Dan Chure wrote:
<This is written in the past tense. Is the specimen no longer at the Victor
Valley Museum? The complete institutional name is Victor Valley Museum and Art
Gallery. I checked the website and there is no mention of the Minotaurasaurus
skull or dinosaurs for that matter.
The specimen number for the type is INBR21004. There is no list of acronyms
given in the paper. Does anyone have an idea what institution this refers to?>
The material is on display there, and a cast of it at Gaston Design, as *Saichania chulsanensis*.
As a further note, although I do not wish to raise too much hubbub, was that the material was purchased from a dealer, apparently from the Gobi, and if this is anthing related to *Saichania* or it IS *Saichania*, then it's from Mongolia (or China) and was likely acquired by the dealer illicitly.
With unknown provenance, and incomplete CT data, it is hard to ackowledge distinction
here between the two taxa. For example, a difference noted between the two taxa is the
orientation of the pterygoids, horizontal for this skull and vertical for *Saichania*. To
my understanding, nearly vertical is the natural condition for ankylosaur pterygoids, for
mechanical reasons, and any orientation differences should be suspected as distortion,
although the authors claim the lack of such. Otherwise, the cranial architechture,
details of the narial region, the shape of the premaxilla and jugal "horns" as
well as the superficial regions of the dorsal cranium, imply that this is a distorted or
modified *Saichania chulsanensis*.
Cheers,
Jaime A. Headden
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)
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