u/Powerful_Gas_7833

From Fame To Falling: the paleos whos careers crashed and burned

From Fame To Falling: the paleos whos careers crashed and burned

The rise and fall of people's careers has always been a fascinating thing to talk about. Seeing someone go from so respected and admired to almost despised is something that at first can defy belief. When we usually think of that we usually think of an actor who committed some kind of scandal or a politician who made bad decisions. People rarely think of paleontology or the sciences as having that kind of stuff. It's almost like people think it's benign and free of much controversy.

But paleontology has had its own shares of rise and falls of its prominent operatives. And I'm going to be talking about four of them here.

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ROBERT DEPALMA

Robert DePalma was a young paleontologist that had risen to Fame in the 2010s. He had made some discoveries in the hell Creek formation. He had discovered the taniis site, which is possibly the only deposit in the world that directly formed on the day of impact of the dino killing asteroid. He also named Dakota raptor which briefly took the media by storm due to the notion that there was a giant dromaeosaur that lived long side T-Rex.

But as soon as he appeared to be gaining Fame and respect it all came crashing down. Depalma was more like an Indiana Jones kind of figure Fame and attention first science second.

He refused to allow anyone to access the Tanis site. It then turned out that Dakota raptor was a chimera of turtles and unrelated bones and very few material was actually assignable to a raptor. He then shipped it off to some private collectorship seemingly to avoid further scrutiny.

It then came out that he had stolen and misappropriated at the work of one of his colleagues and took credit for it.

These scandals appear to have done their dues. You hardly hear anything out of Robert depalma anymore and I'm not even sure he's still working in the field of paleontology.

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OCTAVIO MATEUS

Octavio was arguably one of the most important European paleontologists of the 21st century. When it came to late Jurassic dinosaurs the Morrison formation had a nearly uncontested Monopoly. The tendaguru of Tanzania seemed to be a rival but there hadn't been much prospecting since a German expedition (hum Rich African fossil deposits that were prospected by the Germans and then not prospected again for a long time, I wonder where I heard that before) and it's compounded by the fact that the fossil record of theropods there is so atrociously poor.

In the mid 20th century several fossils of dinosaurs had been found in Portugal in the coastal cliffs of the lourinha formation but not much ever came out of it. Octavia had been obsessed with dinosaurs ever since he was a young kid and he made it a personal mission to increase the scientific knowledge of Jurassic Portugal.

Beginning in the 1990s more and more fossils started to come out of the cliffs of Portugal and by the 2000s the lourinha formation of Portugal had rapidly come to rival the Morrison formation as a source of dinosaurs. This is largely thanks to Octavio and his work. So many of the dinosaurs that were named and dug out of the Portuguese rocks in the past 30 years were because of his prospecting and his descriptions. And he started doing all of this before he even reached his 20s.

But then the reason he's on this list reared its head. In 2023 numerous women came forward and accused him of sexual harassment, predatory behavior and fostering an abusive environment. The allegations dated back since 2010 but didn't come forward until 2023. He was then suspended by his university but then for some reason they gave him papal clemency.

The effect on his career has been noticeable. Ever since then he hasn't put out as many papers or named as many new taxa. He seems to have largely been superseded by malafaia and colleagues as the preeminent paleontologist of Portugal. It got to the point that in Walking with Dinosaurs 2025 they made it seem like torvosaurus gurneyi was described by Carla Tomas and simao mateus when it wasn't, it was off Octavio's description. Carla is more of a preparator lady and public face for the museum while simao is more of a reconstruction guy than describing animals. They just didn't include him for the aforementioned controversies.

He is truly divisive in my opinion. On the one hand he is an absolute POS for what he did to all those women. He was a predator and what he did was reprehensible. But arguably we would know practically nothing about Jurassic Portugal If it wasn't for his work. The lourinha formation and its depiction in dinosaur revolution were my whole childhood and even still to this day I prefer that formation over the Morrison any day of the week. It's kind of hard because this is a case where you have to separate the art from the artist. The art is great but the artist isn't.

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NICK LONGRICH

Nick Longrich is an American paleontologist. He started out his career by describing and talking about a lot of dinosaurs in Western North America before eventually coalescing a lot of his efforts around New Mexican, Mexican and Moroccan fossils.

At the start he started out as kind of an unremarkable paleontologist. He did a good amount of work but I wouldn't really say a lot of it was either influential or controversial.

