Episode 228 is all about Gigantspinosaurus, a stegosaur (not a spinosaur) with large shoulder spines.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

The day that wiped out the dinosaurs was captured in a 1.3m layer of flood water, fossilized fish, and raining tektites source

According to the New Yorker, we can expect to see many dinosaur fossils that were killed by the asteroid in future articles source

Several museums are working together to excavate near the Jurassic Mile in Wyoming source

A man found a Spinosaurus tooth while running erands in Japan source

The Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise is installing Tinker, a juvenile T. rex cast source

The Antarctic Dinosaurs exhibit is now at LA’s Natural History Museum with Cryolophosaurus and Glacialisaurus source

A Jurassic Park fan created a 6 minute stop motion short called Indomation featuring an Indoraptor toy and wooden artist manikins source

The dinosaur of the day: Gigantspinosaurus

Stegosaur that lived in the Late Jurassic in what is now Sichuan, China

Holotype is of an adult and included a partial skeleton of a subadult, with lower jaws (no skull), hind feet, and end of the tail, as well as plates, spines, and scutes

Also found a skin impression from the left shoulder

Medium-sized, estimated to be 14 ft (4.2 m) long and weighed 1,500 lb (700 kg)

Had large shoulder spines, twice as long as the shoulder blades, and small plates on its back

Had a large head, with 30 teeth in the lower jaw

Had broad hips, and robust forelimbs

Xing Lida and others described the skin impressions in 2008. They were pentagonal or hexagonal in shape

Skeleton had a pathology in the left femur, probably from a bone tumor (based on CT scans)

Type species is Gigantspinosaurus sichuanensis

Name means “giant spined lizard”

Species name refers to Sichuan

Found in 1985 by Ouyang Hui, and described in 1986 by Gao Ruiqi and others, who thought it was Tuojiangosaurus

Named in 1992 by Ouyang, in an abstract for a lecture

Thought to be a nomen nudum until 2006 (the abstract had enough of a description)

Tracy Ford wrote an article in 2006 that reconstructed Gigantspinosaurus (there had been other images of it published before)

Ford said earlier representations had the shoulder spines upside down, his reconstruction had them going upwards

Peng Guangzho and others in 2005 redescribed Gigantspinosaurus

Susannah Maidment and Wei Guangbio in 2006 also found it was a valid taxon

Can see Gigantspinosaurus at the Zigong Dinosaur Museum

Fun Fact: The “Age of the Dinosaurs” that we all imagine was mostly the Cretaceous Period.