#triassic madness

[solradguy]

I wrote another 1000 words for this GG fic but I haven't drawn a single Soltober sketch today..........

#textpost #It's at 8000 words now. I wrote a dream sequence about the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event from a dissociative perspective #Because the Flame of Corruption and the Scales of Juno were the catalysts for all the mass extinction events on Earth #And the FoC influences Sol's emotions a lot so I figured maybe it influenced more than that too #He's got MAD eye circles in some art so he definitely is not sleeping well #I'm sure having nightmares about the planet boiling probably don't help. On top of everything else going on

[scolop98]

Apologies in advance for the person I will become once @weirdanimal-tournament’s tournament bracket begins. I’m know most of y’all follow me for the fandom memes but I’m also a huge zoology nerd and I will be hyperfixating on this and flooding this account with impassioned arguments to vote for chevrotains and Jerusalem crickets

#describing actual living animal species as my blorbos feels cursed #but would not be inaccurate in the slightest #the only reason I didn’t go completly feral during Triassic March Madness was b/c I didn’t have a tumblr account at the time #nothing will stop me now

[sauriansolutions]

I have many stupid Floyd headcanons/scenarios, but this is my current, unbelievably stupid favorite.

The tweels are both big eaters, right? However, Jade seems to somehow always eat more. Are their appetites different? Or, maybe Jade is more focused while eating?

In truth, Floyd never manages to eat as much as his brother--in fact, he probably barely ever manages to finish his meals--because he's too busy playing with his food.

Imagine the octotrio in the cafeteria.

Azul is trying to very slowly chew and *savor* every bite of... whatever gross health food he's currently pretending to enjoy.

Jade is smiling serenely while industrially plowing his way through his seventh or eighth serving of spaghetti with mushroom sauce, a stack of empty bowls piling up in front of him.

Floyd? Floyd just can't eat normally. Floyd has to balance ever single French fry on his nose before he eats it. Floyd has to use his fork as a slingshot to launch individual meatballs in the air, and attempt to catch them in his mouth, (missing about 1/3rd of the time, to the annoyance of his fellow diners).

Floyd needs to construct an accurate diorama of the Night Raven College campus out of hamburg steak and mashed potatoes on his lunch tray before eating. With broccoli and asparagus for trees, alfalfa sprouts for grass, and savory broth for the rivers and ocean.

The bell has long since rung at this point. The cafeteria is basically empty at this point. Azul and Jade know, by now, the futility of interrupting Floyd's artistic vision.

It's just Floyd, putting the finishing touches on the NRC castle, made out of breadsticks. Epel is also there helping carve carrot sticks into the likeness of the Main Street statues. Cater is livestreaming this to magicam for posterity, and Sebek is in the background with one trembling hand pointing a finger, his mouth hanging open in awe, as he watches this all unfold.

Eventually, Crowley barges in, attempting to get mad about these shenanigans. But then he ends up crying over his precious students' display of creativity and school spirit. Crowley ends up trying to build a little wall around the diorama to preserve it until RSA visits for some inter-school function next week, so he can rub Ambrose's nose in it (maybe literally?)

The ghost chefs beg him not to, claiming this is an absolute violation of the Sages Island health code, to no avail.

Meanwhile Floyd shows up 45 minutes late for class, seeming very happy. Asking in a whisper, does Shrimpy have any tasty snacks they feel like sharing today?

Yuu (a gremlin): Uhh sure! I have these dinosaur nuggets I shoved in my pocket yesterday!

Floyd: Shrimpy. What in Twisted Wonderland are dinosaur nuggets?

Trein's class ends up getting hijacked as Yuu excitedly explains Earth prehistory, and Floyd convinces everybody to shove all the desks together and build an epic Triassic diorama out of stale dinosaur nuggets and random school supplies.