But then it came out that he was an abusive bully. He verbally abused many of his students and it got to the point where he lost a 1 million pound Grant in 2018.

Paleontologists who I've emailed basically echo the same sentiment that he's very difficult to work with and pretty much a prick. They've also said a lot of his ideas, theories and methods aren't particularly great. For example 1 paleontologist I talked to literally said “titanoceratops is one of the few things he got right.” Like damn dude.

Despite his controversies he hasn't stopped posting a lot of papers and naming new animals but this is a case where he's all about quantity and not quality. He is infamous for naming animals based on too few remains. He named a troodont off a single badly weathered fragment of the top of a skull. Some of the animals he's named such as pluridens have been accused of being forgery fossils.

It's practically a meme that the newest Nick longrich taxa is basically going to be another slop-a-saurus.

He's also just been kind of weird at times like in one of his videos about the dinosaur killing asteroid he went on some weird tangent about spiritualism or something.

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EMILY WILLOUGHBY

Okay so technically she is not a paleontologist but she's a prominent paleo artist so I still think she counts.

When I was a kid her paleoart was so influential to me. Whenever I visualize my favorite raptors it was always her images that came up in my head. One of my favorite paleontology YouTubers trey the explainer also admired her artwork.

She really managed to bring feathered dinosaurs to life in such detail in splendor.

But then of course she had to be controversial.

It came out that she had been drawing how I should put this “naughty German deinonychus”.

She had been drawing these really weird effed up and downright esoteric imagery that was just, what?

And also turns out she became a very prominent proponent of eugenics and scientific racism. According to prehistorica cm she supports the idea that intelligence has a racial element to it.

_________

JACK HORNER

Jack Horner has been talked to death so I'll keep this as brief as can be.

Obviously he was an important paleontologist in his early career, finding evidence of dinosaurs being good parents, supporting the idea that they were more closely related to birds and were active dynamic creatures etc.

Then he became an outspoken supporter that T-Rex was just an obligate scavenger. Now some people have criticized him for this but others have said that this was just a public ploy to fuel more discussion and discovery about Tyrannosaurus.

Then he married one of his students when she was 18 and he was in his sixties and it didn't help that he had known her since she was a child.

And then he popped up in the Epstein files. Think you understand the gist of it.

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 4 days ago

The first sauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Khok Kruat Formation of Thailand enriches the diversity of somphospondylan titanosauriforms in southeast Asia

doi.org
u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 8 days ago

Late Jurassic Europe

Art by cisiopurple,joschua knuppe,gabriel ugueto,walking with dinosaurs,fact apps,pedro andrade,connor ashbridge,funk monk

This is a remake of a previous post,moderators please dont delete. I remade to include more info,credit the authors and improve on past mistakes.

When people think of earth 150 million years ago, they think of the north american morrison formation, thanks to a publicized cod piece measuring contest between 2 paleontologists as well as the amazing fauna,the Morrison formation is possibly one of the most famous formations on earth. Its diversity is often treated as if second to none

However I challenge this notion. In my opinion Europe around 150 million years ago is even more impressive than the morrison formations diversity. Everything from islands filled with giants, Islets of abundant vertebrate microfauna and oceans teeming with marine life were all concentrated in Europe at the same time.

Europe at the time was a bunch of islands,sandwiched between the infant atlantic ocean and the tethys ocean. The breakup of pangaea raised sea levels and Europe got flooded worse than any continent. Islands are naturally conducive to biodiversity. Their isolation can lead to life developing in unique ways,they can act like stepping stones between continents, they create habitat in the oceans.

________________

Lourinha formation

Without any doubt the hotspot of dinosaur biodiversity in late Jurassic Europe is the lourinha formation of Portugal,particularly the porto novo and praia azul members. These 2 members are interfingered rock units. This meant the environments that made up the members were coeval environments that existed alongside each other in time, and by extension the dinosaurs did too. They shifted back and forth as sea levels rose and fell. The porto novo member represents a continental fluvial environment while the praia azul member represents a coastal ecosystem.

This unique stratigraphy created a cornucopia of different dinosaurs,spread out across different habitats and environments on the same island. The island itself was a warm mediterranean climate comparable to the island of sicily.

