There have been a number of potential species assigned to Allosaurus, a carnosauriandinosaur, since its description in 1877 by Othniel Charles Marsh, but only a handful are still regarded as valid. Allosaurus was originally described from material from the Upper JurassicMorrison Formation of the western United States of America; the type speciesA. fragilis became one of the best-known species of dinosaur. The genus Allosaurus was part of the Marsh/Edward Drinker Cope "Bone Wars" of the late 1800s, and its taxonomy became increasingly confused due to the competition, with several genera and species named by Cope and Marsh now regarded as synonyms of Allosaurus or A. fragilis. Since the description of Allosaurus, scientists have proposed additional species from such far-flung locales as Portugal, Siberia, Switzerland, and Tanzania, Australia and unnamed remains from China have also been assigned to the genus at one time or another. It is unclear how many species of Allosaurus there were. Seven species have been considered potentially valid since 1988. There are also at least ten dubious or undescribed species that have been assigned to Allosaurus over the years, along with the species belonging to genera now sunk into Allosaurus. (Read more...)
... that Irritator is only known from a skull that was badly obscured by plaster which was added by the commercial fossil-collecting fossil-poachers who illegally sold it in hopes of making the fossil look more complete and valuable?
... that rhynchosaurs had unique teeth that were modified into broad tooth plates?
... that a trackway produced by an unknown crocodyliform that measured approximately 12 meters in length was uncovered in the Galve region of Spain?
... that Loxommatids are possibly the first tetrapodomorph group to actually spend substantial time on land.?
... that Zuniceratops was discovered by 8 year old Christopher James Wolfe, son of paleontologist Douglas G. Wolfe?
"An evolutionary perspective of our place in the history of the earth reminds us that Homo sapiens sapiens has occupied the planet for the tiniest fraction of that planet's four and a half thousand million years of existence. In many ways we are a biological accident, the product of countless propitious circumstances. As we peer back through the fossil record, through layer upon layer of long-extinctspecies, many of which thrived far longer than the human species is ever likely to do, we are reminded of our mortality as a species. There is no law that declares the human animal to be different, as seen in this broad biological perspective, from any other animal. There is no law that declares the human species to be immortal."
—Richard E. Leakey. Co-author with American science writer Roger Amos Lewin (1946), Origins: What New Discoveries Reveal about the Emergence of our Species and its Possible Future (1977), 256.
Two incomplete Malerisaurus skeletons were discovered in what is thought to be the gastric contents of a Parasuchus hislopi. The fossils were retrieved from fluvial flood plain deposits of the Late TriassicMaleri Formation of the Gondwanasupergroup, India. Malerisaurus was a small eosuchian, presumably bipedal, and probably capable of climbing trees and swimming. The skull has some adaptations to a carnivorous diet, but is nevertheless unspecialized and probably more of an insectivore. Malerisaurus, seen as a diapsidskull, shows primitive and advanced facies in its unossified laterosphenoid, absence of antorbital and mandibularfenestrae, gracile form, primitive girdles, elongated cervicals and absence of dermal armour. The suborder Prolacertiformes currently represents four families: Petrolacosauridae, Protorosauridae, Prolacertidae and Tanystropheidae. Provisionally, Malerisaurus is regarded as being phylogenetically close to Protorosaurus.
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