Episode 141 is all about Ohmdenosaurus, a questionable genus that was herbivorous and lived in the Early Jurassic in what is now Germany.

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In this episode, we discuss:

News:

The dinosaur of the day: Ohmdenosaurus

Name means “Ohmden lizard”

Herbivore that lived in the Early Jurassic in what is now Germany

Named and described in 1978 by Rupert Wild, a German paleontologist who visited the Urwelt-Museum Hauff at Holzmaden in the 1970s and saw that a fossil labeled as a plesiosaur was actually a dinosaur bone

Type species is Ohmdenosaurus liasicus

Name refers to Ohmden, the town near the quarry where Ohmdenosaurus fossils were found

Species name refers to Lias, which is an old name for Early Jurassic

Only a few fragmentary leg bones have been found

Some think Ohmdenosaurus may not be a valid genus, because so few remains have been found

May be a vulcanodontid, which are basal sauropods, but Vulcanodontidae has historically been a waste-basket taxon for basal sauropods (but not enough Ohmdenosaurus bones have been found to determine if it is for sure Vulcanodontidae)

Holotype includes partial limb bones (tibia, astralgus, calcaneus)

Tibia is only 405 mm long, which is small for a sauropod

Small, about 13 ft (4 m) long

Bones found had signs of weathering, so it probably died on land and then the bones were washed into the sea

Fun Fact:

Sauropods would make great painters if they could figure it out (like elephants have)

Sauropods aren’t mammals and probably have different painting abilities than elephants, but birds can be trained to use tools, so who knows…

Jonathan Kingdon says a rearing elephant can reach 7m (23ft) high enough to (theoretically) paint most houses

Paul’s paper shows a Giraffatitan with its mouth 16m (>52ft) off the ground Enough to paint a 5 story building Or our house Maybe it could even do a life-size self-portrait



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