Portugal was arguably one of the most predator filled mesozoic ecosystems in the mesozoic,the amount of contemporary large remains is insane. The largest predator by far was torvosaurus, the aptly named savage lizard was at least 10 meters and 4 tonnes in size,but was possibly as big as 12m in length. Allosaurus was 8m in length and was possibly a pack hunter. Ceratosaurus had 3 horns and on its face and was basically a slasher,using its teeth to quickly slit the throats of its prey. Lusovenator is one of the earliest carcharodontosaurs and was only 6m long,modest compared to the titans that would follow it. Remains of a megalosaur related to marshosaurus have been found,based on scant bones and teeth. Lourihanosaurus is a puzzling enigma,nobody knows what kind of theropod it is and with gastroliths and bones found in its belly it might have been some omnivore.

Indeterminate elaphrosaurs are known,distantly related to ceratosaurus itself. Teeth from dromaeosaurs have been found as well.

The various predators coexisted by hunting different prey and preferring different environments.

Many sauropods lived in lourinha. Lusotitan was a relative of brachiosaurus and at 25 meters and 40 tonnes it was likely the biggest dinosaur on the island. Dinheirosaurus was a relative and possible synonym of supersaurus. It was a big animal,already 25 meters long and 10 tonnes, but remains such as giant footprints, a partial femur and 7 foot ribs might suggest a larger size of 30 meters in length. Zby Atlanticus was a turiasaur of uncertain size. Oceanotitan was a 12m animal and one of the earliest precursors of the titanosaurs. Lourihanosaurus was a 15 m relative of the american camarasaurus.

Dacentrurus was the titan of stegosaurs,at 8 to possibly 9m in length,it was even bigger than stegosaurus itself. Miragaia is famous for its distinctly long neck but wether or not its distinct or synonymous with dacentrurus is hotly debated.

Various relatives of camptosaurus lived in lourinha. Draconyx and hesperonyx were 3 m long swift footed herbivores. The largest is a giant known only from large bone fragments and a giant footprint,estimated at anywhere between 6-9 meters in length. Eousdryosaurus was the equivalent of dryosaurus in this ecosystem.

Various non dinosaur archosaurs are known from the ecosystem. Machimosaurus ranks as one of the largest crocs of the Jurassic,with a 1.5 meter long skull. Atoposaurids were terrestrial crocodylomorphs that held the niche of small predators.

___________

Solnhofen

In Germany there weren't many large islands. As a result the majority of the animals were relatively small.

Many pterosaurs were found on these small islands. Archaeopteryx was once thought to be the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. COmpsognathus was once thought to be the smallest dinosaurs.

Many animals lived in the shallow waters,such as fish that speared pterosaurs.

______________

Kimmeridge clay

This formation in England represents a marine environment in shallow shelf water up to 200 m in depth.

Various marine crocs called metriorhyncids lived here. Some like cricosaurus were modest fish eaters. Others like dakosaurus and plesiosuchus were blade toothed macrophages. Plesiosuchus particularly was one of the biggest Jurassic crocs at 7m in length.

Plesiosaurs like kimmerosaurus lived in the kimmeridge clay. The abington pliosaurus was 12m long and possibly the biggest of its kind.

Various ichtyosaurs like brachypterygius lived in the kimmeridge.

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 9 days ago

Late Jurassic Europe

Art by cisiopurple,joschua knuppe,gabriel ugueto,walking with dinosaurs,fact apps,pedro andrade,connor ashbridge,funk monk

This is a remake of a previous post,moderators please dont delete. I remade to include more info,credit the authors and improve on past mistakes.

When people think of earth 150 million years ago, they think of the north american morrison formation, thanks to a publicized cod piece measuring contest between 2 paleontologists as well as the amazing fauna,the Morrison formation is possibly one of the most famous formations on earth. Its diversity is often treated as if second to none

However I challenge this notion. In my opinion Europe around 150 million years ago is even more impressive than the morrison formations diversity. Everything from islands filled with giants, Islets of abundant vertebrate microfauna and oceans teeming with marine life were all concentrated in Europe at the same time.

Europe at the time was a bunch of islands,sandwiched between the infant atlantic ocean and the tethys ocean. The breakup of pangaea raised sea levels and Europe got flooded worse than any continent. Islands are naturally conducive to biodiversity. Their isolation can lead to life developing in unique ways,they can act like stepping stones between continents, they create habitat in the oceans.

________________

Lourinha formation

Without any doubt the hotspot of dinosaur biodiversity in late Jurassic Europe is the lourinha formation of Portugal,particularly the porto novo and praia azul members. These 2 members are interfingered rock units. This meant the environments that made up the members were coeval environments that existed alongside each other in time, and by extension the dinosaurs did too. They shifted back and forth as sea levels rose and fell. The porto novo member represents a continental fluvial environment while the praia azul member represents a coastal ecosystem.

