Episode 554: Nanotyrannus is Valid! Two separate groups of researchers have independently confirmed that Nanotyrannus is its own genus and not just a juvenile T. rex. Plus a new Nanotyrannus species and another new tyrannosauroid and tyrannosaur injuries.

News:

• A new complete Nanotyrannus skeleton confirms that it deserves its own genus and is not just a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex source
• A close analysis of the small throat (hyoid) bone from the Nanotyrannus holotype confirms it was nearly full-sized source
• Review of the taxonomic history of Nanotyrannus source
• There’s a new Late Cretaceous tyrannosauroid, Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, related to the fluffy Yutyrannus source
• Scotty the T. rex appears to have blood vessel structures in a rib showing how it healed. (in the fun fact) source
• Companies are claiming to make luxury fashion items out of T. rex leather but that’s not currently possible. (in the fun fact) source

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The dinosaur of the day: Calamosaurus

• Small theropod that lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now Isle of Wight, England (Wessex Formation)
• Known from two neck bones (cervical vertebrae), that Reverend William Fox collected in the 1800s
• Richard Lydekker named it Calamospondylus foxi in 1889, when he was cataloguing Fox’s collection of fossils (more than 500) for the then British Museum (now the Natural History Museum, London), and said they were similar to the theropod dinosaur from the Jurassic, Coelurus
• Two neck bones were at first stored with turtle fossils, until Lydekker noticed how similar they were to Coelurus
• Turns out the name Calamospondylus was already taken (Fox had named a different dinosaur Calamospondylus in 1866), so Lydekker renamed it Calamosaurus in 1891
• Talked about Calamospondylus in episode 548
• Lydekker also tentatively referred a right tibia (shin bone) to Calamosaurus that Fox had found in 1865 or 1866
• Lots of debate over this bone. Has been considered to belong to a compsognathid, an ornithomimosaur, and most recently Calamospondylus
• As a possible compsognathid coelurosaur, would have been small, with a small head, and it would have been a fast runner with long legs but short arms and a long tail, and carnivorous
• Had a curved neck
• One estimate in 2001 suggested it was around almost 10 to over 16 ft (3 to 5 m) long
• Type and only species is Calamosaurus foxi
• Genus name means “reed lizard”
• Considered for a while a potentially dubious theropod (too hard to know much about it from two neck bones)
• At one point, in 1985, Norman found that Aristosuchus, Calamosaurus, Calamospondylus, Thecocoelurus and Thecospondylus were all the same, and he classified them as Aristosuchus
• Talked about Aristosuchus in episode 525
• Then more fossils were found
• Fossil hunter Dave Badman found a neck bone (cervical vertebra) in 2015 on the Isle of Wight, on a beach (now on display at the Dinosaur Isle Museum)
• Fossil is pretty eroded, and was about 4 cm long (1.5 in)
• Lived in a semi-arid environment with conifers and ferns (probably lots of wildfires, based on preserved charred plants being found)
• Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include the compsognathid Aristosuchus, the possible oviraptorosaur Calamospondylus, the spinosaur Ceratosuchops, the tyrannosaur Eotyrannus, the hadrosaur Iguanodon, the ankylosaur Vectipelta, and the sauropod Ornithopsis, to name a few
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place include fish, mammals, plesiosaurs, turtles, and pterosaurs

Fun Fact:

Blood vessel structures have been found in Tyrannosaurus, and they can help us learn how it healed from injuries.

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