October 12, 2010
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Dispatch, Part 1
A restoration of the ankylosaur Euoplocephalus by Nobu Tamura. From Wikipedia.
The first day of the 70th annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting was chock-full of dinosaur talks. Fans of ornithischian dinosaurs—the hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs, stegosaurs, pachycehpalosaurs, horned dinosaurs and their kin—had a lot to cheer about. There is a flood of new species, and new evolutionary comparisons are refining the relationships of some familiar species and, in some cases, are suggesting that there is much left to be discovered. Two researchers agreed to let me give you a sneak peek at research that is changing our understanding of dinosaur diversity and evolution.
From documentaries to technical papers, the armored dinosaur Euoplocephalus has often been taken as the quintessential ankylosaur. It seemed to occupy a long range of time and be represented by a wide array of skeletal material. Things are not as clean and neat as they seem. Just last year University of Alberta grad student Victoria Arbour and two others showed that some of the bones scientists had been calling Euoplocephalus really belonged to the distinct genus Dyoplosaurus, which had been named in 1924. This was not the only ankylosaur that was hiding within Euoplocephalus. At least one, and possibly two, other ankylosaurs have probably been mistakenly lumped into the genus. Arbour is continuing her efforts to tease apart the taxonomic mess in the hope that we will be able to get a clearer picture of ankylosaur diversity at the end of the Cretaceous in North America.
The year 2010 might as well be known as the “Year of the Ceratopsians.” From the Torosaurus = Triceratops debate to peculiar ceratopsian forms found in unexpected places, our understanding of these dinosaurs is rapidly changing. Paleontologist Andy Farke and colleagues will soon be adding another taxa to the mix. As he introduced it to colleagues Sunday morning, the new species looks like “the love child of Centrosaurus and Styracosaurus.“ The only thing more bizarre than its looks was the fact that the specimen sat virtually unnoticed on a museum shelf for about a century. Nor was it the only new ceratopsian introduced during the first two days of the conference, and by present indications there are still many new species waiting to be found.
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Did Andy’s new centrosaurine get a name?
Zach:
Its generally preferable not to release the name of a taxon until it is published. So, undoubtedly the publication will name the taxon, but he avoided using it in the talk.
@220mya: Thanks for the assist with the reply, and I am sorry that I missed you at the conference.
The new dinosaur was not named – that is pretty much the rule at the conference, it seems – and I kept the details scant because I wanted to respect the wishes of Andy and his co-authors. I think the SVP community as a whole is still trying to figure out how to best adapt to blogs and Twitter coverage of the event, and I will post a few more thoughts on this in the near future.
IIRC Ken Carpenter once argued for a valid Dyoplosaurus and then backed off. But what if the other genera are valid? Assuming the material is Campanian (not much putative Euoplocephalus material is from the early Maastrichtian)that would further heighten the contrast between late Campanian and late Maastrichtian dinosaur diversity. New ceratopsid genera of Campanian age(Medusaceratops, Kosmoceratops etc)and the possible sinking of a late Maastrichtian taxon exacerbated the diversity drop already.
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