This unique stratigraphy created a cornucopia of different dinosaurs,spread out across different habitats and environments on the same island. The island itself was a warm mediterranean climate comparable to the island of sicily.

Portugal was arguably one of the most predator filled mesozoic ecosystems in the mesozoic,the amount of contemporary large remains is insane. The largest predator by far was torvosaurus, the aptly named savage lizard was at least 10 meters and 4 tonnes in size,but was possibly as big as 12m in length. Allosaurus was 8m in length and was possibly a pack hunter. Ceratosaurus had 3 horns and on its face and was basically a slasher,using its teeth to quickly slit the throats of its prey. Lusovenator is one of the earliest carcharodontosaurs and was only 6m long,modest compared to the titans that would follow it. Remains of a megalosaur related to marshosaurus have been found,based on scant bones and teeth. Lourihanosaurus is a puzzling enigma,nobody knows what kind of theropod it is and with gastroliths and bones found in its belly it might have been some omnivore.

Indeterminate elaphrosaurs are known,distantly related to ceratosaurus itself. Teeth from dromaeosaurs have been found as well.

The various predators coexisted by hunting different prey and preferring different environments.

Many sauropods lived in lourinha. Lusotitan was a relative of brachiosaurus and at 25 meters and 40 tonnes it was likely the biggest dinosaur on the island. Dinheirosaurus was a relative and possible synonym of supersaurus. It was a big animal,already 25 meters long and 10 tonnes, but remains such as giant footprints, a partial femur and 7 foot ribs might suggest a larger size of 30 meters in length. Zby Atlanticus was a turiasaur of uncertain size. Oceanotitan was a 12m animal and one of the earliest precursors of the titanosaurs. Lourihanosaurus was a 15 m relative of the american camarasaurus.

Dacentrurus was the titan of stegosaurs,at 8 to possibly 9m in length,it was even bigger than stegosaurus itself. Miragaia is famous for its distinctly long neck but wether or not its distinct or synonymous with dacentrurus is hotly debated.

Various relatives of camptosaurus lived in lourinha. Draconyx and hesperonyx were 3 m long swift footed herbivores. The largest is a giant known only from large bone fragments and a giant footprint,estimated at anywhere between 6-9 meters in length. Eousdryosaurus was the equivalent of dryosaurus in this ecosystem.

Various non dinosaur archosaurs are known from the ecosystem. Machimosaurus ranks as one of the largest crocs of the Jurassic,with a 1.5 meter long skull. Atoposaurids were terrestrial crocodylomorphs that held the niche of small predators.

___________

Solnhofen

In Germany there weren't many large islands. As a result the majority of the animals were relatively small.

Many pterosaurs were found on these small islands. Archaeopteryx was once thought to be the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. COmpsognathus was once thought to be the smallest dinosaurs.

Many animals lived in the shallow waters,such as fish that speared pterosaurs.

______________

Kimmeridge clay

This formation in England represents a marine environment in shallow shelf water up to 200 m in depth.

Various marine crocs called metriorhyncids lived here. Some like cricosaurus were modest fish eaters. Others like dakosaurus and plesiosuchus were blade toothed macrophages. Plesiosuchus particularly was one of the biggest Jurassic crocs at 7m in length.

Plesiosaurs like kimmerosaurus lived in the kimmeridge clay. The abington pliosaurus was 12m long and possibly the biggest of its kind.

Various ichtyosaurs like brachypterygius lived in the kimmeridge.

_____

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solnhofen_Limestone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourinh%C3%A3_Formation

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 9 days ago

Washington Formation

When people think of early Permian fauna, they think of dimetrodon in the lowland swamps of what would be Texas and Oklahoma. Maybe to a lesser extent the uplands of the tambach formation of Germany.

The red beds of Texas is an informal name for various Rock units in Texas and Oklahoma that all produce similar animals dimetrodon, eryops, edaphosaurus etc and the number of other animals are consistently found within the red beds.

The thing is the red beds are not one single formation but multiple groups and many more formations that span millions of years in the early Permian. There are so many species of the genus is involved that it gets really confusing.

As someone who prefers a biostratigraphically type fauna this bothers me. Luckily there is a formation that condenses many of the most preferred red beds fauna into a single formation.

