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SVP 2017
Topic Started: Jul 20 2017, 04:46 PM (1,188 Views)
LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

Day Three; also check out twitter. In particular I was reading through Alb and Tom Holtz's, as well a bunch of retweets on Victoria Arbour's.
totally not British, b-baka!
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I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
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kusanagi
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The mosasaur-snake group is still a mess, but snakes are an outgroup. This is unsurprising because snakes evolved in low light environments as burrowers. But if snakes are still close to a mosasaur-like clade - which is contested nowadays by Gauthier and Conrad - did mosasaurs evolve from a burrowing ancestor too? Snakes and skinks both show repeated aquatic tendencies despite fossorial origins.

Important note of caution: a recent paper on fossil pareiasaur trackways found theirs to resemble turtle ones. What time depth are these tracks suggesting the ghost presence of turtle ancestors?

Why did anyone think to pretend Megatherium ate glyptodonts when water can explain it better? Some paleo ideas were dead on arrival.
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ÐK
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kusanagi
Aug 27 2017, 09:50 AM
Important note of caution: a recent paper on fossil pareiasaur trackways found theirs to resemble turtle ones. What time depth are these tracks suggesting the ghost presence of turtle ancestors?
The oldest of these trackways are dated the late Early Triassic (Olenekian), roughly 10 million years older than Odontochelys and a bit less for Pappochelys, which the authors don't consider a turtle. The trackways are of a type produced by terrestrial turtles with a shell that restricts movement of the limb girdles, and so would have to be produced by types of turtle that don't appear until much later in the Triassic fossil record (e.g. Proganchelys, Palaeochersis).

The paper was already published in June, before SVP, and makes mention of the similarity of turtle tracks to those of pareiasaurs. Could be the same paper you read, for all I know.
~Projects~

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In the absence of proper data, speculate wildy.

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pfft, DK making a project

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I'm sorry but in what alternative universe would thousands of zebras be sent back in time by some sort of illegal time travel group to change history and preparing them by making gigantic working animatronic allosaurs?

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LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

Day Four, and it's really good.
totally not British, b-baka!
Posted Image You like me (Unlike)
I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
Me
What, you want me to tell you what these mean?
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Words Maybe
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Dapper Man
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Nice. Two new Megaraptorans :D
Speculative Evolution:

Manitou; The Needle in the Haystack.
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kusanagi
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Only real thing worth much comment is Baron. P. as an ornithischian is fine, but why do ornithischians lack pulmonary pneumatism like ie. silesaurids? Ornithischian-ceratosaur parallels noted since very early paleo: ideas about birds as ornithischian descendants involved Ceratosaurus.
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