#floyd leech #twisted wonderland #twst headcanons #dinosaur nuggets #yuu is an enabler #nrc is a silly place #3 hours later sebek is still standing in the same position in the cafeteria #we broke him

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Noticed that none of the widely known Dino’s aren’t in the competetion…..which is honestly good cause the trex would have absolutely swept

So actually this is our 6th dinosaur march madness! (5th, technically, anyway). We've been doing this for ages, ever since I got inspired by a similar thing on twitter (mammals, not dinosaurs)!

Year one was way back in 2016 - we used to use google polls to run the competition! We had people narrow down their fave dinosaurs by general group (ie ones closely related to each other) and then duked it out. Believe it or not, T. rex didn't make it into the first year! That'll remain wild for me, but Yutyrannus was the tyrannosaur. Ultimately, the Common Raven won, which makes a significant amount of sense for tumblr

Year two (2017) we only allowed in contestants that hadn't made the bracket the year before - this was a weird year, because Maiasaura won, and I s2g, I don't think it should have, I think people just voted for it because it's my (Meig, the main ADAD guy) favorite dinosaur. What can ya do...

Year three (2018) we only allowed in things that hadn't been in EITHER bracket EITHER year - this allowed for a lot of weirdos to show up, and the ultimate winner was Halszkaraptor, the first known goose-raptor-thing (like Natovenator this year)!

Year four (2019) - DMM Allstars! It was a bunch of competitors that had made it into the bracket the other three years, but didn't win outright. Amargasaurus won that year! It's a close cousin of Bajadasaurus in this year's bracket

Year five (2020 - note all the prep happens BEFORE March...) we switched it up and did Triassic March Madness - not technically dinosaurs, just a bunch of really weird critters from one of the weirdest times in Earth's history - Postosuchus won though, even though its not that weird, because the art made it look like a puppy. What can ya do.

Then we took a break because I was starting grad school again, moving across the country, bunch of the rest of the team also doing literally the same two things to whatever extent it applied to them, and also that whole pandemic thing

And now we have DMM: Rising Stars, where we take the opportunity to highlight dinosaurs that had come out since the last competition new ones would have showed up in (2018) - hence its a bunch of dinosaurs y'all haven't heard of! What a great opportunity to share new science and make DMM even more interesting!

Plus it gave me and @albertonykus more opportunities to brag about the birds (Anachronornis and Asteriornis respectively) we've named during that same time period XD

We want to do Permian Madness eventually like we did Triassic, because the Permian is also super weird. Another year we might do Fossil Birds, because often the birds that got voted in those first four years were living species and a lot of fossil birds haven't had their time in the spotlight in my very biased fossil-bird-researcher opinion. We have a lot of ideas, and frankly the excitement that is not having to use a third party (google) with the addition of tumblr polls means prehistory-march-madness will continue for a while!

#its just really funny so many people have joined DMM rising stars with absolutely none of this backstory known to them #dmm: rising stars #dmm #dinosaur march madness #dinosaurs #palaeoblr #birds #birblr

[thetamehistorian]

I recently rediscovered the joy of Primeval and it's derailed all of my other writing plans so enjoy this snippet I guess!

Portsmouth, UK

Captain Hilary Becker had survived SAS selection, two tours of duty – which had included four miserable months in the Afghan desert with insurgents taking pot shots at him on the regular – and growing up as the only boy in a household with three older sisters.

That was to say that he categorically refused to let an overgrown prehistoric chicken become the reason his mother received a knock on the door from a sympathetic officer. With the butt of his EMD rifle nestled firmly in his shoulder he let off another burst and finally hit the sodding thing. It had been getting a little too close and bite-y for comfort for a moment there.

“Sitrep Captain?” Evan, his second and frequent bane of his life asked over the comms, presumably in the hopes that she could get off babysitting the scientist duty and have a piece of the action.

Becker didn’t so much nudge the stunned dinosaur back through the anomaly as shove it home with extreme prejudice. Look, what Abby didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. “Fan-fucking-tastic, Lieutenant.”

“SNAFU, copy that sir.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

Becker could hear the grin in Evan’s voice. There were days he was glad that Special Forces hadn’t recruited female officers back when he’d been in training. Evan was exactly the kind of feral that would have thrived in that environment, which probably explained how she’d ended up in his unit, thinking about it. It took a certain type of person to last at the ARC.

