Episode 529: Dino Duels!. Happy March! We’re celebrating with a friendly Dino Duels Competition. Fill out a bracket to predict which dinosaur will win their matchups and you could win a prize!

Here are the steps to enter the Dino Duels Competition:

• Check out our interactive Dinosaur Bracket at bit.ly/dinoduelsbracket and predict the dinosaur champions
• Then copy over your picks and submit them in the Google Form by March 11, 2025 at bit.ly/dinoduelspicks
• Go to bit.ly/dinoduelsrules for all the rules for the Dino Duels Competition

Sponsors:

This episode is brought to you by the Colorado Northwestern Community College. Join them for two weeks digging up dinosaur bones from the Jurassic Period in Northwest Colorado this summer. For details go to CNCC.edu/dinodig

The dinosaur of the day: Cumnoria

• Basal iguanodontian that lived in the Late Jurassic in what is now Oxfordshire, United Kingdom (Kimmeridge Clay Formation)
• Iguanodonts started around the Middle Jurassic and lived until the end of the Cretaceous
• Some debate over whether or not it’s Camptosaurus
• Looked similar to Camptosaurus
• Uteodon, our dinosaur of the day in episode 521, also looked similar to Camptosaurus (and is a species of Camptosaurus, depending on who you ask)
• Small and walked on two legs, had shorter arms, had a long tail and a long(ish) head
• Holotype includes a partial skull and skeleton
• Holotype had a slender build, and was about 11.4 ft (3.5 m) long
• Holotype is probably a juvenile, based on lack of fusion in the vertebrae and ribs
• In adult iguanodontians, these bones are fused, which is why the holotype is thought to be a juvenile
• Even though the specimen is a juvenile, doesn’t affect being classified as a basal iguanodont because characters used in ornithopod phylogenies aren’t really influenced by changes in their growth
• Well preserved (not much crushing or distortion)
• Unique in that it had features such as a prominent ridge on the shoulder bone, and an oval muscle scar on its arm bone
• Had robust feet
• Fossils found at Cumnor Hurst, a hill near Cumnor, Oxfordshire, in the UK, in 1879
• Fossils found while the area was being excavated for a tramway
• Fossils first ended up in a dump heap, but then were later collected and shown to George Rolleston, an anatomist from Oxford University. He showed them to Joseph Prestwich in 1879, who said they were a new species of Iguanodon (but didn’t give it a species name). Then in 1880 Prestwich published an article on the stratigraphy of where the fossils were found, and later in the year John Hulke named the fossils Iguanodon prestwichii, in honor of Prestwich
• First description, wrote, “The skull is wanting, except a small fragment”
• In 1880, Hulke wrote its “head was lizard-like, with large eyes and capacious nostrils”
• Hulke also wrote, “Unfortunately, as too frequently happens, the removal of the fossils by the unskillful hands of day-labourers has occasioned much damage and many losses. The bones had been already much crushed by the pressure of the beds ; but many of the fractures are plainly quite recent”
• In 1888 Harry Seeley renamed the fossils as Cumnoria prestwichi
• Genus name Cumnoria is after Cumnor, the village where it was found
• But in 1889 Richard Lydekker said it was Camptosaurus prestwichii, which many scientists over the years agreed with
• Then it was possibly Cumnoria in 2008 (Naish and Martill)
• Then Cumnoria in 2011 by McDonald, and again in 2020 by Barrett and Wills
• Susannah Maidment and others in 2023 redescribed Cumnoria
• Found it to be distinct from Camptosaurus and valid, with two unique features in the shoulder
• Not many Late Jurassic ornithopods from Europe are known (only Callovosaurus, based on an isolated femur found in the UK, Eousdryosaurus and Draconyx from Portugal, and Cumnoria)
• One of only four valid dinosaurs from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation of the UK (including the stegosaur Dacentrurus, the titanosauriform Duriatitan, and the tyrannosauroid Juratyrant)
• Holotype includes an incomplete skull, including a partial braincase, vertebrae from the neck, back and tail, ribs, part of an arm, part of the hips, parts of the legs, and parts of the feet and a hand
• Need more fossils to better understand this dinosaur
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place include sauropods, theropods, sea turtles, and pterosaurs

Fun Fact:

John Wooden is the most successful coach in the history of college basketball, and he guided UCLA to ten national championships, but one of his streaks was broken by a dinosaur.

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