#noasaurid

[ppaleoartistgallery]

#LemuriaChallenge - Submission 1

my first submission to the #LemuriaChallenge, assorted non-avian dinosaurs of the savannah and surrounding areas

[saritapaleo]

Archovember 2024 Day 7 - Vespersaurus paranaensis

The rare noasaurids were a family of theropod dinosaurs belonging to the group Ceratosauria, and were related to the short-armed abelisaurids. One noasaur, Masiakasaurus, brought the family into the limelight recently with its appearance on Prehistoric Planet. But in Cretaceous Brazil, a different noasaur left its strange, monodactyl footprints across the sand. Vespersaurus paranaensis had two “killing claws”, on each foot, but not like a Velociraptor, or a Balaur, or even like modern Accipitriformes. Instead, it walked on its middle toe, while its 2nd toe and outer toe were raised off the ground. This may have been an adaptation to moving swiftly across the hot sand of the Botucatu Formation, a vast Cretaceous desert. Such an adaption has not been found in any other archosaur. Vespersaurus probably didn’t actually use these claws for hunting, and was likely a generalist, chasing down small, fast animals, opportunistically scavenging the kills of other predators, or hunting weak and injured animals. It may have instead used its claws in powerful defensive kicks, similar to modern cassowaries.

Other named species have yet to be found in the Botucatu Formation. Aside from Vespersaurus, other fossils include indeterminate coelurosaurs, ornithopods, lizards, tritylodontids, and mammals.

This art may be used for educational purposes, with credit, but please contact me first for permission before using my art. I would like to know where and how it is being used. If you don’t have something to add that was not already addressed in this caption, please do not repost this art. Thank you!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

trick or treat :3c

Vespersaurus by Juanet

[fishsfailureson]

Kiyacursor, I also did an alternative version with lighter feathers but I decided that it'd look better with darker feathers. (lmk if you want to see that one).

[thedrawinggizzard]

A young berthasaura narrowly escapes the jaws of a predatory vespersaurus. Despite appearances, these two are actually quite closely related, both being part of the clade noasauridae. These were a group of ceratosaurid theropods that were quite varied in forms, among them small hunters and beaked herbivores that lost their teeth as they grew up.

Not entirely sure whether these two lived together but I really like the contrast of how different yet also how close these two are. Also vespersaurus is one my favourite dinosaurs ever.

[kakapojay]

A noasaurid falls off a cliff. Was he pushed? We'll never know.

[aberrantologist]

Kiyacursor, a newly described noasaurid theropod dinosaur, running around on its strange, ostrich-like feet.

[new-dinosaurs]

Kiyacursor longipes Averianov et al., 2024 (new genus and species)

(Type specimen of Kiyacursor longipes, from Averianov et al., 2024)

Meaning of name: Kiyacursor = Kiya River runner [in Latin]; longipes = long foot [in Latin]

Age: Early Cretaceous (Aptian)

Where found: Ilek Formation, Kemerovo Oblast, Russia

How much is known: Partial skeleton of one individual including several vertebrae and limb bones. A partial neck vertebra found at the same site may belong to the same individual.

Notes: Kiyacursor was a ceratosaurian theropod. It resembles the Late Jurassic ceratosaurs Elaphrosaurus of Tanzania and Limusaurus of China in having relatively elongate lower legs and feet, suggesting that it was well adapted for fast running. The type specimen of Kiyacursor is estimated to have been 2.5 m long in total body length, but it probably had not finished growing when it died.

Although ceratosaurs are known from the Late Cretaceous of Europe and especially the Southern Hemisphere, Kiyacursor is the youngest known ceratosaur from Asia. In addition to Kiyacursor, the Ilek Formation has produced fossils of various other animals that are more characteristic of Jurassic ecosystems, including certain types of proto-salamanders, proto-crocodylians, and proto-mammals. This may indicate that what is now Western Siberia acted as a "lost world" for some Jurassic animal groups during the Early Cretaceous.