Becker tried not to contemplate what that must say about him.

Heaving himself up, EMD still trained on the anomaly, he held back at grunt as the scar tissue on his side twinged at the movement. “ETA on Temple?”

“Two minutes,” came the reply, echoed a second later by the man himself.

Finally, some good news. After the fiasco with the first, very broken, locking mechanism, and then the creature incursion, Becker could do with some haste.

“What are these little buggers anyway?” he asked, having set up in a better position to snipe any others that got ideas about coming through.

“Eoraptors,” Temple informed him, slightly out of breath. Over the sound of the comms, Becker could hear approaching footsteps. “Late Triassic.”

“Small, fast, lots of teeth, omnivores,” Matt added helpfully from somewhere halfway across the country.

Two anomalies opening at once wasn’t exactly common, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened during his time at the ARC. Becker hoped they were having more luck corralling the herd of peaceful giants back through their anomaly his team were with the overgrown chickens. Sorry – Eoraptors.

With a scuff of boots on the floor, Connor Temple burst into the room, set down the new locking mechanism and activated it with a speed that would have the instructors at Sandhurst grudgingly impressed. This time, blessedly, the anomaly behaved itself and shrunk down to a closed state. Connor let out a sigh of relief. Becker did too, but he was more subtle about it.

Then the mad genius that Becker had the misfortune to call his colleague looked at him, grinned in a mildly manic way that could have been either the result of too little sleep, or humour, or both, and said, “So, James, eh?”

Despite his attempt to hide it, Becker did not miss the way Connor’s eyes flicked down to the ID plate on his EMD, the one that matched the dog tags round his neck which clearly proclaimed him to be one Captain H J Becker.

He was well aware of the ongoing debate at the ARC regarding what those initials stood for and was just glad that Connor hadn’t overheard the first part of the conversation.

There was a reason he went by his surname, after all.

Banging his head against the wall, Becker looked up toward the ceiling of the powder magazine – grade II* listed Hils, Maddy has enthused upon their arrival, one of the best examples of a bastion trace fort in the country - and once again cursed the universe for opening an anomaly at his favourite sister’s place of work.

SNAFU - "Situation normal: all fucked up" or 'this sucks, but that's the normal state of affairs'.

#primeval #fanfiction #my writing #captain becker #connor temple #matt anderson #ocs

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

SO...I guess there are polls on here. Who knew?

Today's competitors are therapsids, anscestors to modern mammals.

Cynognathus

Lived during the late Triassic Period. It had a double gait meaning that its hind legs were erect but its front legs were sprawling. Dinosaurs had a completely erect gait.

Lystrosaurus lived duringbthe late Permian into the early Triassic some 20 million years before dinosaurs. While 98% of all life died at the end of the Permian, Lystrosaurus said "naw, I got this." It had a semi-sprawling gait and it was found on multiple continents so it was used as evidence for continental drift.

#paleontology #fossils #march madness #competition #not a dinosaur #mammal

[statecryptids]

Reposting an old book review with a cool new book portrait

THOSE DREADFUL ELTDOWN SHARDS by Franklyn Searight and Richard F. Searight

Some of the hallmarks of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft- the grandfather of modern cosmic horror- are the ancient tomes of forbidden and madness-inducing knowledge that infest his tales like pallid fungi. His most famous fictional text is the “Necronomicon”, but he also mentions other works like the “Pnakotic Fragments” and the “Book of Azathoth”, along with grimoires invented by his fellow Weird pulp writers such as Robert Bloch’s “Book of EIbon”, Robert E. Howard’s “Nameless Cults”. And, of course, the artifacts that this anthology focuses on: the “Eltdown Shards” of author Richard Searight.

Searight himself only wrote two stories featuring the Shards. The majority of tales in this anthology are actually posthumous “collaborations” with his son, Franklyn Searight. Rounding out the book are Lovecraft’s tales which mention the Shards, including the novella “The Shadow Out of Time”, and more obscure works such as “The Diary of Alonzo Typer”.

