The Most Wondrous Duckbill In All the West

In the in-development video game Saurian, which I wrote about recently far beyond recent memory, the world of the very-Latest Cretaceous environment preserved within the sedimentary rocks of the Hell Creek Formation is brought to life. One of the most abundant large animals in this ecosystem is a large, shovel-mouthed herbivore belonging to the group of dinosaurs known as hadrosaurs, or more commonly in the popular parlance, duckbills.

In Saurian, the Hell Creek duckbill is called Anatosaurus annectens. This not the name most people in the palaeo community use for this animal.  In just about all sources for the last few decades, the Hell Creek duckbill is called Edmontosaurus annectens. So what's up with the name Anatosaurus?

The duckiest duckbill, usually called Edmontosaurus annectens. Its scale
patterns are based on 'mummies' that preserve fossilised skin impressions.
[art by the author]

Day of the Diplodocids Redux

And he means business -- just check out that switchblade comb.
[by the author]

Remember Tschopp et al 2015? You know the paper... Brontosaurus is back! Huzzah and tally-ho and all that. I wrote about it here, nearly 15 months ago. I'm bringing it back up now because it will be relevant to a post that I've had in the works for a little while now. That should hopefully materialise here within the next little while but before it does, let's look back at good ol' Brontosaurus and see what was really important about its resurrection from the open grave of taxonomic obsolescence...

Day of the Diplodocids

Welcome, true believers, to a Very Special installment of Noah's Ravens. As you have no doubt seen while scrolling through Facebook or Twitter or while idly surfing the web, yesterday marked the appearance of a new (very long) paper reviewing the diplodocid sauropods, 'A specimen-level phylogenetic analysis and taxonomic revision of Diplodocidae (Dinosauria, Sauropoda)' by Emanuel Tschopp, Octávio Mateus, and Roger B J Benson, published open-access in PeerJ. Although I'm certain you've all had time to read it, pore lovingly over the cladograms, savour each and every word about each and every specimen, and completely lose yourself in the figures depicting small chunks of bone, I thought it might be nice to have a brief(ish) round-up post that covers some of the big ideas of the paper in a condensed(ish), hopefully-easy(ish) read.

It was nice knowing you, Diplodocus longus, but all good things
must come to an end. Read on to find out why. Legs belonging to
The Sauropod Formerly Known As Diplodocus longus at centre.
[photograph by the author]