(Select bones and schematic skeletal of Kiyacursor longipes [scale bar refers only to the skeletal and not to the photographs of bones], from Averianov et al., 2024)

Reference: Averianov, A.O., P.P. Skutschas, A.A. Atuchin, D.A. Slobodin, O.A. Feofanova, and O.N. Vladimirova. 2024. The last ceratosaur of Asia: a new noasaurid from the Early Cretaceous Great Siberian Refugium. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291: 20240537. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2024.0537

[ye-oldroderich]

sometimes i wake up and i remember that I LOVE DINOSAURS !!!!!! RAAAAGHHHH !!!!!!! anyways anyone else ever think about the kem kem beds. because i do.

kem kem beds save me. save me kem kem beds. the disproportionate split between large herbivores and megatheropods enamors me. what do you mean theres just only sauropods and no other large herbivores. what do you mean theres like 20 different large theropod species running around at the same time. why are there fish that damn BIG. what even are noasaurids. also spinosaurus is here.

kem kem group so fine kem kem group divine. my roman empire is thinking about how the ecosystem of the kem kem beds was so incredibly diverse that it allowed for all of these different VERY LARGE carnivores to coexist because they all occupied different niches in the environment. which just totally crumbles the stereotype of Big Theropod Deathmatch because uh yeah, sorry jw bros, we have proof of some of the largest theropods in history all living in the same place at the same time!!! successfully!!! animals do not just go around beefing and fighting one another 24/7, especially carnivores. carcharodontosaurus and spinosaurus are not fistfighting everytime they see one another. spinosaurus is busy sleeping like a log on the riverbank and carchar is just coming by to get a drink. carchar accidentally steps on spino's tail and the spino snaps at it but misses completely because its half asleep and stupid. carchar walks away. they are just animals !!! and every ecosystem is incredibly complex and i love that even though we only have fossils and rocks to go off of this fact is SO evident across the globe but kem kem beds is so special to me. in my heart. anyways very rough sketch to go along with this train of thought.

i miss you kem kem beds. sighs dreamily

[bornulhuu]

Refuge, an artifical earth-like planet, it has a rich atmosphere and geologic activity controlled by giant ancient machines deep in its crust.

It was seeded with late cretaceous fauna and flora. With oviraptors, small abelisaurids, noasaurids, dromys and more. Which then evolved into tremendous new species.

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Results from the 65 redesign #paleostream.

Starting of with the stuff you are dreaded/waited for: the Quadrex, a 8 m long peirosaurid. Slight spoilers ahead in the images below.

Next you see here a "long boy", an arboreal baurosuchine, the "anky-raptor" actually a Jakapil relative (only a juvenile appears in the movie), cave-dwelling oviraptorosaur and a noasaurid as a stand-in for the troodon/compies (?)

Last thing we did was an animal that isn't even fully visible in the movie, there is something long, spiky and fish, and what you see in the trailer is everything you see of it. We fleshed it out as a long and massive bowfin

Important detail here: the scenario we imagined for this stream is that, it is an alternative timeline in which South America is closer to North America so that a limited faunal interchange is already possible. Also the asteroid came down 1 million years later ;)

[aliceandhare]

Another day, another dinosaur. This time, it's the small but fast Velocisaurus unicus 💨

There aren't many specimens of this dinosaur and I haven't drawn an abelisauroid, let alone a noasaurid ever, so I went for the cartoony style to hide any anatomy mistakes xD

I'm happy to learn more so if you have any info or advice, let me know! ☺️

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Fossil Friday: Argentinosaurus

Argentinosaurus is a titanosaur from late Cretaceous Argentina. The animal is very fragmentary with only 14 known elements of which only two are complete.

So, how do we know it's the heaviest land animal to ever walk the earth? Well, we don't actually. We need more pieces of the puzzle before we can accurately answer that question. We can, at the very least, put in a clade though.

