The most powerful and fearsome predatory reptile of all time

[theropod]

C. megalodon isn’t a reptile.

[0ldgrizz]

OH. wow! Another blunder. I'm not going to touch this topic again. Embarrassed.

[creature386]

You don't need to. You can learn like that. And this is no forum where you will get ridiculed for this.

[Grey]

Popular articles from last year :

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-24803451
www.eadt.co.uk/news/features/how_john_created_the_garden_of_his_dreams_1_3596090

The bone is massive, does someone where it places in a pliosaur skeleton and overall would correspond to which body size ?

[Grey]

A TV doc in German about Dino Frey excavations :



Do they speak about the Aramberri pliosaur ?

[theropod]

That seems to be a propodial, but whether it’s a humerus or femur is difficult to tell without at least something to compare it to.
And it doesn’t seem abnormally huge (18cm wide at the distal end and 42cm long), for example the bone is respectively 50-58% the size of the humerus and 44-50% the size of the femur when compared to the Stretham P. macromerus specimen that McHenry estimates at 9-11m by comparing it to Kronosaurus boyacensis.

Unless it’s a phalanx (which seems extremely unlikely given both shape and size) it is a rather small pliosaur.

[theropod]

Nov 29, 2014 20:51:00 GMT 5 Grey said:

A TV doc in German about Dino Frey excavations :



Do they speak about the Aramberri pliosaur ?

There’s no sound…

The description sais the following:

Sie drehen jeden Stein um und graben sich bei sengender Hitze tief ins Erdreich: Auf den Spuren der Urzeit erforschen die Karlsruher Wissenschaftler Wolfgang Stinnesbeck und Eberhard Frey in Mexiko die Jura- und Kreidezeit. Jene Erdepoche, in der auf der Erde die Giganten unter den Dinosauriern lebten. Ihre Funde könnten eines Tages auch das Geheimnis um das plötzliche Verschwinden der Riesen lüften. Vor 65 Millionen Jahren starben die Dinosaurier plötzlich aus. Bis heute ist das Rätsel um ihr Verschwinden nicht restlos geklärt.
Mehr und mehr nehmen Experten Abstand von der Theorie, dass der Einschlag eines Asteroiden der Auslöser für das Artensterben gewesen sei. Auch die Wissenschaftler Wolfgang Stinnesbeck und sein Kollege Eberhard Frey vermuten andere Gründe. Dafür sammeln sie seit Jahren Beweise und ihre bisherigen Funde scheinen ihnen Recht zu geben. Stinnesbeck, Paläontologe und Geologe der Universität Karlsruhe, und Frey, Biologe und Oberkonservator am Naturkundemuseum Karlsruhe, forschen seit rund zehn Jahren im Nordosten von Mexiko.
In einem Umkreis von mehreren hundert Kilometern haben sie bereits spektakuläre Fossilien ausgegraben. So fanden sie einen der bislang größten und fast vollständig erhaltenen Pliosaurier. Das Tier galt zu Lebzeiten als einer der gefährlichsten Raubsaurier der Meere und maß bis zu 14 Meter. Auch nach über 70 Millionen Jahren lassen sich im Nordosten Mexikos, einer kargen Landschaft mit viel Kalkgestein, mit geschultem Auge versteinerte Überreste einer einst reichen Fauna und Flora ausmachen. Fußabdrücke und Wirbelsäulenknochen zahlreicher riesiger Urzeittiere sowie versteinerte Pflanzen und andere Fossilien sind im Übermaß vorhanden. Zu den Entdeckungen von Stinnesbeck und Frey gehören die zurzeit größten und außergewöhnlich gut erhaltenen Fußspuren des so genannten Dromaeosauriers. Mit einer Schrittlänge von bis zu vier Metern muss er ein Riese unter den Raubsauriern gewesen sein. Die Dokumentation begleitet die beiden Wissenschaftler bei ihrer Detektivarbeit und versucht eine Antwort auf die Frage zu geben, was genau im Nordosten von Mexiko am Ende der Kreidezeit geschehen

Bolded part translates to "In so doing, they found one of the hitherto largest and almost completely preserved pliosaurs. During its time, the animal was deemed one of the most dangerous predatory saurians of the seas and measured up to 14m."
As oddly translated as it was written. It seems like some sort of official description for the documentary, but it doesn’t seem very scientific–further down it talks of "the dromaeosaur" with a stride lenght of 4m being a giant among theropods.