The Shards, a collection of clay tablets inscribed with bizarre hieroglyphics written in an unknown, prehuman language, are housed in the museum of Beloin College, a small university near Weston, Wisconsin. Though they seem innocuous, the Shards hide great power that has ensorcelled the minds of many beings throughout the eons.

An overwhelming desire for omniscience- full comprehension of all knowledge in the universe- is a major theme in stories surrounding the Eltdown Shards. Protagonists obsess over the tablets, using the incantations contained in the forgotten hieroglyphics to summon beings such as The Warder of Knowledge, the ice demon Avaloth, and the ape-god Ouran-Atun. As you can imagine, these encounters usually do not end well for the mortal summoners.

Mind transference is another theme in many of the Shards stories. There is a strong connection with the Yithians of Lovecraft’s “Shadow Out of Time”, who came to Earth in the distant past by transferring their minds across the universe into the bodies of the strange, cone-like beings of the Triassic.

Mental voyaging also crops up in “The Challenge From Beyond”, a round robin story co-written by Lovecraft, Searight, and their Pulp-era peers A. Merrit, C.L. Moore, Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long. In this tale a man discovers a strange crystalline cube that turns out to be a mind-teleporting device sent by a race of centipede-people from the distant planet of Yekaub who may or may not be related to the original bodies of the Yithians.

Several of the stories written by Franklyn Searight feature his character Alan Hasrad, a journalist and descendant of Lovecraft’s Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred. Hasrad’s stories tend to be frustratingly anticlimactic. He investigates some strange thing related to the Shards, obtains information he needs and… well, that’s it. The story “Seized by the Warder” does have an odd twist ending, at least, though it doesn’t add much to the rest of the story.

While Those Dreadful Eltdown Shards don’t add much to the Lovecraft mythos beyond giving some background to a text briefly mentioned in “The Shadow Out of Time”, it is interesting to see the Searights’ own world taking form. There is potential here for an intriguing mythology, it just needs wider expansion and deeper delving.

#book review #lovecraft mythos

[blorbologist]

You said we could ask about dinosaurs, what's your favourite/weirdest one? Also, do you think dino feathers are related to pterosaur fur? I'd love to imagine their common ancestor as a fluffy sillysaur-like creature :p

My favorite dinosaur flipflops between Dakotaraptor (potentially not valid & has the mess around its discovery, BUT was in a super cool ecosystem and is a real life JP Raptor) and Deinonychus (incredible fossils, revolutionized how we understand dinosaurs, the inspiration for those JP Raptors even if they slapped Velociraptor's name on the package). Because as fascinating as other species get, I'm a sucker for 'eagle-leopard-dragon'.

There's something just so cool about larger dromaeosaurids, even as it seems increasingly like most were not as social as we initially thought. I study social behavior in reptiles and can tell you that them not necessarily hunting in packs does not mean they didn't have fascinating intraspecific behaviors, and potentially social learning / gaze following / 'friendships' (here citing research in bearded dragons, red-footed tortoises and garter snakes, all of which are considered less socially / cognitively complex than birds. So I'd expect this as a bare minimum from most dromaeosaurids.)

My favorite weird dinosaur is actually harder to choose because there are so many of them. My current favorite is likely Jakapil, because I'm bitter it didn't win Dinosaur March Madness. You can read a bit more about it in @a-dinosaur-a-day's finalist post for it here! This thing has a super long ghost lineage, lived alongside one of the largest terrestrial predators to ever live, and just has such a funky look to it:

(Art credit to pantydraco on Twitter, which I 100% just chose because of the handle gkntrnh incredible)

Other weird favorites include Yi qui (dinosaur gave being a tiny dragon a try), Kulindadromeus (we'll get to it shortly) and Deinocheirus (giant-sloth-bear-duck, and its fossils also have their own incredibly weird story).

