The Dilophosaurus redescription by Marsh and Rowe is now freely available

The new monster redescription of Dilophosaurus by Adam Marsh and Tim Rowe came out in the Journal of Paleontology last week. I’m blogging about it now because the OA link just went live yesterday. So you can get this huge, important paper for free, at this link.

There’s a lot of stuff to love here: beautiful, clear photos of every element from every specimen from multiple angles, interesting anatomical and phylogenetic findings, and of particular interest on this blog, some very cool documentation of serial variation in pneumatic features. Here in Figure 62 we see serial changes in the posterior centrodiapophyseal laminae, which in some of the vertebrae are split around an intermediate fossa, or have accessory laminae.

One thing that I’ve thought a lot about, but written not so much about (yet), is pneumatic features on the ventral surfaces of vertebrae and how they change along the column. So I was excited to see Figure 64, which shows how fossae change serially on both the lateral and the ventral surfaces of the presacral centra. As far as I know, no-one has ever done something like this for a sauropod (please correct me in the comments if I’ve forgotten any examples), but it could be done and the results would be interesting, particularly for taxa like Haplocanthosaurus or Dicraeosaurus that have both lateral and ventral fossae and keels in at least some of the vertebrae.

Here’s Figure 66, a beautiful new skull reconstruction and life restoration, both by Brian Engh. There’s a lot of Engh/Dilophosaurus stuff going on right now, including a new video for the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site museum (short version here, longer version available at the museum, and I think on Brian’s Patreon page), and, uh, another thing that will be revealed in the not-too-distant future.

I hope everyone is well and safe. When I first realized we were going into quarantine back in March, I had big plans for doing various series of posts here, but almost immediately the demand of getting med school anatomy online ate up all my time and creative energy. Just barely getting back on my feet now. I know Mike has been busier than normal, too. So please be patient with us, and we’ll try to remember to feed the blog now and then.

Reference

Marsh, Adam D., and Rowe, Timothy B. 2020. A comprehensive anatomical and phylogenetic evaluation of Dilophosaurus wetherilli (Dinosauria, Theropoda) with descriptions of new specimens from the Kayenta Formation of northern Arizona. Journal of Paleontology Volume 94, Supplement S78: 1-103. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/jpa.2020.14