Fossil Crates 🦖🦕

Saturday Playtime Found these skulls tucked away in some crates. #Saurophaganax (conjectural) #Torvosaurus “old school” #Allosaurus CLDQ composites Neat directionally-correct size comparison. Look for Scaled loved and Full-size offerings late 2024 :-)! #FossilCrates

Just another day working on #sauropod #dinosaurs. I never thought my youth spent in construction would be so useful. Electric forklifts are game changers: quiet, no noxious emissions, and more torque than I thought possible. Just gotta remember to plug ‘em in… #FossilCrates

Miyako Grass Lizards! Went to Japan in part to observe grass #lizards. The Ueno Zoological Gardens (great fun!) had three species on display. These are #Takydromus toyamai. Thanks so much to the herpetological team for “employees only” access, twas an honor. #FossilCrates

#Estemmenosuchus “crowned crocodile” Chudinov 1960 A #Permian #dinocephalian #therapsid ~12’+ 1,000+ lbs. Skin impressions (Chudinov 1968) suggest a smooth body w/ possible glandular structures preserved. Are they accessible? Any isotope work done on the teeth? #FossilCrates

Ontogeny 3! #Parasaurolophus, “near crested lizard,” adult crests are iconic! The red arrows identify broken ribs, and where Parks thought the crest might be attached to the body. “Baby Joe,” at the Alf Museum, shows the juvenile crest state, tiny and cute! #FossilCrates

Ontogeny Adult Triceratops have long, attenuated brow horns w/ a shorter, stouter nose #horn, plus a recurved frills. Juvenile Tric horns and frills are posses a quite different morphology than adults. With so many skulls, neat ontogenetic studies await! #FossilCrates

Table for 6 please #Otodus #megalodon is the best-known-to-the-public fossil #shark (Jaws retains the top spot for #sharks in general :-)) thanks to its gigantic size. This one is on display at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center. That’s me for scale :-)! #FossilCrates

Open Wide! We saw this fun, and fun-sized, #Otodus #megalodon at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium in Draper, Utah (betwixt Salt Lake City and Provo). @TylerGreenfield shared on PaleoPortals.com the work he is conducting on this majestic #shark #sharkweek #FossilCrates

Does this count as analogous evolution? 😀 This #Gavialosuchus instantly reminded me of a Star Destroyer. Affinities for Epic Rap Battles of History and Canva resulted in this mashup. I can already hear Gunnar and Colin, “Why aren’t you working on the paper?” #FossilCrates

Ke$ha presaging Cerato$auru$ ??? #Ceratosaurus juvenile (top, not to scale, all original bones) compared with cast of composite skull, with multiple Cerato Utah-reposited specimens all scaled to the largest material (the BYU-houses bones). Ontogeny everywhere! #FossilCrates

Size 20 please :-) An associated #Tyrannosaurus foot sold for $ 1.4 million (before fees) at the Sotheby’s auction on 7/16/25, the same price as the Pachycephalosaurus skull. The red oval is the #arctometatarsalian condition, the red circles are pathologies. #FossilCrates

This #Pachycephalosaurus skull just sold for $1,400,000 (the bottom one). It is, AFAIK, the best ever offered at auction, and one of the best ever found. Found in one block, it has hyoid bones preserved! I adore Pachys and hope this one gets in the literature! #FossilCrates

This #Ceratosaurus juvee sold for $26,000,000 Since 2000 I have looked at this Late #Jurassic #dinosaur on display. It appears in the lit at least twice: Snively & Russell 2007 Table 1 Tsai PhD 2015 Table 3-2 My blog on fossil sales: bit.ly/3TsVtHw #FossilCrates

Agents Skully reporting for duty! I love looking at (notice I didn’t say study ;-)) skulls. Check out #Phrynosoma, “toad bodied,” aka horned toad, and #Styracosaurus “spiked lizard.” Mix in my delight with @Canva and, voila, this comparo pic :-). #FossilCrates

Not to scale :-) Hole-ee cow! I didn’t know the Parson’s #chameleon (#Calumma parsonii) and #Torosaurus both have giant holes in their head frill. Is the chameleon’s for jaw musculature? The Toro’s isn’t. I have taken to removing scale and then comparing. Fun! #FossilCrates

#Miosiren skeleton cast at the Gunma Museum of Natural History. Dollo named this pachyostic wonder in 1889. I’ve included Dollo’s teeth images and Flower’s skull for good measure. I am dismayed at how few #mammalian postcranial elements are figured. #FossilCrates #fossilfriday

Field Work! Join #FossilCratesLive, via Zoom, Saturday, July 12th at Noon PST/3 PM EST, when Ben Goode (AZMNH) and Jacob Jett (RMDRC) share stories of fieldwork, new finds, and more! Not a Member? Join 30-days free at paleoportals.com/join #PaleoPortals #FossilCrates

Doing donuts! #Platecarpus “flat wrist” Cope 1869 ~20’ long and weighed ? at Gunma Museum of Natural History in Tomioka, Japan I love dynamic poses even when I’m not certain the zygapophyses would work. Exhibited specimens are targeting a non-researcher audience. #FossilCrates

Caution around potential nest sites! Mourning Dove (#Zenaida macroura) babies now live atop my clearly little-used ladder Had she not taken flight a disaster would have transpired when I grabbed said ladder. She (?) returned a few mins later… crop milk for all! #FossilCrates

What an incredibly fun visit! Gunnar, Tom, and I described #sauropods at Brigham Young University Museum of Paleontology, Natural History Museum of Utah, and Mountain America Museum of Ancient Life. Plus mixed in a few hours of vertebral and skull CT scanning! :-) #FossilCrates

Hard headed! Meet #Sclerocephalus, “hard head,” a beautifully preserved amphibian from Germany I saw at the Gunma Museum of Natural History in Tomioka City, Japan. One pond produced larvae to adults, solving a mystery of what were thought to be many genera. #FossilCrates