Saturday, April 28, 2018

Adorable Triassic Pseudosuchians

Erpetosuchus sp. from North America
Erpetosuchids are one of those groups that I saw reference to somewhere, filed it away in the recesses of my brain, and didn’t remember again until I read the new paper by Nesbitt et al. (2018) about the brain and endocast of Parringtonia gracilis. There’s a gorgeous skeletal restoration on page 124 and that skull looked awfully familiar to me. Oh yes, it looks a whole lot like the skull of Erpetosuchus grandi, a taxon I first read about thanks to Benton & Walker (2002) probably a decade ago. With a little more digging, I found that the Erpetosuchidae is a small but charismatic family of mid-sized pseudosuchians with unusual dentition and surprisingly croc-like armor. This is one of those small, obscure groups of Triassic hellasaurs that I like to put in the spotlight, if even briefly.

Friday, April 13, 2018

The Camptosaurus Challenge


Camptosaurus dispar skeletal by Scott Hartman
If any of you dear readers follow me on Twitter (@zmiller1902) or any of my blogger colleagues (there’s a handy list at the bottom of this post) you’ve probably seen at least a few entries in the hashtag Camptosaurus challenge. For the deets, check out David Orr’s two posts on this very topic and the deluge of paleoart that it inspired. You’ll see that I have two rather terrible entries—both were rush jobs—but I was determined to put something respectable together last night and I’m pretty happy with the result: