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Episode 245 is all about Vulcanodon, a Jurassic sauropod that lived in an African desert surrounded by volcanoes.

We also interview Scott A Bradley, the host of the Hellbent for Horror Podcast, and author of the book, Screaming for Pleasure: How Horror Makes You Happy and Healthy. He is also a guest blogger on Lit Reactor and contributing writer to magazines like Evilspeak and Medium Chill. Follow him on twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

A microraptor was found with a complete lizard in its stomach that it ate face first source

A shiny new dinosaur, Hesperornithoides, was found in amber with one especially long fuzzy toe source

Makoshika State Park in Montana has a new dinosaur/paleontology tour source

Dinosaur Isle Museum, in the UK, has a new juvenile T. rex replica skeleton source

Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy is being held on the Isle of Wight in September source

The Grand Rapids Children’s Museum in Michigan has a new traveling exhibit called Amazing Dinosaurs source

Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Colin Trevorrow, and Blue attended the grand opening of Jurassic World the Ride source

A mobile game called Tap! Dig! My Museum! Is available on Android and iOS source

The dinosaur of the day: Vulcanodon

Sauropod that lived in the Jurassic in what is now southern Africa

Quadrupedal, with column-like legs, long neck, long tail

Based on skeletal remains, at least 21 ft (6.5 m) long

Gregory Paul estimated it to be 35 ft (11 m) long

Estimated to weigh 3.5 tonnes

Early, basal sauropod

Not much known about the skull or neck

Forelimbs were more similar to later sauropods, about 3/4 the length of hindlimbs (proportionately long)

Had a large claw on the first toe of each foot

Claws and second and third toes were broad and nail-like (similar to Tazoudasaurus, a close relative sauropod found in Morocco, but not other sauropods)

Had spoon-shaped teeth

Only one species: Vulcanodon karibaensis

Found in 1969 in Zimbabwe

Found on an island in Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe (used to be Rhodesia). Lake Kariba is the largest man-made lake in the world

Found in 1969 by B.A. Gibson, a team collected the fossils between October 1969 and May 1970

Described in a brief note at a symposium in Cape Town in 1972 by Michael Raath

Genus name means “volcano tooth”

Skeleton was found in sandstone, on Island 126/127 (no official name), in the “Vulcanodon beds”, sediment in the Batoka Formation with flood basalts. At the time Vulcanodon lived, there was a lot of volcanism and lava flows.

Genus name refers to the Roman god of fire, Vulcanus, combined with the Greek word “odon” for tooth

Species name refers to Lake Kariba

One of the first dinosaurs found in Zimbabwe

Found a fragmentary skeleton (pelvis, sacrum, most of the hind limb and foot, right forearm, right thigh bone, and tail vertebrae). No skull found

Geoffrey Bond and Michael Cooper found more fossils later, including a shoulder blade and part of a neck vertebra

Originally thought to be a prosauropod (found knife-shaped teeth near the fossils, and prosauropods may have been omnivorous). But those teeth are actually from a theropod that may have scavenged the Vulcanodon carcass

Raath thought at first Vulcanodon was an advanced prosauropod, then in 1975 Arthur Cruickshank showed it was a sauropod (Vulcanodon’s 5th toe is the same length as 5th toes on sauropods)

For a long time scientists thought Vulcanodon lived in the Early Jurassic or the Triassic-Jurassic boundary and thought to be the earliest known sauropod, but Adam Yates in 2004 found Vulcanodon was much younger, from the Late Jurassic

In 2000, scientists described the sauropod Isanosaurus from Thailand, which lived in the Triassic (well before Vulcanodon)

Probably lived in a desert like environment

Vulcanodon fossils are stored in Bulawayo, in the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe

Fun Fact: Some dinosaurs may not have digested their food fully, and opted to spit out parts of undigested food like owls do today.