Hot new stuff in APP: rebbachisaur pneumaticity, big croc, Allosaurus butts
June 6, 2017
Just got the APP new issue alert and there are three papers that I think readers of this blog will find particularly interesting:
- Ibiricu, L.M., Lamanna, M.C., Martí nez, R.D.F., Casal, G.A., Cerda, I.A., Martí nez, G., and Salgado, L. 2017. A novel form of postcranial skeletal pneumaticity in a sauropod dinosaur: Implications for the paleobiology of Rebbachisauridae. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 62 (2): 221–236. The latest installment in the ongoing tale of wacky pneumaticity in rebbachisaurids. I reviewed this one, and thought it was solid, interesting work.
- Frederickson, J.A., Cohen, J.E., Hunt, T.C., and Cifelli, R.L. 2017. A new occurrence of Dakotasuchus kingi from the Late Cretaceous of Utah, USA, and the diagnostic utility of postcranial characters in Crocodyliformes. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 62 (2): 279–286. Near and dear to my heart, as it’s an OMNH specimen written up by a bunch of OMNH folks, including my mentor, Rich Cifelli, and some of his current crop of grad students. I’ve seen this material and it is big and beautiful – so well preserved that it could have come out of a modern croc, if it wasn’t jet black. Note that the Supplementary Online Material includes 3D PDFs of several of the most important elements.
- Cau, A., and Serventi, P. 2017. Origin attachments of the caudofemoralis longus muscle in the Jurassic dinosaur Allosaurus. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 62 (2): 273-277. A nice addition to the growing corpus of work on tail muscle attachments in dinosaurs.
That’s all for now, just popping in to let people know about these things.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
June 7, 2017 at 6:25 am
And, for the mammal fans, beavers and early rhinoceroses.
(Thanks for the heads-up: I don’t always remember to check for APP.)
June 14, 2017 at 2:12 am
Very cool about the new Dakotasuchus find. I’m currently writing on faunal comparisons between eastern and western North American dinosaurs during the Cretaceous, and so the presence of Dakotasuchus in both Kansas and Utah during the Albian is definitely something to think about in terms of biogeography. The new size proposed for D. kingi also has me thinking in terms of large crocodylian ecology in North America during the Cretaceous.
Chase