Smithsonian.com

The first thing you need to know about the 1977 B movie The Last Dinosaur is that the name of the film’s chief protagonist is Maston Thrust. I’m not kidding. Played by Richard Boone of Have Gun—Will Travel fame, he’s an ornery old cuss with a face like a catcher’s mitt and a penchant for wearing scarf-with-blue-lycra-shirt combos, but the film’s funky opening theme assures us that he is one sexy cat. As if there were any doubt, during one scene he stands next to a cylindrical, pointy-tipped vehicle with the word “THRUST” painted on it in huge letters—a shot that would provide plenty of fodder for any Freudian.

Thrust is the “last dinosaur” of the title—a big game hunter and (shudder) Lothario who is the last of his kind—but, rest assured, dinosaurs of the more traditional type play an important part in the story. During an expedition beneath the polar icecaps, the crew of one of Thrust’s “polar borers” was almost entirely wiped out by what could only be described as a Tyrannosaurus rex. They had inadvertently found a lost world, isolated among the glaciers and heated by volcanic activity, and only one made it back alive. Thrust sees this as an opportunity to hunt the most infamous terrestrial predator of all time, and so he organizes a return trip to the domain of the Tyrannosaurus with Chuck, the surviving geologist; Bunta, a Maasai tracker; Dr. Kawamoto, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist; and Thrust’s (for want a better term) love interest, Frankie Banks (played by Joan Van Ark). The portion of the movie just before the expedition takes off—in which Thrust and Banks flirt and make out—are probably the most horrifying parts of the film.

As would be expected, the motley crew make it through to the realm of the dinosaurs, but things quickly begin to go pear-shaped. A huge mammal—based in Uintatherium but called a ceratopsian (or horned dinosaur) by the team’s geologist—almost stomps on Frankie as she snaps away with her camera, and when the team runs into the Tyrannosaurus on the following day they realize that no matter how fast they run, the lumbering, tail-dragging monster is only two steps behind. (And if you got both hair-metal references in that paragraph, well done.)

Things get even worse when the Tyrannosaurus makes it back to the team’s camp before they do. After conducting an experiment to see if Dr. Kawamoto can be stomped into a pancake (the hypothesis was supported by the evidence), the Tyrannosaurus has a magpie moment and decides that it wants to add the big, shiny polar borer to its collection of bones back in its lair. As the Tyrannosaurus tries to find just the right spot for its new collectible, though, it wakes up a Triceratops that had been slumbering in the cave wall for some indiscernible reason. Face to face in the valley of bones, the men in rubber suits—oops, I mean dinosaurs—duke it out. (Guess who wins?)

With their only mode of transport lost, a terrible Tyrannosaurus on the loose, and a tribe of prehistoric humans making life ever more difficult, the surviving crew members try to eke out a living in the harsh land (though they apparently spend plenty of time grooming as they never look too dirty). They make it for a few months, but after one Tyrannosaurus attack too many (I would think one would be enough), Thrust and company decide to make a catapult to take down the dinosaur. With a little help from Hazel—one of the archaic people who took a shine to the group—the team creatures a wooden trebuchet big enough to put a dent in any large dinosaur.

Just after completing their European history practical, though, the team’s geologist relocates the polar borer—they can finally go home!—but Thrust insists on staying. The intro song called him the “last dinosaur,” after all, so he can’t go while there are still other dinosaurs running about the place. That just wouldn’t be right. After a bit of arguing and dithering about whether Thrust should return to the world they left, the final battle begins, and it doesn’t hold back on the unintentional humor. My favorite moment? When the catapult is fired and the immense rock loaded into it strikes the Tyrannosaurus square on the head. Surprisingly, the dinosaur’s skull collapses to absorb the shock of the impact before springing back into place – Thrust had not counted on his quarry having such a resilient noggin. In the end, the trap doesn’t work, and Thrust is left on the beach of the prehistoric world, with only Hazel and his theme song to keep him company.

But I jest because there’s a special place in my heart for The Last Dinosaur.  It used to air on television relatively frequently when I was a child, and back then anything with a dinosaur in it was a must-see program for me. Even now, when I would like to think my taste in films has been refined a bit, I throw it in the DVD player every now and then. The acting is so bad, the dinosaurs are so crummy, and the soundtrack so cheesy that it’s hard not to laugh at it. Without a doubt, The Last Dinosaur is one of the worst films ever made, but that’s why I keep coming back to it.

