Oct 27, 2021
We’ve covered one small, unadorned and under-rated herbivorous ornithischian already this series in Psittacosaurus and here’s another one in the remarkable little heterodonotosaurs. Another set of animals for which we have some superb skeletons and lots of interesting features that are potentially very revealing about the evolution of dinosaurs in general (and ornithischians in particular) and yet they get very little love. As usual all the attention goes to the biggest dinosaurs, the carnivores and the showiest ones with big crests, but we here at Terrible Lizards want to stand up for the little fun dinos too, so here’s a whole show on them. Plus we get joined by comedian and artist Bec Hill who has a question about sauropod feet with a twist.
Links:
A shot blog post from Dave with some photos of the little filamented Tianyulong: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/tiayulong/
And a much longer post with one tiny photo about the implications of filaments (feathers?) in these animals (though it’s quite old now): https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/blah-blah-feathered-ornithischians-yawn/
http://www.bechillcomedian.com/
Bec’s dinosaur song with Jay Foreman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ydJU-bVXaA