(I can't find who GIFed this and for that I am devastated, but it's from Prehistoric Planet's first season.)

To answer your second question, we don't actually call what pterosaurs have 'fur', given the implication that it'd be related to mammalian integument - the fuzz is called pycnofibers! Given that we see similar simple fibers in pterosaurs, theropods (see: the host of feathered dinosaur fossils, modern birds, a potential fuzzy pants trackway dated to the Triassic) and the ornithischians as well, I'd lean towards pycnofibers being basal to the group.

That weirdo I mentioned above, Kulindadromeus, is actually pretty instrumental to this - not only are its fossils absolutely insane (there are potentially hundreds of them in the bonebed! Including juveniles! Preserved with several types of scales!) but it was fuzzy! With three different types of fibers, too!

(Artist credit: Andrey Atuchin)

So the Triassic was likely rife with smallish not-quite-dinosaurs-not-quite-pterosaurs running around with floof, potentially to better deal with the harsh conditions. Or maybe just to look cute (this is half a joke gntrkntrknh)

#paleoblr #dinosaurs #Am I becoming a paleo-ish blog? :DDDD #all my reblogging of paleo content finally paying off baybyyyy #I wonder what the overlap between CR and dinosaur nerds is. #how many suffered with me at the wave of pronated arm T.rex!Caleb art after Rumblecusp and the boat fight

[bluepriestess]

I HATE THIS FUCKING GUY SOOOOOOO MUCH. his name is il dottore and he's a fatui harbinger and he's a mad scientist and i swear to GOD im gonna beat his ass and break his stupid mask over his head. I HATE HIM MORE THAN SCARAMOUCHE WHICH IS SAYING SOMETHING!!!!!

i forgive sephiroth because he's hot and has a good voice and motivations. dottore, though? lord give me strength im bouta knock this bitch back into the triassic era.

Ok I totally get all that but like 👁👁 I love his color scheme so much also I love mask

#ask #whereforearthouromeo #👁👁👁👁👁

[wtf-triassic]

WHY THE TRIASSIC????

What the FUCK is so WEIRD about the Triassic?

Well I will TELL YOU! 

Okay so first of all, the Triassic is SUPER DUPER OLD. In the grand scheme of the Earth, sure, it happened relatively recently, but working on the scale of the entire geologic time span of the Earth’s existence is not exactly fair: 

I mean, animals that we can recognize today didn’t show up until that line in the Phanerozoic (Hadean is the oldest stuff), so like, it’s smack dab in the middle of THAT 

Look, basically, here’s what happened: 

- The earth Formed. Life Appeared. Chaos reigned (4,600 million years ago until 4,000 million years ago) 

- Life began to become more complex. Some life began to stick its blueprints inside of pockets so they’d be safer. They then swallowed other life forms that were better at getting energy, but kept them around like a buddy inside of them. Some of these guys could make a shitton of oxygen. This made the earth cool and a lot of shit die out super duper quickly. Extinction rate unknown. (4,000 million years ago until 2,500 million years ago) 

- Climate change and fluctuating oceans allow life to start to group up together into SuperLife aka Multicellular Things. These multicellular things got more and more complicated. Some became animals and started moving around a lot. Some plants went on land. Some things were super weird looking and mysterious. LOTS of experimentation by life. Things start to change and a lot of these early experiments go extinct. Extinction rate unknown. (2,500 million years ago until 541 million years ago) 

- Animals can suddenly burrow underground and go absolutely apeshit and diversify faster than you can say “wait a second whAT THE FUCK IS THAT”. Ice Age causes Death, 85% of species die out. (541-444 million years ago) 

- Fish suddenly have a chance to be weird too and some of them decide, what the heck, let’s crawl onto land. Why not, right? Some other animals decide to join them. Plants make everything super cold, 75% of all species die out. (444-359 mya) 

