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Hi everybody, I’m back from a good trip to Tucson. I will abide by the
rules of the list and not tell people how to buy fossils, (like going to
Tucson, giving green paper thingy’s or using plastic to purchase…) :> Anyway… Mike Triebold had 3 casts. An Edmontosaurus skeleton. The skull has some
bite marks on the lower jaw. An Albertosaurus (Gorgosaurus) skeleton, and the
previously mentioned Chirostenotes. It is beautiful. There are 2 specimens and
between them the animal is missing only the upper back part of the skull (he
had the pieces last year and has conferred with several paleontologist about
the pieces) and the tip of the tail. It has a short tail just like Nomingia
(sic), just like I’ve been saying for about a decade. NO pygostle. Some
pathologies, on the ventral side of two or three dorsal vertebrae is a ‘crest’.
You can buy… (oops, sorry)… BHI had “Stan”, a pteranodon, a cast of a nearly complete Triceratops
(this is the one that was talked about at the last Dinofest symposium). The
legs are in complete articulation and indicate that the animal had a
semi-sprawling gait (I remember the talk and the author wasn’t very clear and
he confused people). Once you think you have Pachycephalosaurids figured out, a new skull cap
is found. From Wyoming (I think) a skull cap the width of a normal large Pachycephalosaurus
skull, has a small, inset dome with no fenestra on the dorsal surface. A vendor/collector/seller/ had a new spinosaurid dentary. This is almost
an exact copy of the type jaw, but it’s from Morocco. They had a tip of the
dentary of a larger specimen. They had some vertebrae that they didn’t know
what it was. I told them they had a titanosaurid and possibly a camarasaurid
caudals. There was a Carcharodontosaurus maxilla.
After looking at it I’d say the height of the palate ridge on the inside of the
maxilla weighed against the depth of the maxilla to the ventral edge indicates
that the teeth in the dentary were larger/taller in Carcharodontosaurus in
proportion to the maxilla than Tyrannosaurus rex. At the main
show there was a display with the new short skulled stegosaurid from the Howe
quarry. This is the one that Ken Carpenter will describe in the up and coming
thyrophean volume. There were cool
ammonites, trilobites, etc. I made several contacts that may pan out for me.
All in all it was a very good trip. Tracy |