The dunkard group around the upper Ohio valley is considered the greatest Permian deposit east of the Mississippi River.

The richest formation out of it is the Washington formation primarily located within Ohio.

It contains without a doubt a rich fauna. It's dated to the late wolfcampian to early leonardian which basically correlates to the artinskian stage of the Permian around 290 to 283 million years ago.

This is what I'd like to call the transitory phase for dimetrodon. It's when it went from smaller non apex predator species to the larger serrated tooth predators that most people know it as.

The Washington formation was formed by freshwater swamps created by rivers that came from the then young Appalachian mountains.

Various synapsids have been found here. Dimetrodon is the largest predator at around 3 m long and with serrated teeth would have hunted megafauna. Ophiacodon is another predator that's a similar size at 3 m long. however it's teeth were sharp and pointed and not designed for cutting through thick flesh. A smaller sphenacodont was described in an abstract at the SVP last year and appears to add yet another predator to the fauna. Edaphosaurus was up to 3 m in length and was one of the earliest herbivores to have developed a kind of primitive grinding / mastication of food. This allowed it to eat tough vegetation.

Diadectes was another large herbivore that vaguely resembled a lizard but was only more of a distant relative to reptiles. Protorothyris is it self considered a primitive reptile and was likely an insectivore.

Many amphibians lived in the formation. Some like acheloma and zatrachys were terrestrial, the latter possessed armor and possibly had a long tongue. Edops and eryops were the largest amphibians in the formation and top predators in the water although in different niches. Eryops would have been a poor swimmer and likely hunted more like a snapping turtle. Edops was larger and probably better at swimming and might have had a more alligator like niche. Trimerorhacis was a meter long and fully aquatic.

Brachydectes might look like an amphibian but it's a more basal tetrapod, thought to have lived like burrowing snakes. Diploceraspis is a smaller relative of the more famous diplocaulus and just like it had a big boomerang head. It might look like an amphibian but it's even more primitive than them.

The water had plenty of fishes. There were large lobe finned fishes like ecteosteorhacis. Numerous spiny fin shark relatives lived in the water. Xenacanthus was a meter in length and possibly a favorite food of dimetrodon. Orthacanthus was 3 m long and likely preferred larger game having serrated teeth. Barbclabornia was a 5 m long Giant that was the size of a tiger shark but was actually a gentle filter feeder.

*Art credit goes to Joshua knuppe and dmitry bogdanov

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 12 days ago

Super "sharks" of the Paleozoic

These are the cartilaginous fish of the Paleozoic that reach or exceed 6 M long, the threshold to count as super in my opinion.

Despite calling them sharks they technically really aren't sharks. Come from a variety of families of cartilaginous fishes that are not closely related to today's sharks. Instead they're refer to a sharks just based off convenience.

Cartilaginous fish when they first evolved didn't dominate the apex predator niche, the placoderms did. Then a mass extinction 359 million years ago at the end of the devonian allowed the niche of top predator to be opened.

They rapidly diversified in the following carboniferous and maintained the spot of top predator until the end of the Permian period.

Really two families dominated the niche of giant shark like apex predators,eugeneodonts and ctenacanths.

Eugeneodonts were the ones known for possessing tooth whorls where the teeth were oriented more along a relative line of structure in the mouth instead of along the edges as in most. Edestus is known as the scissor tooth shark, thought to have possibly killed its prey by thrashing its body up and down to generate a saw like motion. Helicoprion is infamous for having a buzz saw in his mouth. Sarcoprion appeared to have an almost swordfish-like morphology. Parahelicoprion appears to have possibly been the largest animal of the Paleozoic at 12 m in length.

Ctenacanths were the other group that reached big sizes. They more closely resembled modern sharks but had spines in front of the fins. Saivodus could measure 7 m long. There's a large partial cranium from Texas that might belong to the genus glikmanius. Kaibabvenator was 6 M long and it was the member of its family that amped up their game. You see most ctenacanths had multicusped teeth designed purely to grip prey so they could then be swallowed whole. They didn't really slice and dice and cut chunks the same way that eugeneodonts did. However kaibab was unique in that it had serrations on its teeth this in combination with its large size indicates it was likely a macrophage. It also even coexisted with helicoprion.

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 13 days ago

Take the biomechanical weapon of a prehistoric predator and name and make a weapon out of it

I would stick a terror bird skull on the end of a pole and call it a hellbird, like halberd.

