In our 130th episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Tim Porter, Director of New Learning Resources at the Boston Children’s Museum. The Boston Children’s Museum recently opened their first dinosaur exhibit, Explore-a-saurus, which integrates STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields all in one exhibit and teaches visitors all about dinosaurs.

Episode 130 is also about Puertasaurus, a massive titanosaur that lived in the Cretaceous in what is now western North America.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

The dinosaur of the day: Puertasaurus

Titanosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Patagonia

Type species is Puertasaurus reuili

Named in honor of Pablo Puerta and Santiago Reuil, who discovered the specimen in 2001 and helped prepare it

Described in 2006 by Fernando Novas and colleagues

Found a neck vertebra, back vertebra, and two tail vertebrae

Tend to find fewer bones of larger animals because they were probably scattered by scavengers and environmental factors (flood, winds, storms) before the body is buried

Back vertebra is about 1 m (3.6 ft) tall and 1.7 m (5.6 ft) wide (broadest known sauropod vertebra, and two-thirds of it have wing-like diapophyses, which support the ribs, and merge with the centrum and neural spine, to make a wide spade-like shape

In other sauropods the vertebrae is not as large and form a cross-bar shape

One of the biggest known dinosaurs

Originally estimated to be about 115-131 ft (35-40 m) long, and weighed about 80-100 metric tons, now thought to be 98 ft (30 m) long and weigh 50 metric tons, though some think it was 89 ft (27 m) long and weighed 60-70 metric tons

Not clear if Puertasaurus was one of the longest titanosaurs, but it seems to be similar in size to Argentinosaurus (length wise)

The dorsal vertebra shows it had a more massive rib cage than Argentinosaurus (possible that Puertasaurus would have been wider)

Similar to titanosaurs in the group Lognkosauria (some of the longest, heaviest dinosaurs), so Puertasaurus is related to titanosaurs such as Futalognkosaurus and Mendozasaurus

These titanosaurs had more flexible necks than other titanosaurs, so it’s possible Puertasaurus could eat a large range of plants without having to walk much (could easily consume food in one place, so that would help it grow and maintain its large size)

Before Puertasaurus, scientists thought that the largest titanosaurs (Lognkosauria group) lived earlier in the Late Cretaceous, but Puertasaurus was found in early Maastrichtian deposits, which means these large dinosaurs may have lived all the way to the end of the Cretaceous

Fun Fact:

The huge eggs that Baby Louise and its relatives came from have been credited to several different species over the year

Tyrannosaurus (large & from Asia)

Therizinosaurs (What the original baby Louise drawing is based on)

In 2007: Oviraptorosaurs, with the discovery of Gigantoraptor which would be able to lay the huge eggs (now confirmed with the recovered embryo)



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Interview:

For those who may prefer reading, see below for the full transcript of our interview with Tim Porter:

COMING SOON!