The Paleontology Thread

[Grand Seijin]

One particular family of theropods that's been peaking my interest lately is Megaraptora, which includes the recently discovered genus, Maip of South America. Even T-Rex would be at risk facing off against rival predators with such enlaged forelimbs. They seemed like such badasses.

Megaraptorans are definitely one of the more bizarre lineages of theropods. At first, they were thought to be dromaeosaurs, then they used to be considered allosauroids, and nowadays they're grouped in with the coelurosaurs.

[JAGzilla]

https://youtu.be/hf_-jIiyyD0?si=x69tZtnIG8vYbCC9

Not quite on topic, maybe, but there's a new animated dinosaur series in the works from the little indie studio Lunar Dragon Entertainment. Talon. It's a similar premise to Avatar: TLA, with a team of young dinosaurs being granted elemental superpowers to save the world from an alien invasion. The link above is the pilot episode. It's very amateurish so far, but hopefully it can be sharpened up into something cool. Original dinosaur media is always welcome.

[JAGzilla]

https://youtu.be/1FNFxJc_hqo?si=sEIB65AkKY7Vryek

Proof of herbivory in pterosaurs has been found! (Relevant segment is at around the four minute mark on the video.) The fossilized stomach contents of a Chinese tapejarid called Sinopterus were found to include phytoliths, mineral fragments from certain plant tissues. This individual was eating woody plants, ferns, and flowering plants. There were also gastroliths, which are normally associated with herbivores.

This is a pretty big development! Herbivorous pterosaurs had never really occurred to me as a possibility. They're basically always assumed to be carnivores of one type of another. Turns out they were more diverse than we knew.

[LegendZilla]

^This could bring us one step closer to finding evidence of carnivory in ornithiscians.

[Leviarex]

While certainly a first, it's more than fitting that a dinosaur bone has recently been found beneath a natural history museum parking lot (in my home state's capital no less):

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ju ... 50380&ei=6

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

Brand new icthyosaurus fossil retains soft tissue impressions giving science our best look yet at the animals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09271-w