Episode 444: Dinosaurs within the Badlands: That includes 2 Producers from Prehistoric Planet 2

Episode 444: Dinosaurs within the Badlands: That includes 2 Producers from Prehistoric Planet 2. Volcanoes, deserts, and different inhospitable locations that dinosaurs lived.

Interview:

Mike Gunton and Tim Walker, Mike Gunton is the Government Producer and Director of the BBC’s Pure Historical past Unit and Tim Walker is the showrunner and producer of Prehistoric Planet & Prehistoric Planet 2

Sponsors:

The dinosaur of the day: Isisaurus

• Titanosaur that lived within the Late Cretaceous in what’s now India and Pakistan (Lameta Formation and Pab Formation, which had been about the identical age)
• Reconstructions make it look form of hunched over, with a brief neck for a sauropod, with very lengthy legs
• However like different sauropods, in that’s pretty massive, lengthy tail, walks on 4 legs, has a proportionally small, elongated cranium
• In Prehistoric Planet, fairly stout
• Medium-sized, estimated to be about 59 ft (18 m) lengthy and weighed 15 metric tons
• Humerus was about 58 in (148 cm) lengthy
• In 2009, Sauropod Vertebra Image of the Week posted that the reconstruction of Isisaurus was “bizarre as heck”
• Mentioned that there are conflicting reconstructions which are additionally bizarre (each reconstructions based mostly on knowledge from the unique paper, although one is from the size bars within the figures within the paper and one is from measurements written within the paper)
• Advocated measuring the skeleton once more to find out if the size bars or the revealed measurements are correct
• Wrote: “We all know that Isisaurus should have been fairly darn bizarre as a result of its cervicals are so quick”
• Kind species is Isisaurus colberti
• Initially regarded as Titanosaurus colberti
• Named Titanosaurus colberti in 1997 by Sohan Lal Jain and Saswati Bandyopadhyay
• Species identify in honor of Edwin Colbert “foremost exponent of dinosaurs”
• Sohan Jain and Saswati Bandyopadhyay wrote: “The earliest document of titanosaurids anyplace on this planet was established in India in 1877” (Titanosaurus discovered within the Lameta Formation, which is beneath the Deccan Traps)
• All fragments discovered, however sufficient to call Titanosaurus
• Fossils of Isisaurus collected between 1984 and 1986
• Discovered a well-preserved, partly articulated skeleton of 65 bones (contains vertebrae, ribs, elements of the shoulder, left arm, pelvis), lacking cranium, hind limb, and foot bones (presumably on account of erosion)
• Due to being articulated, most likely buried near the place it died
• Variations within the tail vertebrae from different Titanosaurus species (together with extra barely curved surfaces)
• Additionally variations within the shoulder and arm bones
• In 2003, Jeffrey Wilson and Paul Upchurch renamed it to Isisaurus colberti
• Wilson and Upchurch re-evaluated all Titanosaurus species and located solely 5 to be legitimate (discovered the kind species “indicus” to be invalid)
• Genus identify means “Isi lizard”
• Genus identify Isi is in honor of the Indian Statistical Institute “which homes India’s foremost assortment of Mesozoic fossil vertebrates and whose students found and described the holotype skeleton”
• Different sauropods present in what’s now India embrace Titanosaurus (a number of species) and Jainosaurus
• Lived alongside Jainosaurus
• In 2011, Jeffrey Wilson, Paul Barrett, and Matthew Carrano referred a “almost full, comparatively undeformed braincase” to Isisaurus. Braincase was discovered within the Pab Formation in Pakistan
• Mentioned there hadn’t but been any systematic comparability between sauropods present in each the Pab and Lameta Formations, “and there stays a robust chance that extra of the stays collected from the Pab Formation can be referable to Isisaurus and Jainosaurus”
• Additionally potential there have been different titanosaur species
• Mentioned Jainosaurus and Isisaurus don’t appear to be intently associated, and that they “characterize distinct titanosaur lineages”
• Coprolites thought to come back from Isisaurus contained fungus, that are identified to contaminate tree leaves and trigger leaf spot and crimson rot (look how they sound). If these coprolites belong to Isisaurus, means it ate quite a lot of totally different tree leaves, and doubtless was a excessive browser, like camels and giraffes in the present day
• Primarily based on the fungus, Isisaurus most likely lived in a tropical-subtropical local weather
• Different dinosaurs discovered across the identical time and place embrace abelisaurs similar to Indosuchus and Rajasaurus
• Different animals that lived across the identical time and place embrace fish, shrimp, gastropods, turtles, crocodiles

Enjoyable Reality:

The Triassic-Jurassic extinction occasion, one of many largest extinction occasions in Earth’s historical past, was doubtless brought on by volcanic eruptions comparable to people who shaped the Deccan traps.

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