0 Pterosaur Week: Anhanguera.

 One of the things I keep stressing in pterosaur entries is how darn weird they are. Seriously, there are a lot of relatively-untapped monsters in pterosaurs, even without making them into dragons. Plenty of them would make one release one's bowels in an untimely manner on sight.

Source.

This is one of those. Anhanguera is a Late Cretaceous pterosaur straight out of somebody's nightmare. Its name means "ancient devil," and rightfully so. It looks freaky. The species was found in Brazil, and thus got a Portuguese name. By pure coincidence, it also shares that name with a Brazilian highway and a few individuals.

Anhanguera, along with all other ornithocheirids, has one of the freakier faces seen in pterosaurs. The group is characterized by a slender bill with a wider tip. In Anhanguera's case, this tip had teeth splaying out in all directions. These were excellent for trapping flailing fish. The tip was also weighted with a crest on each piece. This makes it the rough equivalent of a spoonbill mixed with a fish-eating, flying death machine. Oh, and it wasn't the only one with a strange bill - just the only one called a devil.

Surprisingly, we have been able to glean quite a lot of information about how Anhanguera worked. Through presumably a lot of simulations, we have found that Anhanguera likely took off from the ground. It had a running start, then flapped to get into the air. The skeleton also has a keel for flight muscles, making powered flight like that even more likely.

Anhanguera is too weird to not make it into popular culture. Like most things this week, it has a Fossil Fighters counterpart in Guera. As a bizarre, more subtle reference, Birdramon's toothy beak also bears an uncanny resemblance to Anhanguera's jaws (or that of its relative, Ornithocheirus). Subtle? Perhaps, but tell me there isn't some pterosaur, here:

Tell me there ISN'T ornithocheirid in this thing.

"Bird dragon monster" indeed. Anhanguera or one of its relatives made for one nightmarish phoenix.

Detail: Pterosaur Week: Anhanguera.

0 Creature Feature: Irritator.

You are not misreading that header. It is not Pokemon Week again. There really is something with the simple name of "Irritator." Let us show you.

I'll show YOU irritating - try being DEAD for a couple million years! - from Wiki.

This is a dinosaur named Irritator challengeri. It was found in Brazil in 1996. Like other spinosaurids, it was either carnivorous or piscivorous - there's still a fair amount of debate on that regarding spinosaurids in general. It lived in the early Cretaceous, which means it did not quite coincide with Tyrannosaurus and a great amount of the most popular dinosaurs.

Before you mention that this sounds like Latin done by a moron who was trying to sound smart, no, it was made by scientists after racking their brains trying to figure out what exactly this thing was. It was first classified as a raptor for some very questionable reasons, including that the snout had been lengthened just to make the specimen more impressive. It might even be the same thing as Angaturama, another spinosaurid found in the same time and place. Irritating indeed.


Despite being named by scientists, Irritator was not discovered by scientists. They named it, but they were not the ones to dig the skull up. The skull - the only part we have - was found through the illegal fossil trade. As mentioned above, it was doctored to look more impressive, making scientists ball up paper in frustration. The good news? It's still the most complete spinosaurid skull today.

Now for what you really came to see: Irritator in the flesh. Contrary to its mildly-annoying name, Irritator was a beast. Imagine a crocodile walking on two legs. Now imagine that it weighs 2-3 tons and is 8 meters long from head to tip of the tail. Imagine that it had a neat-looking fin and could all but breathe underwater with its nostrils located towards the top and back of the jaw. That was Irritator, AKA "Jaws meets Jurassic Park."

Irritator has not had much love in popular culture. To its credit, however, the "Dinosaurs Alive!" attraction at King's Island starts with Irritator. It's hard to imagine a Vivosaur more trollicious than Dimorph in Fossil Fighters, but if Irritator ever made the cut, I'm sure he would live up to his name. Don't expect to see him as a Jurassic Park threat, though...at least, not with a name like that.

Detail: Creature Feature: Irritator.

0 Creature Feature: Golden Lion Tamarin.

A rather interesting question came to me in the form of a fortune cookie: Which would you rather have as a pet: a pig or a monkey? Both are notably intelligent, messy, and carry diseases that can cross over into humans. It's a fair question; answer it below if you like.

Now, as anyone who follows this blog is aware, I am not the biggest fan of monkeys. My answer to that question would probably be the pig, hands-down, if one particular type of monkey did not exist:

It's called a golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia) (or "golden marmoset" for those of you without any imagination). It can be found in the Brazilian forests along the east coast. This monkey has a diverse diet of fruit, leaves, insects and eggs. Basics done - you may d'aww now.

The golden lion tamarin really looks like a little lion. Although not predatory like a lion, this monkey does have a "mane" of elongated hair along the sides of its face. This color supposedly comes from the carotenoids in their diet, much like flamingo coloration being the result of eating crustaceans. The tamarin also has claws - a rarity in primates, with the notable exception of all other New World monkeys.

Golden lion tamarins are also monogamous. Like wolves, they have a social structure in which the top male and top female mate. They mate for life while everybody else doesn't get any. Aww, just in time for- wait, it's not Valentine's Day, yet. Never mind. 

Alas, the golden lion tamarin is highly endangered, and not because it's darn adorable. A good chunk of its habitat has been chipped away by deforestation. The lion tamarin is considered one of the more popular endangered species - enough so that one of the characters in Tokyo Mew Mew has a tamarin as her animal splice. That said, any attempts to get one as a pet would probably be illegal. Guess I'd pick the pig after all.

Detail: Creature Feature: Golden Lion Tamarin.