- Land-vertebrates start to diversify. They try out a lot of new things, but there aren’t a lot of them yet. So there’s still a lot of experimentation in body plans. Mammal-relatives are actually some of the most diverse ones. Reptiles are fairly rare. A GIANT MASS EXTINCTION CAUSED BY A GIANT LAVA FIELD EXPLODING KILLS ~95% OF LIFE ON EARTH. (359-252 mya)

- NEW animals get to try to diversify and do lots of crazy shit in the wake of SO MANY JOBS IN THE ENVIRONMENT GETTING CLEARED OUT. Reptiles diversify so fast you don’t know what the heck is happening. Other animals also take this opportunity to do new and weird shit. VOLCANOS EXPLODE, KILL ~80% OF LIFE (252-201 mya) 

- Dinosaurs finally get to do fun things now that other reptiles are no longer being weird. Modern life starts to show up. (201 mya-today). 

BASICALLY: 

- Land Animals had only just started to diversify and try out new funky things with their bodies in order to cope with the challenges of terrestrial life 

- Then a giant mass extinction killed everything. Mass exinctions are bad news for a lot of shit that’s specialized for the environment that’s been destroyed, BUT it allows things that make it through to have a chance to try out new shit to fill all those empty jobs in the environment 

- So, generalist reptiles, who hadn’t had a chance to do jack diddly squat before, now suddenly had the whole planet to play with. And the other animals around them, from mammal-cousins to amphibians to fish to insects to other invertebrates, also got to try out some new stuff in this new world 

- AND THEN ANOTHER MASS EXTINCTION HAPPENED RIGHT AFTER THAT RESET THE CLOCK AGAIN

This means that the TRIASSIC has some of THE MOST UNIQUE ANIMALS TO HAVE EVER EVOLVED IN EARTH’S HISTORY. Experiments were tried, rapidly, and MANY were lost RIGHT AWAY. It’s not like the life that evolved after that, which was honestly similar to what we see today - or those that evolved after the end-Cretaceous extinction, which was even more like today. These were weirdos that appeared and were wiped out before they could continue on to today 

And, because this was a rapid evolutionary period, we see the starts of many of today’s modern groups of animals, and they’re super weird, too! 

Honestly, the only weirder period in Earth’s history is the Cambrian Explosion, when animals first started doing anything notable at all 

On top of THAT, the ENTIRE EARTH was ONE GIANT SUPERCONTINENT called Pangea! Everyone could go everywhere! There were no terrestrial barriers to movement! So many creatures spread all over the globe. It was a HOTSPOT of biodiversity and a major turning point in Earth’s History

But, because the dinosaurs that evolved in the Triassic were kind of Meh, it doesn’t get enough press!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

So, we’re going to cover the Weird and Wonderful animals of the Triassic - we have a carefully curated list of Weirdos ready to take Tumblr by storm, and we hope you’ll enjoy learning about these amazing animals right along with us! You’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see them, though - don’t want to give away the surprises! 

GET! PUMPED! 

IT’S TRIASSIC TIME!

#Triassic #Palaeoblr #Dinosaurs #Prehistoric Life #Animals #Reptiles #Triassic Madness #Triassic March Madness #History of Life #Evolution #Paleontology

[deinonychusfloof]

DEAD MEME! DEAD MEME!

Tag urself poorly drawn Triassic fauna edition.

#I'm Just a Fish and Gay. #tag yourself #tag urself #palaeoblr #Triassic March Madness #tmm #DREPANOSAURUS OR BUST BABY

[scolop98]

VOTE STEGOUROS FOR DINOSAUR MARCH MADNESS 2023

art by Gabriel Ugueto

This is admittedly a really tough choice, but what is March Madness season for if not throwing your entire soul into campaigning against a random animal species for petty reasons? (disclaimer: this is from the guy who slandered Vaderlimulus for almost the entirety of Triassic March Madness before realizing that it never actually beat Atopodentatus in a poll)

I’ll try to keep this short since my previous Berthasaura propoganda post took a lot out of me and I actually respect Spicomellus as a contender /hj

A VOTE FOR STEGOUROS IS A VOTE FOR:

- an entirely new basal clade of ankylosaurs, only described less than two years ago, which survived until the Maastrichtian!

