Re: Burpee Conference

[Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

Hmmm, veeeery interesting......

A Hell Creek Leptoceratops?  Mega Ovies from hell?  Shazam.....

<pb>
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On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 16:28:15 -0600 <Ken.Carpenter@dmns.org> writes:
> Indeed the Hell Creek has been picked over for over a hundred years, 
> but
> it has only been in the last decade that T rex has been found in
> abundance, almost becoming "oreodonts of the Cretaceous" ;-)  Most 
> work
> has been done in the upper-most Hell Creek around the Ft Peck 
> Reservoir.
> The middle and lower parts have many secrets that are only now 
> being
> revealed: The first Leptoceratops skull (now in press), and two 
> partial
> skeletons of a giant oviraptorid (new genus). It may be significant 
> that
> the type Nanotyrannus and the Burpee specimen come from the 
> southern
> portions of the Hell Creek (Carter County), which has a very 
> different
> lithofacies than up around Ft. Peck Reservoir. Carter County 
> samples
> more of the lower and middle Hell Creek.
> 
> Ken
> 
> Kenneth Carpenter, Ph.D.
> Curator of Lower Vertebrate Paleontology/Chief Preparator
> Department of Earth Sciences
> Denver Museum of Nature & Science
> 2001 Colorado Blvd.
> Denver, CO 80205
>  
> Phone: 303-370-6392
> Fax: 303-331-6492
> ************************************************************
> for PDFs of some of my publications, as well as information of the 
> Cedar
> Mountain Project: 
> https://scientists.dmns.org/sites/kencarpenter/default.aspx
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu] On 
> Behalf
> Of Phil Bigelow
> Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 9:12 AM
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: Burpee Conference
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:14:20 -0700 (PDT) Guy Leahy
> <xrciseguy@prodigy.net> writes:
> > Before the conference, I was leaning
> > towards the "Nanotyrannus is a T. rex" hypothesis, but
> > after the conference I have lept back on the fence as
> > to whether Nanotyrannus is a juvenile T. rex or a
> > juvenile of something else.
> 
> The big question is, if "Nanotyrannus" is a juvenile of some other
> taxon,
> then why haven't we discovered any of its adults in the Hell Creek
> Formation?  The H.C. Fm is one of the most "combed-over" formations 
> in
> the U.S. (as well as the world).  It has been picked over for over 
> a
> hundred years.
> 
> In their 1988 _Hunteria_ paper on "Nanotyrannus", Currie, Williams 
> and
> Bakker discussed whether "Nano"'s cranial sutures were, or were 
> not,
> fused.  IIRC, they claimed that the sutures were fused.  Since then, 
> I
> have read comments that suggest that there is still some question 
> about
> the degree of element fusion on the holotype's skull.  Any update
> regarding this question?
> 
> The null hypothesis is that "Nano" parents occupied the same 
> geographic
> range as did their kids.  Migration or separation of the kids from 
> the
> adults are also viable ideas, but those scenarios involve more
> complexity
> and therefore they are not as parsimonious ideas as are mingled 
> adult
> and
> juvenile populations.
> 
> Except for their shed teeth, which are more common that thought, 
> the
> skeletons of "Nanos" are rarer than pachycephalosaur skeletons (and
> pachys are quite rare).
> 
> Nano nano,
> 
> <pb>
> --
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


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