In a paper describing the holotype of Argentinosaurus, we can see the characters it possesses that place it within titanosauria:

"Argentinosaurus huinculensis is identified basically with Titanosauria, by the presence of diverse characters whose association is characteristic of this clade, and that have in part been already been pointed out and illustrated by Powell (1986): a) opisthocoelous dorsal vertebrae with relatively small, elliptic pleurocoels, located in the middle and anterior sector of the vertebral body, in a wide pleurocoelic depression of 8 oval form, more wide in the anterior sector than in the posterior; b) presence of very clear, angular fossae, in the lateral face of the neural arch of the dorsal vertebrae; c) neural spines of the anterior dorsals rather flat, wide transversely, and without vestiges of bifurcation; d) presence of large bony cells in the entirety of the spongy tissue of the dorsal and sacral vertebrae." (https://www.naturalhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/media/translated_publications/Bonaparte%26amp%3BCoria_93.pdf)

Argentinosaurus was found in the Huincul Formation composed of green and yellow sandstones up to 820ft (250m) thick. It is thought to represent a drainage system of a braided river.

Plants known from this formation include hornworts, liverworts,

ferns, clubmosses,

gymnosperms (including gnetophytes like ephedra and conifers)

and angiosperms.

Animals found in this formation include lungfish, gar,

turtles, squamates,

sphenodonts, crocodiles,

and many dinosaurs including titanosaur Choconsaurus, rebbachisaurids Cathartesaurus and Limaysaurus, carcharodontosaurid Mapusaurus, abelisaurids Skorpiovenator, Ilokelsia, and Tralkasaurus, noasaurid Huinculsaurus and paravian Overoraptor.

Tune in on Monday to learn all about diplodocids in more detail. Fossilize you later!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Round Four: Berthasaura vs Caihong

Berthasaura leopoldinae

Artwork by @i-draws-dinosaurs, written by @i-draws-dinosaurs

Name meaning: Bertha and Leopoldina’s reptile (in honour of naturalist and women’s rights activist Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz, and first Empress of Brazil and advocate for Brazilian independence Maria Leopoldina)

Time: Uncertain, likely ~121 to 75 million years ago (Aptian to Albian stages of the Early Creataceous) but may be younger

Location: Goio-Erê Formation, Brazil

Theropods are famously carnivorous dinosaurs, but many, many groups of theropods have decided “actually but what if I didn’t” and gone vegetarian, and yet it’s still wild when another one of those pops up every now and then. Even among them though, Berthasaura is special for being the only theropod that seems to have tried to just straight up turn itself into an ornithopod. The long spindly legs, the teeny little arms, and a big head with a toothless beak all come together to create an utterly bizarre little theropod that honestly nobody could have predicted.

Berthasaura is a noasaur, and those of you familiar will at this moment be saying “oh of course it’s a noasaur” because those guys were small ceratosaurs that were basically Theropod Wacky Experimental Phase 1.0. Within this group you’ve got wild sticky-outy teeth, a single weight-bearing toe on each foot in our fellow competitor Vespersaurus, and now multiple instances of beaks evolving independently. Theropods just love to evolve a beak, what can I say? Whatever the hell Berthasaura had going on, it must have been successful because as the basalmost noasaurid currently known its direct lineage has been surviving since at least the Late Jurassic!

Caihong juji

Artwork by @i-draws-dinosaurs, written by @i-draws-dinosaurs

Name meaning: Rainbow with big crest

Time: 161 million years old (Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic)

Location: Tiaojishan Formation, China

It’s always a special treat to hear the announcement of a dinosaur with known colours, because it gives the most direct impression of how truly stunning these animals would have been to witness in real life. And Caihong might just be the most spectacular of them all so far, described in 2018 from an immaculate full-body fossil that preserves detailed feathers! Caihong’s feathers are longer than some other floofy dinosaurs, and would have had the appearance of a luxurious mane along its neck. Not only that, the fossil preserves feather microstructures that in life would have made this dinosaur gloriously iridescent!