[Grey]

There is the sound on the YT page. I think they talk about it at least around 8 minutes.

[creature386]

I already have sound when watching the embedded video.

[theropod]

Now it’s working. I think my system gets upset when I try opening a youtube video and simultaneously still have the stream of another yutube video opened in vlc, even tough I’ve paused it. I’ll have a look.

But I wouldn’t take it at face value anyway, have you seen that dromaeosaur animation at 03:30?

[theropod]

What they say about the monster is the usual stuff. That the attacker was over 20m, perhaps 25 or 30, and that Buchy estimated the specimen itself at 15-18m (without actually showing her say so).

Starting at around 15:15 there’s footage of the bite-marked part, shortly afterwards you hear Frey stating that 3 tyrannosaur teeth (probably referring to T. rex) fitted through the bite mark.

Not really surprising, since that’s quite an old documentary.

[creature386]

Isn't this from 2006? If yes, this is even outdated for its time!

[Grey]

Despite the doubts, we really need the Monster to get a proper definitive description and the actual arguments of Frey to support it to be a juvenile and the bite mark to come from such a large tooth.

But that's the first time we see a proper look at the bite mark, it's truly massive indeed. 3 T. rex teeth fitting it ? If a giant tooth really did this, the predator behind this would be almost unimaginable.

The size estimate of the monster is outdated (I think the doc dates back 2007) but they still consider the crown to have been 300 mm...

[theropod]

In the most recent work Frey & Stinnesbeck refer to it as a subadult. The arguments for immaturity are likely the same ones they had from the beginning.
You recently posted a mail that outlined the situation.

Experts simply disagree (which isn’t a rare thing) about whether or not the osteological condition means the animal wasn’t adult, but perhaps that’s a sematic problem.
Given that we assume (sexual) maturity had already ocurred in the Aramberri individual, and that osteological maturity was never reached, does this also mean the animal kept growing at a somewhat steady pace? In that case, the question breaks down to either mere terminology (adult/immature/subadult) or establishing criteria for sexual maturity.

However what remains to be discussed is whether or not the assumption that pliosaurs retained osteological immaturity throughout their lifetime is really the most parsimonious (having recently learned that it’s not at all unprecedented to have vast biases towards immature specimens in the fossil record), whether there is evidence from other lines of reasoning, and whether it really refers to all pliosaurs.

About that bite mark, yes, it’s good to at least have a picture, but it’s not very telling without context, detailed anatomical descriptions and measurements. The documentary said 3 Tyrannosaur teeth. I’m fairly sure that when saying "tyrannosaur tooth" what Frey has in mind is T. rex, but of course we can’t be certain of that. Given that he is, that’s still a very ambiguous phrasing to indicate size (T. rex is among the most heterodont theropods in terms of tooth size…), nothing very helpful.
Although, of course if he’s referring to a lateral tooth from a big T. rex, that’d be very impressive.

However, what we really need is reasoning why the tooth diameter must correspond closely to the diameter of the toothmark. That simply seems like a premature conclusion. After all the forces involved would not just certainly suffice to break bone and enlarge the bite wound, but depending on the mechanics of the substrate it might be quite unlikely for a tooth to puncture clean through the sheets of bone without breaking off additional material as it enters. That would of course need some testing to verify it.

Then, I’m pretty sure Frey is guessing when he asserts the adult would be above 20m, although I think I’ve seen him or Stinnesbeck repeat that statement in more recent interviews. And let’s not forget that that’s just documentaries–you can’t even count on them not having quote-mined those statements.

@creature: Yup, it’ſ from 2006.
www.programme-tv.net/programme/culture-infos/101432-les-detectives-de-la-prehistoire/

[Grey]

But simply, just to puncture the pterygoid bone in a large pliosaur skull, do we need such a large tooth ?

But if a pliosaur had such monstrous teeth, wouldn't be strange that we don't find one fragment at all ?

Regarding the maturity, it appears that in the catalogue I had posted earlier on this thread, they report as well small matures and large juveniles pliosaurs from the formation. Benson said that it's still possible that many of the pliosaurs we have represent immature specimens...whereas others are described as adults.


Certainly Frey is guessing about his 20 m plus figure as he did not published it, reasonnably.

I really want to explore all the possibilities and alleged hints about 20 m pliosaurs....