Episode 564: Rob Sula who co-discovered the Tanis site. The Tanis site is one of the most important paleo sites in North America, showing details of the exact day when the Cretaceous ended. Plus two new cute dinosaurs.

News:

• Dr. Hans Sues has ascended to paleo legend status source
• There’s a new cute ornithopod, Foskeia pelendonum source
• There’s another new, possibly even cuter dinosaur, the thescelosaurid ornithischian Doolysaurus huhmini source

Interview:

Rob Sula, the Senior field supervisor for Paleo Prospectors. He’s a field paleontologist, teacher, and artist with decades of experience hunting and excavating dinosaurs and has co-discovered some very important fossil sites. He was also recently featured in the documentary Why Dinosaurs?

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The dinosaur of the day: Silvisaurus

• Nodosaurid ankylosaur that lived in late Early Cretaceous in what is now Kansas, U.S. (Dakota Formation)
• Looked like a typical nodosaur: walked on all fours, had a long tail (no club), and a small head
• Body covered in armor, and had some armor along the tail
• Had round and polygonal osteoderms (armor)
• Also may have had bony spines on the shoulders and tail
• Estimated to be about 13 ft (4 m) long
• Skull was 13 in (33 cm) long
• Fossil found in the 1950s by a rancher, Warren Condray
• Condray saw fragments embedded in a rock
• His son, Jettie, who was 10 at the time, described them as an “oval-shaped chalky structure on the surface of the rock”
• The University of Kansas ended up excavating the skeleton in 1955 (the preparator of the natural history museum of the university, Russell Camp worked with Condray)
• Named and described in 1960 by Theodore H. Eaton Jr.
• Type and only species is Silvisaurus condrayi
• Genus name means “woodland lizard”
• Species name in honor of Condray
• Found an incomplete skeleton with a skull (includes parts of the jaws, eight neck bones, ten back bones, parts of the hips, three tail bones, part of the right femur/thigh bone, and part of a toe)
• Also found some plates and spikes
• Bones were weathered (exposed at the bottom of a dry riverbed) and had been trampled by cattle, so not in the best shape. Some parts only impressions or natural casts
• Bones were fragile and they were in “ironstone” which made preparing the fossils difficult
• Another sacrum (part of the hips) that’s potentially Silvisaurus was reported in 1988, but hasn’t been studied in detail so it’s a ? if it’s Silvisaurus
• Skull was lightly built
• Skull described as pear-shaped
• Had blunt, conical teeth at the front of the jaw (later nodosaurs had toothless beaks)
• Teeth go almost to the tip of the jaw
• Means the beak would be at the very end of its mouth
• Had a narrow beak
• Had large air passages in its skull, which may have been for communication (making loud vocalizations)
• Lived in a warm climate
• Lived in a dense forest that was near water (Western Interior Seaway)
• Kansas mostly known for its marine fossils
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place include troodontids and other theropods, crocodylomorphs, and pterosaurs
• Official state land fossil of Kansas, as of 2023
• Became the state land fossils thanks partly to some sixth grade students, and their teacher (grandson of the rancher who found the fossil)

Fun Fact:

There is an upcoming reimagining short film of “The Land Before Time”, called “Littlefoot”.

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