18 days until the paperback release of When the Earth Was Green

193 days until the release of Tyrant Lizard Queen

This week has been a big one for the Triassic. And even more specifically, the Triassic creatures of Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Not only were we introduced to a new, short-snouted croc that scampered around the conifer forests of 220 million years ago, but paleontologists Simba Srivastava and Sterling Nesbitt named a new, shout-snouted dinosaur from the same famous Coelophysis Quarry.

The skull of the new dinosaur, Ptychotherates bucculentus, looks like it was left out on the interstate for a week. Reconstructing the skull was a massive undertaking, one that had been a long time coming. Despite being collected in the 1980s, no one knew the significance of the pancaked skull until Srivastava and Nesbitt took a closer look.

Ptychotherates was a very ancient form of dinosaur. The subtle features of the carnivore’s skull don’t so much resemble the slender theropod Coelophysis as the boxy-skulled Herrerrasaurus - long regarded as one of the earliest and most archaic forms of carnivorous dinosaur. Ptychotherates wasn’t even a theropod dinosaur, in other words, but represents an older carnivorous branch that managed to hang on alongside the ancestors of favorites like Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. Ptychotherates was part of an early burst of dinosaur evolution whose members apparently were able to hold on even as new forms of dinosaurs were evolving, perhaps, the researchers speculate, because climate and environmental conditions at higher latitudes remained favorable even as they disappeared from their point of origin.

The Triassic just keeps getting stranger, doesn’t it? When I was young, the story was that dinosaurs appeared, outran and outcompeted all the other reptiles, and evolved along a sensible progression, becoming larger and more specialized. You could draw a straight line from Eoraptor to Coelophysis to Allosaurus to Tyrannosaurus. More recent studies of the Triassic, from bottom to top, have fundamentally changed the story. Dinosaurs had an early burst of evolution, some of those ancient lineages persisting along with the new ones the same way birds lived alongside other forms of theropod dinosaurs for tens of millions of years. The picture is messy, tangled, and complex, Ptychotherates only underscoring the fact that the Triassic was even stranger than we already perceive it to be.

Scribblings

• Paleontologists have been searching the Hell Creek Formation for over a century. It was difficult to pick five influential discoveries from the rock layers, but I tried to go for a broad spread. Check it out at Smithsonian Magazine.

• I was thrilled to find The Last Days of the Dinosaurs highlighted as one of Steve Brusatte’s top 10 dinosaur books over at Scientific American. “[T] latest and most engaging glimpse at what it would have been like to experience the carnage. In doing so, Black pioneered a new genre of narrative prehistorical nonfiction.”

• Instagram pulled me back in. It’s just where people are these days, so I’ll be back to posting fossil photos - and the occasional household feline - over here.

• I wrapped up the first run of I Want My DinoTV with the finale of The Dinosaurs. On Monday, I’ll start a new run with {drumroll} the BBC’s reboot of Walking With Dinosaurs.

• And of course, the newest cutie croc from Ghost Ranch.

Ear Perks

• InvertFest is coming up fast! Love invertebrates? Never heard of it before? Just hoping to see some cool bugs? Check out this post for how to get involved.

• Remember the paper I mentioned about treetop toilets for rainforest creatures? Bee Brookshire has the story for you.

• Have you ever wondered with a creature feature populated by a cast of Wes Anderson/Knives Out characters would be like? Check out The Yeti. The indie monster movie is artfully done, with plenty of practical effects. The plot goes by slasher rules for the second half, but, even if not wholly innovative, The Yeti is a good time if you like blood, puppets, and a quirky ensemble to chew through.