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Texacephale
''Texacephale'' is a pachycephalosaurid dinosaur from the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. Its fossils come from the Aguja Formation of Big Bend National Park, in Texas, and were described in 2010 by Longrich, Sankey and Tanke. The generic name means Texas + "head" (''kephale'' in Greek) in reference to its place of discovery, and the specific name honors Wann Langston. Discovery The holotype specimen of ''Texacephale'', LSUMNS 20010, is composed of fused frontals and parietals. A second specimen, LSUMNS 20012, is composed of an incomplete frontoparietal dome. It was found in the same WPA quarries that produced ''Agujaceratops'', and may have been excavated and tossed aside, being mistaken for a rock or concretion, before being picked up decades later. According to the team, the fossilized dome of the animal possessed five to six vertical flanges on each lateral side, connecting it with the postorbital bone. The team interpreted these structures as interlocking "gear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texacephale Referred Specimen By Nick Longrich
''Texacephale'' is a pachycephalosaurid dinosaur from the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. Its fossils come from the Aguja Formation of Big Bend National Park, in Texas, and were described in 2010 by Longrich, Sankey and Tanke. The generic name means Texas + "head" (''kephale'' in Greek) in reference to its place of discovery, and the specific name honors Wann Langston. Discovery The holotype specimen of ''Texacephale'', LSUMNS 20010, is composed of fused frontals and parietals. A second specimen, LSUMNS 20012, is composed of an incomplete frontoparietal dome. It was found in the same WPA quarries that produced '' Agujaceratops'', and may have been excavated and tossed aside, being mistaken for a rock or concretion, before being picked up decades later. According to the team, the fossilized dome of the animal possessed five to six vertical flanges on each lateral side, connecting it with the postorbital bone. The team interpreted these structures as interlocking "ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pachycephalosauria
Pachycephalosauria (; from Greek παχυκεφαλόσαυρος for 'thick headed lizards') is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs. Along with Ceratopsia, it makes up the clade Marginocephalia. With the exception of two species, most pachycephalosaurs lived during the Late Cretaceous Period, dating between about 85.8 and 65.5 million years ago. They are exclusive to the Northern Hemisphere, all of them being found in North America and Asia. They were all bipedal, herbivorous/omnivorous animals with thick skulls. Skulls can be domed, flat, or wedge-shaped depending on the species, and are all heavily ossified. The domes were often surrounded by nodes and/or spikes. Partial skeletons have been found of several pachycephalosaur species, but to date no complete skeletons have been discovered. Often isolated skull fragments are the only bones that are found. Candidates for the earliest known pachycephalosaur include ''Ferganocephale adenticulatum'' from Middle Jurassic Period strata ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aguja Formation
The Aguja Formation is a geological formation in North America, exposed in Texas, United States and Chihuahua and Coahuila in Mexico, whose strata date back to the Late Cretaceous. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation.Weishampel et al., 2004, "Dinosaur distribution (Late Cretaceous, North America).", pp.574-588 Fossil palms have also been unearthed here. Age The ages of the Aguja Formation and its primary fossil-bearing unit, the Upper Shale, are not well understood. Due to the presence of the ammonite ''Baculites mclearni'', which only occurs from 80.67 - 80.21 Ma, in the underlying Rattlesnake Mountain Sandstone and the Terlingua Creek Sandstone, it is likely that the Upper Shale was younger than 80.2 Ma. A radiometric date of 76.9 Ma was recovered in the Upper Shale, making it likely the formation wasn't younger than 76.9 Ma. The contact with the overlying Javelina Formation has been estimated at about 70 Ma agoWoodward, H. N. (2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agujaceratops Mariscalensis
''Agujaceratops'' (meaning "horned face from Aguja") is a genus of horned dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) of west Texas. It is a chasmosaurine (long-frilled) ceratopsian. Two species are known, ''Agujaceratops mariscalensis'', and ''A''. ''mavericus''. Discovery and species In 1938, three dinosaur bone beds were excavated, and ceratopsian material was collected from Big Bend National Park (Texas) by William Strain. This material was studied by Lehman in 1989 and named ''Chasmosaurus mariscalensis''. It is known only from the holotype UTEP P.37.7.086 a partial adult skull which includes a braincase, left supraorbital horncore, left maxilla and a right dentary. Additional material was associated with the holotype, but not considered to be part of it. All specimens of ''Agujaceratops'' were collected from the lower part of the Upper Shale member of the Aguja Formation, dating to about 77 million years ago, in the Big Bend National Park, Brewster County. Add ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wann Langston
Wann Langston Jr. (1921 – April 7, 2013) was an American paleontologist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Langston worked on a number of different reptiles and amphibians in his long career, beginning with the 1950 description (with J. Willis Stovall) of the theropod dinosaur ''Acrocanthosaurus''. Langston was hired by the National Museum of Canada in 1954 to replace Charles M. Sternberg, and worked in western Canada and on Prince Edward Island until 1962. One of his major finds, with Loris Russell, was the rediscovery of Sternberg's Scabby Butte ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' bonebed. Langston, along with a small team of fieldworkers, excavated the Scabby Butte bonebed in 1957, securing several skulls and several hundred bones there. He then went on in 1963 to the University of Texas, where in 1969 he became the second director of the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory, where he worked on many projects, including work on Cretaceous vertebrates from Big Bend National ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agujaceratops