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 13 days ago

The Curse of Cartilage

Credit goes to entelognathus,shimada and paleoneolitic

The curse of cartilage is the name I've given to the situation where prehistoric fish are very rarely fossilized in full because they're skeletons are made of cartilage.

Cartilage is a lot less durable than bones and so it ends up decomposing fast.

As a result fish that are made of cartilage tend to rarely fossilize in full and thus the true appearance and biology of many of these prehistoric fishes are completely unknown.

Helicoprion is a prime example. It had only been known from its tooth whorls for centuries and where and how they were placed on the body led to some comical and terrifying reconstructions. The same thing with edestus, no one knew how the scissor Jaws fit. Then eventually Dr tapanila came across specimens that preserved the cartilage Jaws that held their teeth and so we gained an idea of what their jaws look like. But literally everything else about them is completely unknown. They might have only had pectoral dorsal and tail fins based off smaller relatives. But then again these relatives are smaller and might have had different roles in their environment which would have influenced their body.

Megalodon is known literally from just teeth and a few vertebrae. How it looked has been completely debated. Some think it was a deep body great white look alike. Others think it had a narrower slimmer body.

The placoderms are fish that have bony armor on the exterior but have cartilaginous bodies. As a result they don't always fossilize and all we get most of the time are their armored heads. Dunkleosteus is the most famous example, I mean look at how many different body forms it's been through. We only know of the shark like fins because of a fragment of a specimen.

It's frustrating because some cartilaginous fish from prehistory particularly those from the Carboniferous and Permian are so weird and awesome just from what we know. Imagine how much cool things we don't know because they just won't fossilize.

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 13 days ago

The sea monsters that Nigel Marven Forgot

These are large dangerous fauna from the ecosystems Nigel Marven visited in sea monsters that were known when they filmed the show but were unincluded.

Others named after the shows airing don't count.

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 13 days ago

Remember the time we almost lost dimetrodon?

Ah dimetrodon. Our sail backed grand uncle from before the dinosaurs.

It possibly is the most famous creature that lived before the dinosaurs and yet in 2015 we almost lost your name due to bureaucratic nonsense.

In the 1850s Joseph leidy named Bathygnathus borealis off a maxillary fragment found on PEI. He originally thought it was a dinosaur but then they found out it was a synapsid.

Later in the 1800s ED cope named dimetrodon in his infamous bone wars against OC Marsh.

Then in 2015 scientists determined Bathygnathus and dimetrodon were identical there fore Bathygnathus was the same animal as dimetrodon.

This was a huge problem. According to the governing bureaucracy of nomenclature,if 2 animals are the same, the name that was named first would take priority.

Because Bathygnathus was named first, the name dimetrodon would become invalid and synonymous with Bathygnathus. Obviously nobody wanted to lose the name of such an iconic animal.

So a petition was made to supress Bathygnathus and preserve the name dimetrodon which was successful.

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 13 days ago

Fran is the name of the of the North Carolina museum specimen of acrocanthosaurus. It's the giant one that showed the most about its anatomy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11731741

But the study that named tameryraptor noted several differences between the holotype of acrocanthosaurus and Fran.

It's possible it's individual variation.

Have There been any updates?

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 15 days ago

Coalitions is a type of social group amongst modern cheetahs. Cheetahs in general are solitary cats. But oftentimes male kittens from the same litter will continue to live with each other even after they become independent of their mother. They effectively act like a fraternal pack composed entirely of Brothers. They live and Hunt together as if they were a pack or pride.

What do you think of the possibility of pleistocene cats doing this?

I think xenosmilus might have been based off two large similarly sized individuals that were found in the same den.

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 18 days ago

Art by Dinosauria creatures

So several years ago a study was done on deinonychus teeth which stated that teeth from different growth stages indicated that they were eating different food than each other which was thought to disprove the notion of multi-generational packs.

However I've seen people state that there were problems with the study but they've never explained what said problems were.

Please iluminate to me in the comments

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 21 days ago

These are the large fishes that would have been living in the inland sea that covered much of Western North America roughly 275 to 265 million years ago. It's specifically based off formations dated to the leonardian to roadian stages.

This is based off the kaibab formation which is correlated temporally to the phosphoria formation of Idaho and the word formation of Texas both of which contain helicoprion. It therefore would have likely been a contemporary of these animals

u/Powerful_Gas_7833 — 21 days ago