- Illustration by Jeffrey Martz
TWO “missing link” dinosaurs today!
First, from New Mexico, Daemonosaurus chauliodus whose name means “buck-toothed evil spirit”. (This may be my favorite dinosaur name EVER.) Daemonosaurus “bridges the gap between the earliest known group of predators and more advanced beasts such as Tyrannosaurus rex“:
The dinosaur, which stood as tall as a large dog, boasts a very unusual skull, said study co-author Hans-Dieter Sues, a vertebrate paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
“It has a deep, short snout and these monstrous front teeth. That’s a kind of skull structure for a predatory dinosaur that’s really unexpected for this early point in time,” Sues said.
The other dino-link is an herbivore:
Paleontologists see the recently discovered Leonerasaurus taquetransis as the connection between the smaller prosauropods to their much larger descendants, the sauropods.
And lastly, this article contains almost no information except that there was a dinosaur found in Tunisia. However I include it because the name of the town where the fossil was found is the namesake for Luke Skywalker’s home planet.
Oh, this is all just wonderful, satisfying to the dino geek and SF nerd in each of us. Thank you!
That illustration looks like an orthodontist’s wet dream.
2 new missing links means 4 new gaps in the fossil record.
A dinosaur that was ahead of its time! Sort of a reptilian Friendster.