Episode 571: Dinosaur Growth!. Tyrannosaurus hatchlings; Tyrannosaurus took 40 years to reach full size; Some dinosaurs grew really fast and some were incredibly slow; Growth affects how much dinosaurs need parental care; A listener question about how sauropod diets changed as they grew; And a whole lot more dinosaur growth research

News:

• There’s a new titanosauriform dinosaur, Dasosaurus tocantinensis source
• When estimating how dinosaurs grew, some models may be missing important data points source
• Dinosaurs were likely thicker and heavier than previously estimated source
• How much did climate affect dinosaur body size evolution? It’s hard to say source
• Scans of Early Triassic archosauromorph fossils show that this group had a variety of growth strategies from the beginning source
• How scales grow as dinosaurs grow can give us some information on how they lived source
• Tyrannosaur hatchlings may have left the nest shortly after hatching to hunt source
• It took Tyrannosaurus rex 40 years to reach its full size source
• Ceratosaurus grew more than 9 times faster than some of its fellow ceratosaurs source
• The basal ornithopod Changchunsaurus was one of the slowest growing dinosaurs (that we know of) source
• Maiasaura grew in a way that it needed a lot of parental care as a hatchling source
• The hadrosaur Gryposaurus grew (mostly) isometrically (meaning everything grew at the same rate) source
• The small iguanodont Dysalotosaurus had some interesting fused bones in its neck source
• A new, tiny, young sauropodomorph sheds light on how early dinosaurs grew source
• The titanosaur Neuquensaurus grew quickly, but differently than expected source

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The dinosaur of the day: Tambatitanis

• Titanosauriform, possibly titanosaur, sauropod that lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now Hyogo Prefecture, Japan (Ohyamashimo Formation)
• Walked on all fours, had a long neck and tail, small head
• Partial skeleton found
• Fossils found include teeth, braincase, lower jaw, parts of the hips, part of a back bone, some ribs, some tail bones
• Took 5 field seasons to excavate (from 2006 to 2010) because it could only be dug up in winter when the water level of the river was lowest
• Described in 2014 by Haruo Saegusa and Tadahiro Ikeda
• Type and only species is Tambatitanis amicitiae
• Genus name refers to Tamba, the area where the fossils were found
• Name means “Tamba titan”
• Species name means “friendship” and refers to the friendship between the two people who found the holotype in August 2006 (Murakami Shigeru and Adachia Kiyoshi)
• Unique features in the braincase and tail bones
• Neural spines (which stick out) of the tail have a strong curve
• Lived in a subhumid to semi-arid climate
• Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include indeterminate ankylosaurs and iguanodonts, the neoceratopsian Sasayamagnomus, theropods such as the troodontid Hypnovenator
• Other animals that lived around the same time and place include squamates, amphibians, mammals, crustaceans, and molluscs

Fun Fact:

Birds may lay large eggs because of their brain sizes (growth is connected to so many things!)

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