Now iridescent dinosaurs aren’t new, Microraptor has been decked out in fabulous starling-esque plumage for a while now, but Caihong absolutely takes it to the next level. Its whole body was covered in iridescent black, including the enormous tail, but the real star of the show are the platelet-like melanosomes found on the head, neck, and the base of the tail. Different from the usual iridescent melanosomes, the structure of these tiny organelles reflects brilliantly iridescent colours, like those on the heads of hummingbirds and particularly the bright purple feathers on the necks of the trumpeter family. Caihong would have put on an absolutely dazzling jewel-toned display in the treetops or on the forest floor of prehistoric China!

[scolop98]

VOTE BERTHASAURA FOR DINOSAUR MARCH MADNESS 2023

​Berthasaura is just *barely* losing @a-dinosaur-a-day​‘s DMM poll and if the only remaining Noasaur loses to a friggin Spinosaur I might actually riot

A vote for Berthasaura is a vote for all Noasaurs, arguably the weirdest collection of non-avian theropods to ever exist. A vote for Berthasaura is, by extension, a vote for:

- Masiakasaurus “why are your teeth like that“ knopfleri of Prehistoric Planet fame, a genuíne Madagascan weirdo

-  Vespersaurus “only dinosaur that walks on one toe” paranaensis (yes that includes all birds), tragic second place of the previous round

- Limusaurus “are you sure that’s even a theropod” inextricabilis, which started out like normal little baby theropods before losing their teeth and becoming quasi-ornithomimid beaked herbivores, and its fellow Elaphrosaurines

- Noasaurids are also the closest relatives of Abelisaurs, which should be worth extra brownie points

And Berthasaura itself was no slouch either! In addition to being arguably The Most Ornithopod of any theropod (vote for wacky convergent evolution!), it evolved its toothlessness independently of the Elaphrosaurines, and was toothless its entire life! Friggin Noasaurs don’t even do toothlesness the same way twice apparently. Berthasaura also holds the distinction of being the second ever toothless non-ceolosaurian theropod to be described, and it had a nearly complete skeleton! Berthasaura was an ornithomimid before ornithomimids became cool (or even existed), an early-cretaceous throwback to Shuvosaurids, the first of a long line of weirdo theropods. Peak dinosaur, 9/10.

Meanwhile Ceratosuchops is what, a Baryonychine with a horn on its head? Boo, unoriginal, 4/10. The horn ain’t even that big. It’s only known from some fragments of a skull (again: compare to Berthasaura’s remarkably complete skeleton) and in all honesty I’m just tired of Spinosaurs at this point. I couldn’t even keep track of whatever Spinosaurus drama was happening back when I was deep in my early Covid paleo hyperfixation and I'm kinda scared to check in on it. Apologies to Darren Naish, but I’ve had a petty grudge against spotlight-stealing Spinosaurs since like the third post-2014 Spinosaurus paper and it sure as hell-herons ain’t going away now. Sure, Ceratosuchops was a heron-analogue with a cool name, but it’s not even a proper heron mimic. If you want some real convergent evolution, vote for Berthasaura. 

Am I deliberately skimping on Baryonychine facts due to a petty grudge against the most famous member of the family? Yes definitely absolutely. They get enough attention as is. And what do they have that Noasaurs don’t? Weird teeth and an aquatic diet? See Masiakasaurus. Big fore-claws? See Noasaurus. Large size? Overrated, and Deltadromeus might be a Noasaur so they even have that covered. Sail-backs and a semiaquatic lifestyle? That’s Spinosaurus bias talking, vote for Bajadasaurus or Annakacygna instead. Spinosaurs may be fan-favorite weirdo dinosaurs, but I think that Noasaurs were objectively weirder and deserve to advance in the polls. Vote Berthasaura for a weirder, wackier theropod (and a way to unload that pent-up anti-Spinosaurus grudge, if you like)

[smonkey-zer0]

Baleen meditate in the middle of a field as Varinul approaches, the little noasaurid is curious about this strange figure.