And, who knows what might come out of the Morrison? Might be more dicreasurids, might be no more.
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It just boggles my mind just HOW MANY sauropods existed in the Morrison environments. And the thing to be on the lookout for in the Morrison is probably new brachiosaurs.... I've heard rumours that there's lots of scrappy material that just is not referable to Brachiosaurus.
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Yeah, there is a staggering amount of sauropods from the Morrison. Even taking into account temporal and geographic differences, there are still at least four or five HUGE animals (Some of the smallest were still around the size of elephants.) present in a single environment.
Also, hadn't heard about the new brachiosaur material. I live in an area where there aren't many fossils, I don't get info like that early, unfortunately.
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