Episode 230 is all about Jeholosaurus, a cute little ornithopod from northeastern China.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

Amazing skin detail was preserved in one inch long theropod tracks in South Korea source

A new study shows that Dinosaurs didn’t evolve thick eggs until the Middle or Late Jurassic source

A new paper declares that Bienosaurus is a nomen dubium source

The Field Museum in Chicago recreated the night sky of the Cretaceous period to accompany Sue source

The University of Michigan Museum of Natural History is a new museum that has a Majungasaurus on display source

In Texas, there’s a traveling museum that has gone to thousands of schools, called Dinosaur George source

Robert Young, a 9-year-old created a website Dinology, dedicated to dinosaurs source

The Jurassic Park trilogy is now on Netflix, in the UK and Ireland, but not the US source

The dinosaur of the day: Jeholosaurus

Ornithischian that lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now China (Yixian Formation in the Jehol Biota)

Body similar to other ornithopods

Bipedal and small

Holotype is of a compressed skull and partial skeleton, and is 28 in (71.1 cm) long, with a 14 in (35.6 cm) long tail

Second specimen found, has small skull and some neck vertebrae

Both specimens are either juveniles or subadults

Skulls are incomplete, but had a short snout and large eyes

May have been an omnivore

Back teeth and maxillary teeth are fan shaped, like herbivores

Premaxillary teeth are longer and more narrow, like carnivores

Found in 2000 in Liaoning Province and described in 2000 by Xu Xing, Wang Xioalin, and You Hailu

Type species is Jeholosaurus shangyuanensis

Name means “lizard from Jehol” (an old geographical name for western Liaoning and northern Hebei)

Species name refers to the geographical area of Shangyuan where the fossils were found

Small ornithopods are rare in East Asia. More work needs to be done to further establish the phylogeny of Jeholosaurus

Fun Fact: The term Konservat-Lagerstätte is used for amazing paleontological sites that capture more detail than a typical site.