We are now at the end of a very productive, and very busy and tiring, first week in the Moscow collections. We’ve spent a lot of time with material of several key taxa (Garjainia, Sarmatosuchus, Dorosuchus, Eorasaurus, Archosaurus), collected a lot of data, and set-up some interesting projects with our collaborators Dave Gower and Andrey Sennikov. Dave has now returned to the Natural History Museum in London, but we (Martin, Roland and I) are staying on for another week, and aiming to see as much additional material as possible. Today we took a well-earned break, and Andrey and his wife took us on a very enjoyable excursion to the Kremlin, Red Square, and St Basil’s Cathedral. We're enjoying some time off, but also looking forward to getting back into the collections come Monday. 

- Richard

 

Left: Dave Gower, Roland, Richard, Andrey Sennikov, and Martin outside the Paleontological Institute. Right: Roland, Martin and Richard in front of St Basil's Cathedral on Red Square. 

We (Richard, Roland and Martin) are currently visiting the Paleontological Institute (PIN) in Moscow. We’re visiting together with Dave Gower, and are being hosting by and working together with Andrey Sennikov, whom it has been a pleasure to meet and discuss archosauromorph anatomy and taxonomy with. We’re here working on the fantastic collections of Permian–Triassic archosauromorphs, which include numerous key species for understanding the Triassic archosaur and archosauromorph radiations, such as Archosaurus, Garjainia, Dorosuchus, Sarmatosuchus, Chalishevia and many others. The amount of material here, much of it excellently preserved, is a bit overwhelming, but we're working frantically (11 hours in the collection today plus two hours commuting back and to the PIN...) to see as much of it as possible over the next couple of weeks. 

- Richard

Left: Richard (left), Roland (middle) and Martin (right), studying Garjainia and Dorosuchus material. Right: outside the entrance to PIN, with dinosaur-themed gates. 

Shockingly, we haven’t updated the news section of the website properly since June last year, and a LOT has happened in the meantime. We’re now in the process of revamping and updating the entire website, and it’s definitely time for an update on what we’ve been doing.

In June–August Martin and Roland attended the five-week training Intensive Workshop in Analytical Methods of the Paleobiology Database in Sydney, Australia, where they gained skills in a range of quantitative approaches to the study of the fossil record. Subsequently, they visited fossil collections in Brisbane, Hobart (Tasmania), Adelaide, and Melbourne, examining Triassic “proterosuchians” and a range of other Mesozoic vertebrates.

In July, Richard spent 10 days doing fieldwork together with Steve Brusatte, Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki, Piotr Szrek and (in Lithuania) Jonas Satkunas in the Permian and Triassic of the Holy Cross Mountains in Poland and the Triassic of Lithuania.

August saw Richard visiting Lourinha in Portugal to work with Steve Brusatte and Octavio Mateus on Triassic vertebrate fossils collected in the Algarve in previous years. Martin visited the University of Zurich in Switzerland to work with Torsten Scheyer on histology of a new Upper Permian archosauromorph species from Tanzania.

In September Richard attended the SVPCA conference in Oxford in England and presented a talk on the Tanzanian Middle Triassic archosaur Parringtonia. This work has subsequently been published as a joint-authored paper with Sterling Nesbitt. 

Come October, come the Oktoberfest… After we’d recovered from the festivities we hosted David Gower for several days for collaborative research on a new erythrosuchid species from South Africa. Later that month we flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Richard presented work on phytosaurs from Bavaria, Roland on early archosauromorph body size evolution, and Martin on early theropod dinosaur phylogeny and evolution. Following the meeting, Martin and Roland visited major fossil collections in Washington, Harvard, New York, and Chicago, but both unfortunately got caught up in and in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Roland, Martin and Richard at the last night of SVP.

In December Roland and Richard attended the Annual Meeting of the Palaeontological Association at University College Dublin, Ireland. Roland presented a poster on early archosauromorph body size evolution, while Richard talked about a new early ornithischian dinosaur from the earliest Jurassic of Venezuela. Around the same time, Martin attended the 1st Annual Meeting of Students of Paleontology held at the University of La Plata, Argentina. He gave a talk on the new species of archosauromorph from the Permian of Tanzania and its implications for the early evolutionary history of Archosauromorpha. The manuscript describing this interesting new species is close to submission. Martin also visited fossil collections in Montevideo to examine new archosauromorph material from the Permian–Triassic of Uruguay. 

