#Campanian

[makairodonx]

Two male and one female Pteranodon longiceps soar over the heads of a pair of Styxosaurus browni 85 million years ago in what is now the Niobrara Formation of Kansas

[baebeylik]

Campanian/Etruscan small bronze statue depicting a Scythian archer and his horse. The archer is removable. The horse is a piece meant to be placed atop an urn.

5th Century BCE. Currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[stagbeetleboy]

I’m on a roll with the late cretaceous period. Say hi to the Gorgosaurus!

[blueiscoool]

A Very Large Split Ammonite

Pachydiscus Cretaceous, Campanian Belo Sur Tsiribihina, Madagascar

80 cm in diameter, split and polished, each half presented on a custom stand. A beautifully fossilized specimen of exceptional size, with honey-colored calcite and a few cavities with crystals.

Pachydiscus is an extinct genus of ammonite from the Upper Cretaceous with a global distribution. The species of this genus is P. neubergicus; in total, some 28 species have been described.

[ingloriousweasel]

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 36: Prehistory (Iteration Unknown)

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

[arklay]

i found a fc for reina.............it's been 84 years

[breitzbachbea]

Reading information that could potentially make my professor very unhappy.

[cretaceous-kid]

well, it seems a new Tyrannosaurus species was described today! the paper, (authored by Sebastian G. Dalman, Mark A. Loewen, and Nicholas R. Longrich) is based on remains from ancient Laramidia (now New Mexico) previously attributed to T. rex. These particular fossils are dated 6-7ish million years before T. rex. This newly proposed species, Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis, will hopefully give some insight into the evolution of T. rex, which has largely been shrouded in mystery.

The working theory has been migration from what is now Asia, *but* if T. mcraeensis continues to hold up to scrutiny it would turn out that the reverse is true! or even that a double back migration saw large tyrannosaurine dinosaurs migrate to Asia, only to migrate once again towards the northern part of North America!

Obviously the paper goes into far more detail, so i’ve included it below. give it a look!

(art at the top of the post was made by Sergey Krasovskiy)

[new-dinosaurs]

Lokiceratops rangiformis Loewen et al., 2024 (new genus and species)

(Reconstructed skull of Lokiceratops rangiformis [scale bar = 1 m], with unpreserved portions in gray, from Loewen et al., 2024)

Meaning of name: Lokiceratops = [Norse deity] Loki's horned face [in Greek]; rangiformis = Rangifer [genus of the extant reindeer]-shaped [in Latin]

Age: Late Cretaceous (Campanian), roughly 78.1 million years ago

Where found: Judith River Formation, Montana, U.S.A.

How much is known: Partial skeleton of one individual, including a partial skull, several vertebrae, and some limb bones.

Notes: Lokiceratops was a centrosaurine cereratopsian, making it a horned dinosaur more closely related to Styracosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus than to Triceratops. It is one of the largest known centrosaurines, with its skull alone being nearly 2 m long.

The skull of Lokiceratops was highly distinctive. A pair of very large, curved horns at the back of its frill pointed out to the sides. Furthermore, a pair of smaller horns closer to the center of the frill was asymmetrical, with one horn being larger than the other. Asymmetrical head ornamentation is also seen in the antlers of reindeer, hence the species name "rangiformis".

Lokiceratops is known from approximately the same time and location as three other centrosaurines, Albertaceratops, Medusaceratops, and Wendiceratops. Despite their diversity, all centrosaurines discovered so far are only known from very narrow ranges in both time and space. This may suggest that these horned dinosaurs diversified rapidly into numerous forms differentiated primarily by display features such as the shape of their horns and frills, with each species lasting only a short time in a small geographic region before evolving into new species or going extinct.

Reference: Loewen​​, M.A., J.J.W. Sertich​, S. Sampson, J.K. O’Connor, S. Carpenter, B. Sisson, A. Øhlenschlæger, A.A. Farke, P.J. Makovicky, N. Longrich, and D.C. Evans. 2024. Lokiceratops rangiformis gen. et sp. nov. (Ceratopsidae: Centrosaurinae) from the Campanian Judith River Formation of Montana reveals rapid regional radiations and extreme endemism within centrosaurine dinosaurs. PeerJ 12: e17224. doi: 10.7717/peerj.17224

[makairodonx]

Love is in the Air: Centrosaurus Edition

A male Centrosaurus apertus offers a special gift of flowers to his mate 75 million years ago in what is now the Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta, Canada.

[alphynix]

Lokiceratops rangiformis was a ceratopsian dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous (~78 million years ago) in what is now Montana, USA. Estimated at about 6.7m long (~22ft), it was one of the largest known members of the centrosaurine branch of the ceratopsians.

It had a unique arrangement of ornamentation on its skull, with no nose horn, two long brow horns, and a pair of huge asymmetrical curving blade-like spikes on the top of its square frill – some of the largest known frill spikes of any ceratopsian.

It lived in a swampy environment near the shore of the Western Interior Seaway, in an area that seems to have had an unusually high diversity of ceratopsians – along with Lokiceratops there were three other centrosaurines (Medusaceratops, Albertaceratops, and Wendiceratops), and one chasmosaurine (Judiceratops).

(There's also a possibility that it might not actually be a unique species. We know some other ceratopsians' faces changed quite drastically as they aged, so Lokiceratops could instead represent a fully mature individual of Medusaceratops.)

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

References:

Gramling, Carolyn. "Meet Lokiceratops, a newly discovered species of horned dinosaur." Science News, 20 June 2024, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lokiceratops-new-species-horned-dinosaur

Loewen, Mark A., et al. "Lokiceratops rangiformis gen. et sp. nov.(Ceratopsidae: Centrosaurinae) from the Campanian Judith River Formation of Montana reveals rapid regional radiations and extreme endemism within centrosaurine dinosaurs." PeerJ 12 (2024): e17224. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.17224

Molinek, Rudy. “Dinosaur with Giant, Loki-like Horns Has the ‘craziest, Coolest’ Headgear-and Could Be a New Species.” Smithsonian Magazine, 20 June 2024, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dinosaur-with-giant-loki-like-horns-has-the-craziest-coolest-headgear-and-could-be-a-new-species-180984577/

Wikipedia contributors. “Lokiceratops.” Wikipedia, 1 Jul. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lokiceratops

[thecoffeeisblack]

A Campanian Autumn Parasaurolophus walkeri is distracted by falling leaves.

[blueiscoool]

Campanian Red-Figure Fish Plate 360-330 BC

The Three-Stripe Painter. Two breams and a torpedo around a central well. ø 18.5 cm.

[fossilprep]

Ankylosaurian sacrum from our anky site. Campanian, Judith River fm near Havre, MT.

[wtf-scientific-papers]

[Q: How could western North America support such a high diversity of ecologically similar, large-bodied horned dinosaur species during the late Campanian? A: It could not—or, the Red Queen takes an axe to a phylogenetic tree, restructuring an ecological network from within rather than without]

This is the title.

Berry (2023)