Two Triceratops skulls. The one on the left represents the classic, young-adult form, and the one on the right represents the fully mature form (previously called Torosaurus). From the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology paper.

Late last year paleontologists Jack Horner and Mark Goodwin made waves by proposing that what had previously been thought to be two distinct genera of “bone-headed” dinosaurs—Stygimoloch and Dracorex—were really just growth stages of Pachycephalosaurus. Together the three body types illustrated how the skull of this peculiar dinosaur was reshaped as it grew—juveniles did not look just like smaller versions of the adults—but Pachycephalosaurus was not the only dinosaur to undergo such changes. In a new paper just published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Horner and John Scannella suggest that one of the largest horned dinosaurs to have ever lived was simply the adult stage of one of the most famous dinosaur celebrities.

Among the most intriguing dinosaurs named by paleontologist O.C. Marsh during the “Great Bone Rush” of the late 19th century were the ceratopsians Torosaurus and Triceratops. They were the last of their kind—found in the same end-Cretaceous formations across the American West—and they seemed to differ only in some details of the skull. Where Triceratops had a somewhat curved, solid frill, Torosaurus had a flatter, expanded frill with two large openings in it. Beyond these features and a few other minor characteristics in the skull, it has been nearly impossible to tell them apart.

As suggested by Horner and Scannella, the close resemblance between these two dinosaur body types was not due to a close evolutionary relationship, but because they were different life stages in the same animal. After collecting and examining dozens of specimens, the paleontologists found a graded continuum of growth from the smallest juvenile Triceratops all the way up to what has been called Torosaurus. (The difficult-to-classify specimen representing the genus Nedoceratops may also fall within this range of skull shapes.) On the basis of gross anatomy alone, it is easily seen how the frill of Triceratops changed as it aged, with large windows in the frill opening up as the dinosaur became an adult. But some of the most compelling evidence for these changes comes from bone anatomy that can be seen only under a microscope.

When Horner and Scanella looked at the bone structure of Triceratops brow horns, they found that what had previously been thought to be fully mature individuals still had some growing to do. These Triceratops specimens lacked the amount of dense, mature bone which would have been expected for a fully grown animal, and, instead, this kind of mature bone was found in the horns of Torosaurus. Since all the specimens identified as Torosaurus represent adults, and what were thought to be fully adult Triceratops are only young adults, the simplest explanation is that both are growth stages of Triceratops (which was named first, and therefore has priority for the genus name).

From what Scannella and Horner were able to tell, Triceratops retained juvenile characteristics (such as a solid frill) for most of its life before a rapid change before reaching maturity. As shown by the rarity of mature “Torosaurus“ skulls, however, young adult Triceratops became preserved in the fossil record much more often. Why this should be so is a mystery, but the new hypothesis proposed by Scannella and Horner resolves the question of why paleontologists have not found any juvenile Torosaurus skeletons. “Immature ‘Torosaurus’ actually have been known for over a century,” the authors conclude, “but have been called Triceratops.”

Scannella, J., & Horner, J. (2010). Torosaurus Marsh, 1891, is Triceratops Marsh, 1889 (Ceratopsidae: Chasmosaurinae): synonymy through ontogeny Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 30 (4), 1157-1168 DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2010.483632

The 1912 AMNH crew on the scow Mary Jane. From the Dinosaur Hunting by Boat in 2010 blog.

One month ago I wrote about the efforts of paleontologist Darren Tanke and crew to launch a dinosaur-hunting expedition along Alberta’s Red Deer River using the same techniques employed by famous fossil collectors Barnum Brown and Charles H. Sternberg. That journey has now come to a premature end.

As reported by the Red Deer Advocate, the paleontologists aboard the home-made scow ran into trouble early. Navigating the boat down the river was an extremely difficult challenge (it often ran aground), and a tent that was not as waterproof as had been advertised added to the group’s frustrations. A member of the crew gashed her hand on a box of safety equipment, requiring a stop at a local hospital, but the major event that led to the trip’s cancellation was the collapse of expedition leader Darren Tanke on July 4th. Exhausted and suffering from anemia, Tanke was taken to a local hospital and could not rejoin the trip, which ended on July 7th.

