Chasmosaurus belli baby

An intact skeleton of a Chasmosaurus belli youngster was unearthed in Alberta, Canada. This ceratopsid was 3 years old and just 1.5 meters long. It probably got drowned in a river and died. It shows no marks of bites or other signs of predation or scavenging acivity and is so well preserved that it is possible to see the impressions of this individual's scales. 

With just the anterior limbs absent, this discovery will help paleontologists in understanding the growth rates of these species. The specimen found presents the same limb proportions of an adult animal, meaning that even as babies, there was no need for this dinos to run, once the adults were equally slow. 

This species could weigh, when mature, 2 tonnes and have a length of 4-5 meters.

                                                   Adult skeleton of a Chasmosaurus belli

Brazilian little giant

Brasilotitan nemophagus gen et sp. nov. was described this summer in near Presidente Prudente Town, São Paulo, Brazil. This species may have lived 90-80 million years ago (Turonian-Santonian) and was a titanosaur, a big long necked herbivore. 

Among other remains, a "L" shaped mandible was found. This mandible has a dentary with the symphyseal region slightly twisted medially, a unique feature for a titanosaur specimen.

This individual wasn't very long (8 meters) being the smallest sauropod ever found in Brazil.

Check out the abstract: A new titanosaur dinosaur, Brasilotitan nemophagus gen. et sp. nov., is described from the Adamantina Formation (Turonian-Santonian, Bauru Basin). The specimen consists of a dentary, cervical and sacral vertebrae, one ungual and remains of the pelvic region, that were collected near Presidente Prudente city, São Paulo State. It shows a mandible with an ‘L’ shaped morphology, with the symphyseal region of the dentary slightly twisted medially, a feature never recorded before in a titanosaur. Brasilotitan nemophagus can be further separated from other members of this clade by: (1) the dorsal portion of the dentary symphyseal contact is broader anteroposteriorly than the ventral part; (2) the ventral portion of the cervical centrum is arched dorsally; (3) the presence of an anteriorly directed accessory prezygapophyseal articulation surface on the cervical vertebrae; (4) the intraprezygapophyseal laminae of the cervical vertebrae are ‘V’ shaped in dorsal view; and other features. Although the phylogenetic position of Brasilotitan nemophagus is difficult to establish, the new species is neither a basal nor a derived member of the Titanosauria and, based on the lower jaw morphology, appears to be closely related to Antarctosaurus wichmannianus and Bonitasaura salgadoi. This discovery enriches the titanosaur diversity of Brazil and further provides new anatomical information on the lower jaws of those herbivorous dinosaurs.

For more information check: Elaine B. Machado, Leonardo dos S. Avilla, William R. Nava, Diogenes de A. Campos & Alexander W. A. Kellner. 2013. A new titanosaur sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. Zootaxa. 3701(3): 301–321

Dracopelta zbyszewskii - Who was he?

Dracopelta zbyszewskii lived in what today is Portugal, about 155 million years ago. This dinosaur was a herbivore belonging to the order Ornithischia. This ankylosaurid was 2 meters long, being a small sized "armored dinosaur", and is the most ancient member of the family, thought to have started to evolve at around 122 million years ago. Because it was an ankylosaurid it may have bore a big bone mass in the tip of the tail for defense purposes.

The fossil vertebrae were discovered by Peter Galton in 1980 nearby Ribamar, a locality close to Ericeira. Today you can see the remains of this ancient being at Museu Geológico in Lisbon, home to many other interesting specimens of all types, including mammals, crocodiles and other dinosaurs.

New North American giant theropod unveiled

Siats meekerorum was a giant carcharodontosaur that lived 98 million years ago during the Cenomanian stage (Late Cretaceous). Named after a cannibalistic monster from Ute tribal legend, Siats meekerorum was the apex predator at its time and kept smaller tyrannosaurids from taking the throne.

The specimen, discovered by Lindsay Zanno and Peter Makovicky (Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History), weighed about 4 tons and was more than 9 meters long. Although this was a big animal, the bones belonged to a juvenile. As an adult this theropod would have been 11-12 meters long and weighed more than 6 tons.

Siats belonged to Neovenatoridae (new hunters) family which is distinguished by having a short and wide scapula and ilia with many cavities. This species roamed along what now is Utah and is a relevant discovery not only because of its dimension but also because it fills a gap in that period's paleoecology since there wasn't an apex predator discovered  for that determined timespan.

                                                    by: Jorge Gonzales

For more information check: "Neovenatorid theropods are apex predators in the Late Cretaceous of North America" Nov. 22, 2013 in Nature Communications

Abstract 
Allosauroid theropods were a diverse and widespread radiation of Jurassic-Cretaceous megapredators. Achieving some of the largest body sizes among theropod dinosaurs, these colossal hunters dominated terrestrial ecosystems until a faunal turnover redefined apex predator guild occupancy during the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous. Here we describe a giant new species of allosauroid—Siats meekerorum gen. et sp. nov.—providing the first evidence for the cosmopolitan clade Neovenatoridae in North America. Siats is the youngest allosauroid yet discovered from the continent and demonstrates that the clade endured there into the Late Cretaceous. The discovery provides new evidence for ecologic sympatry of large allosauroids and small-bodied tyrannosauroids. These data support the hypothesis that extinction of Allosauroidea in terrestrial ecosystems of North America permitted ecological release of tyrannosauroids, which went on to dominate end Cretaceous food webs.