''Agujaceratops'' (meaning "horned face from Aguja") is a genus of horned dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) of west Texas. It is a chasmosaurine (long-frilled) ceratopsian. Two species are known, ''Agujaceratops mariscalensis'', and ''A''. ''mavericus''. Discovery and species In 1938, three dinosaur bone beds were excavated, and ceratopsian material was collected from Big Bend National Park (Texas) by William Strain. This material was studied by Lehman in 1989 and named ''Chasmosaurus mariscalensis''. It is known only from the holotype UTEP P.37.7.086 a partial adult skull which includes a braincase, left supraorbital horncore, left maxilla and a right dentary. Additional material was associated with the holotype, but not considered to be part of it. All specimens of ''Agujaceratops'' were collected from the lower part of the Upper Shale member of the Aguja Formation, dating to about 77 million years ago, in the Big Bend National Park, Brewster County. Additio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sphaerotholus
''Sphaerotholus'' is a genus of pachycephalosaurid dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of the western United States and Canada. To date, three species have been described: the type species, ''S. goodwini'', from the Den-na-zin Member of the Kirtland Formation (Late Campanian) of San Juan County, New Mexico, San Juan County, New Mexico, USA; ''S. buchholtzae'', from the Hell Creek Formation (Late Maastrichtian) of western Carter County, Montana, Carter County, Montana, USA and the Frenchman Formation of Saskatchewan, Canada; and ''S. edmontonensis'', from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, Canada. History of discovery The etymology of ''Sphaerotholus'' is a combination of the Greek language, Greek ''sphaira'', meaning "ball", and ''tholos'', meaning "dome", and is a reference to the characteristically dome-shaped pachycephalosaurian skull (anatomy), skull. The survival of ''Sphaerotholus'' from the Campanian of New Mexico to the end of the Maastrichtian of Montana demonstr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darren Tanke
Darren H. Tanke (born 1960) is a Canadian fossil preparation technician of the Dinosaur Research Program at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta. Born in Calgary, Tanke became interested in natural history at an early age. In 1979, Tanke began working for Philip J. Currie in the paleontology department of the Provincial Museum of Alberta, originally as a volunteer. From 1979 until 2005 (when Dr. Currie left the Tyrrell to become a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton) Tanke worked as a lab and field technician, a job he still holds today.National Research Council Canada Retrieved 2009-05-17. At the museum he is a senior technician in the preparation lab. He does not hold any formal post-secondary degrees, but is active in research and numerous writing projects. Senio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ceratopsidae
Ceratopsidae (sometimes spelled Ceratopidae) is a family of ceratopsian dinosaurs including ''Triceratops'', ''Centrosaurus'', and ''Styracosaurus''. All known species were quadrupedal herbivores from the Upper Cretaceous. All but one species are known from western North America, which formed the island continent of Laramidia during most of the Late Cretaceous. Ceratopsids are characterized by beaks, rows of shearing teeth in the back of the jaw, elaborate nasal horns, and a thin parietal-squamosal shelf that extends back and up into a frill. The group is divided into two subfamilies—Chasmosaurinae and Centrosaurinae. The chasmosaurines are generally characterized by long, triangular frills and well-developed brow horns. The centrosaurines had well-developed nasal horns or nasal bosses, shorter and more rectangular frills, and elaborate spines on the back of the frill. These horns and frills show remarkable variation and are the principal means by which the various species have b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Interior Seaway
The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, and the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea that split the continent of North America into two landmasses. The ancient sea, which existed from the early Late Cretaceous (100 million years ago) to the earliest Paleocene (66 Ma), connected the Gulf of Mexico, through the United States and Canada, to the Arctic Ocean. The two land masses it created were Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. At its largest extent, it was deep, wide and over long. Origin and geology By Late-Cretaceous times, Eurasia and the Americas had separated along the south Atlantic, and subduction on the west coast of the Americas had commenced, resulting in the Laramide orogeny, the early phase of growth of the modern Rocky Mountains. The Western Interior Seaway may be seen as a downwarping of the continental crust ahead of the growing Laramide/Rockies mountain chain. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deinosuchus
''Deinosuchus'' () is an extinct genus of alligatoroid crocodilian, related to modern alligators and caimans, that lived 82 to 73 million years ago (Ma), during the late Cretaceous period. The name translates as "terrible crocodile" and is derived from the Greek ''deinos'' (δεινός), "terrible", and ''soukhos'' (σοῦχος), "crocodile". The first remains were discovered in North Carolina (United States) in the 1850s; the genus was named and described in 1909. Additional fragments were discovered in the 1940s and were later incorporated into an influential, though inaccurate, skull reconstruction at the American Museum of Natural History. Knowledge of ''Deinosuchus'' remains incomplete, but better cranial material found in recent years has expanded scientific understanding of this massive predator. Although ''Deinosuchus'' was far larger than any modern crocodile or alligator, with the largest adults measuring in total length, its overall appearance was fairly simi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