As Tanke told the newspaper, his experience made him wonder what it must have been like for Brown and Sternberg when they traveled down the river 100 years ago. The difficulties faced by the present crew gave him even greater respect for the fossil hunters of old. And, despite this setback, Tanke plans to take the scow out again next year. Adjustments will be made based upon what he and his crew learned during this trip, and I wish them better luck during next year’s expedition.

The Walking With Dinosaurs live show has raised the bar for dinosaur puppetry, and numerous museums and theme parks have begun to feature their own resident dinosaurs to enthrall their guests. On the inventively educational side of the spectrum are shows like the Utah Museum of Natural History’s “Live From Laramidia” program, but the dinosaurs of Sydney, Australia’s Wildlife World—seen in the video above—fall toward the pure entertainment side. These two dinosaurs, which are of the same design as two of the Walking With Dinosaurs puppets, are realistic enough that some of the children in the outdoor audience seem reticent about taking them for a walk, and (until you see the legs of the performers) it can be easy to believe that these dinosaurs are real. How long will it be until even more realistic dinosaurs—with no sign of their human puppeteers—will start stalking audiences?

The cover of Triassic Life on Land: The Great Transition

As the great 20th century paleontologist William Diller Matthew once wrote, “The story of life on Earth is a splendid drama, as interesting as we watch its action and study the interplay of causes and motives that lie behind its movement as any great historic play.” Within this great play, the Triassic—the time period spanning approximately 250 to 200 million years ago—was one of the most stunning acts, yet it is often cast as simply being the “beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs” for the first appearance of the famous group about 230 million years ago. This habit obscures the grander story of Triassic life, one of catastrophic extinctions and evolutionary innovation involving a weird cast of unfamiliar creatures. Now paleontologists Hans-Dieter Sues (a paleontologist with the National Museum of Natural History) and Nicholas Fraser have outlined this fantastic story in their new reference book Triassic Life on Land: The Great Transition.

The first thing that should be noted about Triassic Life on Land is that it is primarily aimed at specialists. While Fraser wrote a glossy, popular-audience book filled with wonderful pieces of paleo-art by Douglas Henderson several years ago, called Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the new volume is more of a directory of Triassic life. For example, here is a passages about the relationships of several Triassic creatures more closely related to early mammals than to reptiles:

Cynognathus, Diademodon, and Trirachodon belong to the Eucynodontia, which are distinguished by a greatly enlarged dentary with a tall coronoid process and distinct articular process and reduction of the postdentary elements to a bony rod lodged in a medial recess on the dentary.

(In other words, this particular group of mammal-like creatures can be identified by a large lower jaw in which 1) the parts of the jaw that connect to the skull are tall and distinctive, and 2) the bones behind the dentary bone—the bone that makes up the majority of the lower jaw in these animals—have been compressed into a small rod connected to the inside of the lower jaw.)

The authors provide a glossary of terms in the back of the book, but Triassic Life on Land will be a difficult read for anyone without a firm background in anatomy and paleontology.

That point aside, during a time when our understanding of life during the Triassic is rapidly changing, this new book is a very useful resource for tracking down what kinds of organisms (primarily vertebrates, but also plants and insects) lived where and when. For the bulk of the book, Sues and Fraser trace fossils from the earliest parts of the Triassic preserved among the southern continents through the Late Triassic of what is now the American West, noting interesting tidbits about the biology of certain critters along the way. (Of special interest to this reader was the discussion of Triassic sites along the east coast of North America. These sites are not as well-known as others, and—if paleontologists can get to them before they become victims to suburban sprawl—may yield important insights into life towards the end of the Triassic.) This orderly progression then leads to a chapter focused on two particular Triassic sites—the Solite Quarry in Virginia and the Madygen Formation of eastern Europe—followed by two chapters on changes among organisms during the Triassic and the mass extinction event that marked the end of the period. These last two chapters summarize some of the great mysteries that remain about that period in life’s history, from why dinosaurs eventually became the dominant vertebrates on land to what could have caused the mass extinction at the end of the period.

While I would have preferred a few more details about interactions between organisms, paleoecology, and evolutionary patterns in the book—especially since the Triassic was a time when there were major changes going on among vertebrates on land—Triassic Life on Land remains an excellent repository of information. It is like a giant-sized review article about this peculiar act in earth’s history. Its format and extensive references make it easy for interested readers to track down original source materials, and, even though we are learning more about the Triassic every day, I think it will remain an extremely useful volume for many years to come.