Episode 126 is all about Australovenator, a megaraptoran theropod that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now Australia.

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In this episode, we discuss:

In the news:

The dinosaur of the day: Australovenator

Megaraptoran theropod that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now Australia (Queensland)

Name means “southern hunter”

Type species is Australovenator wintonensis

Species name refers to the township of Winton (found near there)

Described in 2009 by Scott Hocknull and team

Only one known specimen, nicknamed “Banjo” after Banjo Paterson (Australian bush poet, journalist, and author)

Bush poetry is a style that depicts the Australian bush (any sparsely-inhabited region in Australia, which Banjo revered as a source of national ideals)

Banjo the Australovenator has found with Diamantinasaurus, a sauropod, at the Matilda site in Australia

Other animals that lived at the same time in the same place include fish, turtles, crocodilians, insects, pterosaurs, ankylosaurians, hypsiolophodonts, sauropods (Diamantinasaurus and Wintonotitan). Plants include ferns, ginkgoes, gymnosperms and angiosperms

Most complete skeleton found in Australia of a carnivorous dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous

Scott Hocknell called it the “cheetah of its time” (lightweight predator)

Holotype includes left dentary, teeth, partial forelimbs and hindlimbs, partial right ilium, ribs, and gastralia

About 6.6 ft (2 m) tall and 20 ft (6 m) long, weighing 1100-2200 lb (500-1000 kg)

Had recurved, serrated teeth

Lightweight and fast, could run down prey

Some similarities with Fukuiraptor and Megaraptor

Megaraptors were the dominant carnivorous dinosaurs in Australia in the mid-Cretaceous

Can see Australovenator at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History

Fun fact:

About 550 million years ago (back in the Precambrian) the Bilaterian animals evolved. The common feature in this clade is that (almost) every animal has a distinct head, and are “bilaterally symmetric” meaning the right half of the animal is a mirror of the left half. This is different than the group of “radially symmetric” animals like jellyfish or adult starfish. Early Bilaterians included things like worms, but shortly after chordates and then vertebrates evolved to include fish, dinosaurs, and eventually humans. One place you see reference to bilaterians in paleontology is with the use of the word “postcranial”, literally after the head. Since (almost) all Bilaterians (which are mostly what fossilize) have heads, it’s an easy way to refer to the rest of the animal. One of the most useful features of dinosaurs being bilaterally symmetric is that you technically only need to find one half of the animal to know exactly what it looked like.”

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