Episode 577: Tyrannosaurus update and Riley Black. Riley Black joins to discuss her new book “Tyrant Lizard Queen” which follows the chaotic life of one particular T. rex. Plus lots of tyrannosaur news: T. rex was as warm as a human, three new tyrannosaurs named based on some splitting, juvenile Gorgosaurus diets, and more

News:

• T. rex was as warm as a person source
• An update on Scotty the T. rex: it died of its broken rib source
• There’s a new albertosaurine tyrannosaurid, Tromerosaurus, known from at least three partial skulls and skeletons source
• A juvenile Gorgosaurus skull sheds light on how and where Gorgosaurus lived source
• Two new tyrannosaurs were named, though they don’t appear to be widely accepted: Gilmoretyrannus and Larsonvenator source
• Asiatyrannus xui and Raptorex kriegsteini are likely junior synonyms of Tarbosaurus bataar source

Interview:

Riley Black, an award-winning science writer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Scientific American, Nature, Smithsonian, and more. She has also written many books, most recently, “Tyrant Lizard Queen,” an imaginative celebration of T. rex from hatching to adulthood. Follow her on rileyblack.net or on bluesky & buttondown @restingdinoface

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The dinosaur of the day: Noasaurus

• Ceratosaurian theropod that lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Argentina (Lecho Formation)
• Typical theropod look: walked on two legs, had a long tail, long snout with sharp teeth
• Small, about 5.2 to 6.6 ft (1.6 to 2 m) long
• Estimated to weigh up to 83 lb (38 kg)
• Don’t know how old the holotype is (histology not allowed on its bones)
• But may belong to an immature individual, based on details of the skull bones
• Possible it may have gotten bigger
• Had a long, s-curved neck
• Teeth were ziphodont (very sharp)
• Had curved, bladelike claws on its hands that would have been covered in keratin
• Don’t know too much about its hands
• Two big, curved claws found by the holotype thought to be foot claws, like dromaeosaurids (raptors)
• Thought to have a sickle-claw on its feet
• Claw is from the hand (like Megaraptor)
• Now we know they were on its hands
• Maybe used hands to get fish from water, and the claws on the hands were like the large thumb claws on spinosaurids like Baryonyx
• Described as “gaffing fish” (sharp hook to pull the fish out of the water)
• Likely ate small vertebrates, including fish
• Type and only species is Noasaurus leali
• Holotype includes just a few bones
• Fossils found in 1975, by a team led by José Fernando Bonaparte
• Found a bonebed of disarticulated fossils, with over 100 dinosaur bones
• Found near Saltasaurus bones (titanosaur)
• Holotype includes parts of the jaw and skull, neck bones, ribs, part of a backbone, two hand claws, part of a finger and part of a hand
• Only know two pieces of the skull and a piece of the upper jaw (maxilla) with some teeth
• In 1999, scientists found a neck bone (cervical vertebra) that was thought to belong to an oviraptorosaur but later found to belong to a noasaurid, and likely the Noasaurus holotype
• Described by José Bonaparte and Jaime Powell in 1980
• Genus names comes from NOA, the acronym for north-western Argentina
• Genus name means “reptile from north-western Argentina”
• Species name is in honor of Juan Carlos Leal, the lab technician who found the site
• Closely related to Velocisaurus, Masiakasaurus, and Laevisuchus, all from the Late Cretaceous in the Southern Hemisphere
• Part of the group Noasauridae
• At first considered to be a coelurosaur, but now considered to be a ceratosaur, and within Ceratosauria, there’s Noasauridae
• Noasaurids were closely related to abelisaurids (interesting, because abelisaurids had such short arms) and noasaurids had longer arms
• Noasaurids kept plesiomorphic traits, including long arms and well-developed claws
• Interesting group that includes Masiakasaurus (with the downturned jaw) and Limusaurus (that had a beak and no teeth as an adult)
• Other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include abelisaurids, titanosaurs like Saltasaurus, and many enantiornithine birds

Fun Fact:

Big mammals did exist, at least in Brazil, in the Early Cretaceous source

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