- the macuahuitl, which I believe is the first new type of thyreophoran tail-weaponry discovered in a long time

- asymmetrical, vaguely hourglass shaped teeth. what was it doing with those teeth? something cool, no doubt; I am a sucker for phylogenetic trends in feeding ecology 

- was apparently adapted for cursoriality, including with hoof-shaped claws? I didn’t even know thyreophorans could do that but yes please, all of that. Hello, new hyperfixation rabbithole

- south america! as far as I’m concerned, South American ecology has been Fabulous roughly since the Cretaceous and hasn’t stopped. Stegouros lived alongside unenlagiines! that’s really cool!

- a Little Guy™️. exhibit A, from wikipedia:

what a perfectly sized little guy. so precious and (comparatively) small, and this was a full-grown adult thyreophoran from the non-European Maastrichtian! As far as I know, Stegouros has no right to be that small. If it does, please tell me, as it will only make me love it more

- something known from a mostly-complete skeleton! so we actually have a good idea of what it looks like!

As much as I love Spicomellus for being so extra (osteoderms attached directly to the rib, first known african ankylosaur, earliest known ankylosaur, lived alongside a Stegosaur) it’s only known from a single rib bone. It is, admittedly, a really cool rib bone, but Stegouros also lots of really cool bones! And they all belong to the same skeleton! Spicomellus may come with some really interesting biogeography and ankylosaur evolution facts, but so does Stegouros! And Stegouros objectively has more neat anatomy than Spicomellus does, no matter how you slice it. Does Spicomellus really have anything to offer that Stegouros can’t offer just as well, if not better?

Vote Stegouros for the only remaining Cool Ankylosaur™️ with a remotely complete skeleton. For the only remaining definitely-a-thyreophoran with a remotely complete Skelton, for that matter.

@a-dinosaur-a-day

#dinosaur march madness #dmm round two #dmm rising stars #stegouros #spicomellus #ankylosauria #a-dinosaur-a-day #dinosaurs

[romigodon]

In honour of Triassic March Madness, here’s me in the field this weekend working in the Redonda Formation of Eastern New Mexico!

Also, our program got really into it (minus Max who was out to the lab that afternoon). It seems some of our picks have already been beaten out, and my professor who has based their whole career on Phytosaurs was not pleased that Rutidon was beaten in round one!

Remember everyone, that funky Doswelliad Vancleavea needs our votes!!! So, VOTE FOR VANCLEAVEA!!!

#romigodon #paleontology #field work #triassic march madness #vancleavea

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

So next year's DMM is going to be Permian Madness, which we've promised for literally ages

I'm just a curious bean who wants to get a feel for whether these other ideas have support?

So here are some other "dinosaur" (I recognize permian march madness will not have a single dinosaur) march madness ideas I have. Remember I'm just looking for interest, so vote for whatever you're curious about, not necessarily what you'd like to "win" or what have you since there are no winners here, only losers

(ie things that get voted very little probably won't happen)

yeah I probably can come up with more that's why I need y'all to help me narrow it down

also we ARE open to more period-madnesses a la triassic and permian, that's just a whole other question

#dmm #dinosaur march madness #palaeoblr #birblr #poll

[rave-lord-nito]

It’s finally Triassic March Madness, which means i will be doing nothing but rooting for the big lad Lisowicia for the rest of the month

#lisowicia bojani #palaeontology #triassic march madness #tmm #please help the big lad

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

March Madness Day 13: Wild and Weird Reptiles

Tanystrophaeus is a long-necked archosauromorph, a reptile more closely related to crocs and birds than to lizards and snakes. And by long-necked, I mean 80% of it's length is neck. It lived during the middle Triassic some 15 to 20 million years before dinosaurs.

Drepanosaurus is a type of arboreal reptile with a prehensile tail. Even crazier, the tail ends in a freaking claw. Don't believe me? Here's the fossil:

#paleontology #fossils #fun facts #march madness #competition #not a dinosaur