Early paleontologists excivating in Spec's eastern Eurasiawere quite surprised to discover
the scattered remains of what appeared to be a group of tiny, ant-eating therizinosaurs,
with elongated tubular snouts and large digging claws. These fossils were dubbed
"microsegnosaurids" and were present in the literature for years before the more detailed
examination of the fossils proved that these bizzare therizinosaurs were too bizarre to be real.
Recent studies of "microsegnosaurus", the first-discovered and most complete "microsegnosaurid"
discovered proved that what was thought to be a single organism was, in fact, a chimera.
The "ant-eating therizinosaur" was actually an amalgum of two unrelated organisms, a small
therizinosaur possibly related to today's Seculasauridae
and an alvarezsaur, the last known from the Eurasian
continent. The three other species of "microsegnosaurid" (all of which based upon scattered elements)
proved to be either therizinosaur of alvarezsaur material, lumped together with
"microsegnosaurus" because of similarities with one part or another of its patch-work skeleton.
Ozpec's Riversleigh deposits (in northeastern Queensland) have produced the remains of a wide variety
of fossil euclasaurs. The 5-million-year-old Wabulasaurus is one the largest and most
striking of these specimens. This 2-tonne animal appears to have been an early offshoot of the line leading to the living hexacorns.
While generally similar to its modern-day relative, Wabulasaurus differed in the
configuration of horns, its narrow beak, and the presence of large ceratopsian-like jugal processes.
The postcranial skeleton is imperfectly known but appears to have been more gracile than
the modern hexacorn.
The Miocene Teratodon is an early rhynchoraptoran megapredator. It isn't exacly clear
why this animal became extinct, but competition from the more advanced rynchoraptorans,
and the fact that Teratodon seems not to have been much of a runner may have played
a part in it's demise. Several Teratodon
skeletons have been found, including a mummified specimen show a row of
sturmtiger-like spines on this animal's back run down to the base of the
tail, which has gained Teratodon the nickname "sabertooth sturmtiger".
Both on HE and Spec the continent of Australia is known to host archaic, surprising and just plain weird forms of life.
But to uncover some of the most perplexing creatures, you have to dig deep, as a group of specpaleontologists discovered.
While hoping to uncover the ancestor
of the rhynchoraptorans, they uncovered a startling specimen that didn't seem to make sense at all: a partial skull
with fragmentary postrcania that looked like it could have belonged to a strange pachycephalosaur with a crown of
spikes and two prominent fangs. The animal was named Mirificranium coronatus, meaning confusing
crowned skull.
Such a find was hard swallow for several reasons. First of all, there were no known pachycephalosaur remains found
in Australia prior to this, and secondly the age seemed too far removed from the last known Specworld pachycephalosaurs.
Mirificranium could be dated to the Ogliocene with reasonable accuracy, while the last of the pachycephalosaurs were
supposed to have become extinct early Eocene.
The tale got another twist when another, more complete skull was found from early Miocene deposits. This animal,
Stegocephalosaurus baiamei (meaning creator god Baiame's roofheaded reptile) had a less flamboyant skull
covered by a flat bony pad. Though there were enough similarities in the skull morphology to classify the animal as
a marginocephalian, it didn't seem to belong to a pachycephalosaur after all. Instead it had a lot in common with the
most basal ceratopsians!
An ulna is known from HE Australia that has been tentatively assigned to a neoceratopsian (possibly Leptoceratops),
which has lead to some speculation that neoceratopsians may be of Gondwanan origin. Mirificranium coronatus was
however the first ceratopsian to show up in the Australian fossil record, so if there is any connection between it
and the Early Cretaceous ulna, there remains a question about where the Australian ceratopians were hiding all this
time. The Mirificranium postcrania also hints that the body of the animal was probably not that of the typical
neoceratopsian, but rather like that of the more basal ceratopians. If a recently discovered partial postcrania from
Early Miocene turns out to belong to Stegocephalosaurus, then the stegocephalosaurs were most likely at least
habitual bipeds.
There is still much more we don't know about stegocephalosaurs. We can only guess that they used their bony heads in
intraspecific combat as pachycephalosaurs may have done in their time, but the purpose of the fangs is unclear.
Another unanswered question is their fate. While they seem so rare in the fossil record that it is too early to make
assumptions about when exactly they disappeared, they did not make it to the holocene. Their extinction is indeed a
great shame, as from live stegocephalosaurs we might have learned a great deal about the evolution of
marginocephalians both in our world as in spec.
A fanciful restoration of Mirificranium, skull based largely on Stegocephalosaurus material.
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Tricerolophus chooi is the first ungulaped hadrosaur known from Europe, dating
back to middle Miocene. It may well be the common ancestor, or at least close relative, of
many later 