Re: When dinos roamed

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@lycos.com>]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001 19:06:01
 Rob Gay wrote:
>>Both are from about the same time and from the same general area.<
>General general area, like western North America.
>
>>The problem with Shonisaurus is that it is known from no skull<
>Berlin-Icthyosaur State Park has a skull on display, IIRC (its been almost
>ten years since I was there though...)
>
>>and the fossils found in Berlin, Nevada are not preserved well.<
>IIRC again, they are very well preserved in a large mass-assemblege of 17(?)
>complete animals. HPs more versed in our aquatic saurian friends could
>probably correct me though...

The fossils themselves are very weathered, AFAIK, and the most common are those 
of vertebrae.  By not being well-preserved I mean that there are not a lot of 
complete skeletons and many of the fine structures are not preserved.  And, as 
far as I know, there are remains of 37 ichthyosaurs.  I may be wrong, though.

>BTW, does anyone have a ref. for the description of _Shonisaurus_ or a
>description of the park?

The ref I have is:

Camp, C.L., 1976, Large Ichthyosaurs from the upper Triassic of Nevada, 
Palaeontographica 170.
>
>>I have seen Shonisaurus reconstructed up to about 13-15 meters, but I
>>recall reading somewhere that one scientist "predicted" that this
>>ichthyosaur could reach sizes of 70 feet.  That would be relatively close
>>to 23 meters...<
>An animal of no small size in the first place...but 23 meters is freaking
>huge! That would be truely awesome to see cruising under the waves.

Agreed!

Regards,
Steve

---
***************************************************************
Steve Brusatte-DINO LAND PALEONTOLOGY
SITE: http://www.geocities.com/stegob
ONLINE CLUB: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thedinolanddinosaurdigsite
WEBRING: http://home.wanadoo.nl/dinodata.net/
INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE SITE: http://www.geocities.com/stegob/international.html
****************************************************************
>


Get 250 color business cards for FREE!
http://businesscards.lycos.com/vp/fastpath/