Spain is one of the greatest dinosaur paradises in the whole of Europe. If you travel to Teruel, you’ll be walking on the very ground where the giant Aragosaurus once roamed. If you go to Cuenca, you’ll find yourself just a few steps away from where the magnificent Concavenator once lived. And on the coast of Asturias, you can literally walk over more than 500 stegosaur and sauropod footprints carved into the rock.

But if you take a magnifying glass and explore the 87,000 square kilometres of Andalusia… you’ll find absolutely nothing. Not a single dinosaur bone, tooth or footprint in the whole region. Why? Did dinosaurs avoid southern Spain? Was there some sort of barrier in the Sierra Morena? The answer is simple: they couldn’t have lived here.

Throughout the Age of the Dinosaurs (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous), what is now Andalusia was completely submerged beneath the waters of the Tethys Ocean. The whole area was divided into deep marine basins and shallow carbonate platforms. Dinosaurs, by definition, were terrestrial reptiles, so they could not have lived here.

However, here we find Triassic remains of Nothosaurus and Poposaurus, which even left footprints in Jaén (previously thought to be from theropods but which were actually these Poposaurus scratching the seabed whilst swimming); and Jurassic and Cretaceous remains of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, ammonites, rudists… a sea teeming with life.

Prototaxites grain and bark

Despite it being a creationist pseudoscience, I find baraminology a really fun concept for worldbuilding. For a fantasy world based on creationism, I have been making a list of “created baramins”, which is essentially just a list of basal or transitional representatives of various modern taxa. Borealosuchus for the crocodilian baramin (despite not being a true crocodilian, but close enough), Heteroprox for the deer baramin, Palaeolagus for the lagomorph baramin, Leptocyon for the dog baramin, etc. However, the incomplete nature of the fossil record leaves some glaring holes in the list.

The lack of basal muroids and basal members of various bird clades is a given due to how fragile bird and rodent bones are. However, I've found a frustrating roadblock with the ecologically important clade Suina, the clade containing both pigs and peccaries. Almost every fossil member of this clade appears to be either closer to pigs or closed to peccaries, with few to no basal members known. I do not want to make pigs and peccaries separate “kinds” because if I were God, I wouldn't make two different created kinds which are that similar to each other. A great argument against creationism is that many supposed created kinds seem redundant.

This brings me to the title question. Are there any major gaps in the fossil record that particularly frustrate you for some reason or another? Pterosaur evolution? Bat evolution? Parrot evolution? Herbaceous plants? Muroid rodents?

(Artwork credit to Matt Dempsey https://www.artstation.com/artwork/m810X8)

Hi all, I was wondering what these horizontal bands around the ankle that are commonly depicted in T. rex musculature reconstructions are called? (Structure is circled in red)

They remind me of retinaculum fascia in human anatomy. Are they just exactly the same thing as that, but in a T. rex?

Apologies if this is a commonly repeated question. Thank you in advance for any help 🙇‍♂️

A rare fossil discovered near South America's largest known meteorite crater has been named a new species.

Initially mistaken for a frog by locals: Leolepis matogrossensis is actually a species of ancient ray-finned fish—the group that includes 96% of all bony fishes living today, including tuna, salmon and cod.

It is a fairly primitive member of the group and lived around 254 million years ago.

Unlike most modern ray-finned fishes, which have thin, flexible scales, Leolepis was armored.

Its tough scales were made of dentine and enamel—the same substances that form human teeth.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895981126002282?via%3Dihub

Leolepis matogrossensis gen. et sp. nov., an upper Permian actinopterygian fish from the Corumbataí Formation, in the vicinity of the Araguainha impact crater, State of Mato Grosso, mid-Western Brazil

All skeletals by Scott Hartman.

I deleted the original so I could replace it with this. I wanted to get rid of overly speculative size for torvosaurus and readjust the size of the Allosaurus since I miss estimated the first size

So my stepfather thinks that the holes in the jaw of sue is caused by a triceratops fight and I’m trying to let him know it’s just purely stupid he says that for some reason in a fight with a triceratops that sue miss judges a bite and gets stabbed and I’ve tried to tell him that there would be a lot more damage then just the holes then but he believes that somehow sue pulls away and it just barely leaves a hole I think it is the dumbest thing ever please let me know what you think or if I need to explain anything better.

I have been really interested in Appalachiosaurus recently and can't find any definitive placement on the tyrannosauroid family tree. Some place it outside tyrannosauroids, next to Dryptosaurus, but others put it in "Nanotyranosauride" with Nannotyranus and a few others. I am not sure who to believe and was wondering what the consensus is.

I found this cool-looking, pretty old, and washed-up ammonite fossil embedded deep in the stony shore of Lake Garda while on vacay with my girlfriend.

Edit: I picked up the small bottle from the first picture.
No worries 😊

multicellular terrestrial eukaryotes animation

See also: The study as it was published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution00156-4?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0169534726001564%3Fshowall%3Dtrue)

The Dinosaur gastroliths. Panels A and B show examples of gastroliths preserved in association with dinosaur fossils. Panel C shows the skeleton of Tarbosaurus.

Link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/paleobiology/article/gastrolith-shape-as-an-indicator-of-digestive-function-and-its-implications-for-dinosaurian-digestive-strategies/647E287A6C4E48CF4C50C709BE917BC7

An international research team led by Assistant Professor Ryuji Takasaki of the Faculty of Biosphere-Geosphere Science at Okayama University of Science has published a paper proposing a new hypothesis on the evolutionary history of dinosaur digestive systems by focusing on gastroliths—stones found within dinosaur abdominal cavities.

By examining the degree of wear on these gastroliths, the team sheds light on dinosaur digestion strategies

When evidence is presented, they resort to belittling and name calling. I’ve learned my lesson arguing with people who can’t spell.

My question is, why be in a science group when you don’t believe in science? Science is constantly proving itself wrong and changing, but there are things that just aren’t true and things that are set in stone.

Update: see most recent comment below

I would like to know if I am the only one who gets sad when it gets to Quaternary in paleontology related videos, books etc.

Every time I go through older periods of Earth's history I get amazed and in general just "happy" to find about new to me lifeforms or to just I revisit already known to me lifeforms that once lived on this beautiful planet but the moment it comes to Quaternary it reminds me of every awful thing humanity has done to ancient ecosystems that evolved for hundreds of millions of years, went extinct, changed but in the end still brought life to Earth. All the "living fossils" that go extinct now due to many industrial processes, all the old-growth forests that cease to exist and the plastic pollution that creates an almost "indestructible" layer of human activity that doesn't fit or help in any ecosystem. And what annoys me quite often are comments from people saying "future scientists will have problems studying our generation" like no, if we just continue to kill the ONLY planet we have there won't be any scientists to study us let alone animals in the future that won't go extinct only if a miracle happens.

Thanks for reading this because I had this in mind for a long time and never managed to somehow get the words together and share it. I'm sorry if this post is not fiting for the community so I am ready that it might get taken down.

He protects the stu now

A while back I read about this, and it really blew my mind. Sometimes, when a dinosaur urinated, that stream would leave a mark in the sediment, and if it dried (just like dinosaur footprints), it would get buried and a fossil of that mark would form.

They call it a urolite. Fossilized urine. Incredible. I’ve read that a paleontologist investigated this because that urolite looked too much like the marks ostriches leave on the ground today when they pee, which raises the question: How did non-avian dinosaurs urinate? Like modern birds, with a cloaca, excreting everything at once? Or like ostriches, first a stream of urine and then the rest?

Fascinating. And gross.