0 Creature Feature: Lambeosaurus.

It seems that filmmakers have decided on a "set" of dinosaurs that must always make it into every dinosaur movie ever. T-Rex is pretty much a given. Triceratops is also popular. If there is a pterosaur, and there usually is, it's either a Pteranodon or some bastardization thereof. Miscellaneous herbivores include Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus, with Brachiosaurus being almost too distinct to be generic. They also usually include this one:

For those of you wondering what this bizarre-looking creature is, it's called a Parasaurolophus and is one of the many duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs) out there. It seems to have become the "default" duckbill. I'm not quite sure what "modern parallel" people see in Parasaurolophus and other hadrosaurs (ancient water buffalo?), but I digress. Point is, as with pterosaurs, there's always that one hadrosaur that popular culture falls back on.

Maybe it's about time we looked at some of the other hadrosaurs on this blog, yes?

Lambeosaurus probably should be the strange duckbill everybody knows. It has a very good fossil record from Canada, Montana, and Baja California. There is some debate over exactly how many species there are in the genus, but specimens are nonetheless plentiful. It is named for the guy who discovered the first few fossils, Lawrence Lambe. Like most of the cool dinosaurs, it is from the Late Cretaceous. It is also the largest hadrosaur, getting up to 50 feet long from head to tail.

As with many hadrosaurs, the most distinguishing feature about Lambeosaurus was its crest. This crest was hatchet-shaped, making the dinosaur look like a cassowary and a unicorn at the same time.  It's hard to get more awesome than that, yet here hadrosaurs are stuck with the goofy Parasaurolophus as their representative. Kinda sad, really.

Nobody is 100% sure what these crests were for. Snorkels and salt glands are also on the table. Maybe they could even make noise; again, people love shilling Parasaurolophus for this ("it's a dinosaur with a built-in trumpet!"). There is adequate evidence that hearing and sight were a Lambeosaurus's strongest senses, so all of the above are possible. We've never seen hadrosaurs in action, or in color, for that matter, so the purpose(s) of these crests will remain a mystery until we invent time machines.

I cold get into more about what makes a hadrosaur a hadrosaur, but that is best saved for another time. Hell, I should just make a "Hadrosaur Week." They're really rather interesting, albeit not my favorite dinosaurs.

Detail: Creature Feature: Lambeosaurus.

0 Pterosaur Week: Why Pteranodon?

So, at the start of this theme week, we covered the rather casually tossed-around term, "pterodactyl." While it is technically a correct term for all pterosaurs, what bugs me about it is that the image that comes with the word "pterodactyl" is usually not a Pterodactylus. It is usually either some messy chimera of a pterosaur or, umm, this:

From this wonderful site here.

There is a 90% chance that this is exactly what came to mind after hearing the word "pterodactyl." While all pterosaurs are by definition pterodactylids, the pterosaur that comes to mind nine times out of ten is Pteranodon. That's the beaky, crested fellow. It was around during the Late Cretaceous (when all the cool dinosaurs except Stegosaurus lived) and has been found in much of North America. They were piscivores, likely behaving much like albatrosses. They were a lot bigger than albatrosses, but still not as big as Quetzalcoatlus.

There are two things that are really distinct about Pteranodon: the beak and the crest. Pteranodon's name means "toothless wing;"indeed, just like in a modern bird, there weren't any teeth in that beak. This does not stop artists from adding them in because rawr, dinosaur. That has to be their logic.

The crest is the most varied aspect in Pteranodon as a genus. Although other pterosaurs had crests, Pteranodon had amazingly prominent ones that curved back like the crest of a cockatoo- only immobile. Along with varying in size, the crests also varied with sex. Males had more prominent crests than females. That said, this pretty much cements Pteranodon's role as a visual creature - again, just like a modern bird.

But that's just the basic info. This entry will go one step further from the norm and try to answer the hidden question posed at the start of this week: why are all pterosaurs mentally lumped into the term "pterodactyl," anyways? Isn't that a lot like calling T-rex "tyrannosaurid" or Triceratops a "ceratopsid?" It's a weird, generic term (actually going back farther than the genus, but I digress) that applies uniquely to pterosaurs.

For starters, Pteranodon was a Pterodactylus before it was its own genus. There are a ton of complicated things involving naming dinosaurs. We could just say "the name stuck," but that still doesn't quite explain the popularity of Pteranodon versus, well...other pterodactyls. It may have been the biggest of its time, but if we Chicagoans can get used to calling the Sears Tower the Willis Tower, surely biology classes can update themselves accordingly.

Along with the name "pterodactyl" sticking, Pteranodon's popularity may well lie in how relateable it is. When marketing dinosaurs, one usually won't go for "OMG this thing is weird!" They want "just weird enough." It is easy for our minds to think things like lion = big carnivore, T-rex = bigger, meanier, scalier carnivore, rhino = big herbivore with horns, Triceratops = big herbivore with horns, and so on. Pteranodon is like a big, weird seabird of some sort - see how easy it is to make that parallel?   Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops are "just weird enough." So is Pteranodon; it's pretty tame as far as pterosaurs are concerned. (And yet, "Pteranodon" is a lot easier to say than "pterodactyl." Go figure.)

It also helps that there are many complete, in-tact specimens of Pteranodon. We more or less know what a Pteranodon looked like. T-Rex's image has undergone more revisions through the ages than Pteranodon has or will. Until Jurassic Park becomes real, we probably know all that we're going to know about Pteranodon aside from the odd new species to the genus. We know that they had sexual dimorphism, with males being larger than females and sporting larger crests. Yes, we literally know Pteranodon intimately.

I'm not even going to try to list every single pop culture reference Pteranodon has had. If a dinosaur thing has a pterosaur in it, there's a good chance it's Pteranodon or some creature modeled after it.  Instead, have a picture of Rodan, one of the most famous Pteranodon cosplayers ever:

As for the chimeric "pterodactyl" still running rampant? Just treat it as a dragon/wyvern. That's what it looks like, after all.

Detail: Pterosaur Week: Why Pteranodon?