Recommended literature

[theropod]

I always found the shape of that crest somehow unsatisfying!

[Derdadort]

Yeah, I never thought about it, but its new crest makes much more sense now.

[Infinity Blade]

www.academia.edu/229159/The_facial_integument_of_Pachyrhinosaurus_Ceratopsidae_Ornithischia_Morphological_and_histological_correlates_of_novel_skin_structures

I think this covers the whole Pachyrhinosaurus horn vs. boss debate. 

[Godzillasaurus]

I think it is more widely accepted that pachyrhinosaurus had a nasal boss as opposed to a horn. At least that is what I believe

[Infinity Blade]

True, but there have been some people who suspected the boss was a base for a rhinoceros-like horn, which may have been disproven by this paper. Unless someone can prove otherwise (I am BEGGING for this to happen).

[Life]

Best shark evolution paper I have read so far: Evolution of white and megatooth sharks, and evidence for early predation on seals, sirenians, and whales

ABSTRACT

The early white shark Carcharodon Smith, 1838 with the fossil Carcharodon auriculatus (Blainville, 1818) and the extinct megatooth shark Otodus Agassiz, 1843 with species Otodus sokolovi (Jaeckel, 1895) were both present in the European proto North Sea Basin about 47.8 - 41.3 m.y. ago (Lutetian, early Middle Eocene), as well as in the Tethys realm around the Afican-Eurasian shallow marine habitats. Both top predators developed to be polyphyletic, with possible two different lamnid shark ancestors within the Early Paleocene to Early Eocene timespan with Carcharodon (white shark line-age) and Otodus (megatooth shark lineage). Their sawblade teeth developed during the early Paleogene as the result of adaptation to feeding on various marine new rising mammals, coinciding with three main waves of evolutionary emergence of seals, sirenians, and whales in parallel with the evolution of these large predatory sharks. Megatooth sharks specialized in hunting whales and sirenians only on the coastal shelves of warm oceans and disappeared globally in the Pleistocene due to climate change and ocean cooling. The cold-water adapted early white sharks have survived until the present day with body temperate change adaptation in warm to temperate oceans and are proposed to have specialized on coastal seal hunting already50 m.y. ago.

Link: www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=39487&

[Derdadort]

Some new stuff I safed recently

The posture of floating Pterosaurs:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018213005257 (damn, not public anymore. I will post the manuscript in the sharing thread)

Edenopteron, a new genus of large devonian lobe-finned fishes from Australia:
www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0053871

Bacteria absorbs Mammoth-DNA and possible consequences for bacterial evolution:
phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/18/the-bacteria-that-absorbed-mammoth-dna/

And last but not least
Europelta, a new ankylosaur from Spain:
www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0080405

[creature386]

Dec 7, 2013 14:31:25 GMT 5 Derdadort said:

And last but not least
Europelta, a new ankylosaur from Spain:
www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0080405

Looks like I have some stuff (and lots of pictures) for my next Prehistoric Newspaper episode!

[Derdadort]

Two dinosaur news:

A socalled "dinosaur mummy" of Edmontosaurus shows a fleshy comb:
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131212-duckbill-dinosaur-rooster-comb-fossils-paleontology-science/

And Acrovenator escotea, a new big abelisaurid of France:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S075339691300089X?np=y
 

[creature386]

This is important to everyone who likes Ceratosaurus and Allosaurus:
archive.org/stream/osteologyofcarni00gilm/osteologyofcarni00gilm_djvu.txt

[theropod]

definitely recommendable. It seems like I even underestimated the rarity of fully mature specimens...

Previous growth-rate studies covering 14 dinosaur taxa, as represented by 31 data sets, are critically examined and reanalyzed by using improved statistical techniques. The examination reveals that some previously reported results cannot be replicated by using the methods originally reported; results from new methods are in many cases different, in both the quantitative rates and the qualitative nature of the growth, from results in the prior literature. Asymptotic growth curves, which have been hypothesized to be ubiquitous, are shown to provide best fits for only four of the 14 taxa. Possible reasons for non-asymptotic growth patterns are discussed; they include systematic errors in the age-estimation process and, more likely, a bias toward younger ages among the specimens analyzed. Analysis of the data sets finds that only three taxa include specimens that could be considered skeletally mature (i.e., having attained 90% of maximum body size predicted by asymptotic curve fits), and eleven taxa are quite immature, with the largest specimen having attained less than 62% of predicted asymptotic size. The three taxa that include skeletally mature specimens are included in the four taxa that are best fit by asymptotic curves. The totality of results presented here suggests that previous estimates of both maximum dinosaur growth rates and maximum dinosaur sizes have little statistical support. Suggestions for future research are presented.

www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0081917

[Derdadort]

First described dinosaurs from Saudi Arabia:
www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0084041

[theropod]

Bite (ie. "tooth-bearing part of jaw") circumference/total-lenght relationships in sharks: www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/Research/Bite_Circumference.html
Determining shark size from forensic analysis of bite damage
Lowry et al. 2009

for the pdf, check the first result here:
scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=Determining+shark+size+from+forensic+analysis+of+bite+damage+&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=

in the case of great whites:
log(upper-jaw-perimeter) = 1.007(log TL)-0.800
r²=0.98

log(lower-jaw-perimeter) = 0.966(log TL)-0.743
r²=0.99

[Grey]

The link does not work as a direct pdf.

Check the first link here : scholar.google.fr/scholar?hl=fr&q=lowry+sharks+circumference&btnG=&lr=

My maths knowledge has not improved, don't understand how to use it, so don't hesitate to use that in the meg size related thread.

[coherentsheaf]

Jan 2, 2014 3:12:41 GMT 5 theropod said:

Bite (ie. "tooth-bearing part of jaw") circumference/total-lenght relationships in sharks: astro.temple.edu/~tud02746/publications/Lowry%20et%20al.,%202009.pdf

in the case of great whites:
log(bite circumference) = 1.007(log TL)-0.800
r²=0.98

EDIT: link doesn't work, so here's the complete citation and abstract to search it on google scholar: www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/Research/Bite_Circumference.html

Note this is the circumference of the upper jaw only.