Also in December Richard joined the Executive Committee of the Paleobiology Database, and in January was fortunate enough to fly to Berkeley to participate in a strategic planning meeting discussing the future of the Database. January was a busy generally month for the group: Roland visited the Natural History Museum in London to carry out CT-scanning of Euparkeria specimens, and we hosted Roger Benson in Munich for collaborative work on body size evolution in Mesozoic vertebrates. As part of this visit Richard and Roger visited collections in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe.

Finally, in February Richard visited Vienna for one week to work on a new phytosaur species together with Eric Buffetaut. He also made a flying visit to Berlin to CT scan a new species of basal rhynchosaur.

Phew! That's a very brief overview of activities of the last eight months - in forthcoming updates we'll talk about our recent papers, including two new special volumes of papers that we are involved in, as well as our forthcoming trip to Russia and other developments. 

- Richard

We have published several new papers in the last few weeks, and I haven't got around to updating the news section. Martin published two papers on dinosaurs: one focusing on the earliest dinosaur assemblages, and the other focusing on a new Cretaceous theropod dinosaur from Patagonia. I have been involved in three new papers: one documenting the results of our recent fieldwork in Lithuania, one redescribing the enigmatic early archosaur Parringtonia and implications for the archosaur radiation, and one focusing on the diversity of pterosaurs (flying reptiles) across the Mesozoic. There's lots more I could say about these, but no time right now...

- Richard 

Brusatte, S. L., BUTLER, R. J., Niedźwiedzki, G., Sulej, T., Bronowicz, R. & Satkunas, J. (published online). First record of Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrates from Lithuania: phytosaurs (Diapsida: Archosauriformes) of probable Late Triassic age, with a review of phytosaur biogeography. Geological Magazine.

BUTLER, R. J., Benson, R. B. J. & Barrett, P. M. (published online). Pterosaur diversity: untangling the influences of sampling biases, Lagerstätten, and genuine biodiversity signals. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

EZCURRA, M. D. 2012. Comments on the taxonomic diversity and paleobiogeography of the earliest known dinosaur assemblages (late Carnian-earliest Norian). Historia Natural, tercera serie 2: 49–71.

Nesbitt, S. J. & BUTLER, R. J. (published online). Redescription of the archosaur Parringtonia gracilis from the Middle Triassic Manda Beds of Tanzania, and the antiquity of Erpetosuchidae. Geological Magazine.

Novas, F. E., EZCURRA, M. D., Agnolín, F. L., Pol, D. & Ortíz, R. 2012. New Patagonian Cretaceous theropod sheds light about the early radiation of Coelurosauria. Revista del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, nueva serie, 14: 57–81.

I am second author on a new paper published in Nature Communications on dinosaur morphological diversity in the lead-up to the end-Cretaceous extinction (in which all non-avian dinosaurs went extinct). The dinosaur extinction has generated a vast body of research and popular attention, but one of the most controversial questions has long been whether or not dinosaurs were already in a long-term decline of some sort before the asteroid impact and massive volcanism that mark the terminal Cretaceous boundary. Most previous work addressing this question has attempted to look at changes in species diversity through time, something that is very difficult to do accurately in the deep time fossil record. Together with lead author Steve Brusatte (American Museum of Natural History, New York), Albert Prieto-Márquez (BSPG, Munich) and Mark Norell (AMNH), we looked at the problem using a different approach: morphological diversity or disparity, the range of differences in skeletal anatomy shown by groups of dinosaurs through time. We found that some groups of large-bodied plant eaters were becoming less morphologically diverse, but that this was only true of the North American record, and not of the Asian dinosaur record. Other groups of dinosaurs do not appear to have been undergoing a decline in morphological diversity. Thus, changes in dinosaur biodiversity prior to their extinction appear to have been highly complex and differed according to clade and geographic region.

Disparity trends in four dinosaur groups during the final 12 million years of the Cretaceous (North American species only). Time (from 77-65 million years ago) is shown on the x axis. The y axis shows the disparity metric: sum of variances derived from anatomical character databases. The error bars indicate whether comparisons between time intervals are significant or not (overlap of error bars means non-significance, no overlap means significance). Overall, the large-bodied bulk-feeding ceratopsids and hadrosauroids underwent a marked long-term decline, but the carnivorous coelurosaurs and small herbivorous pachycephalosaurs were stable. (AMNH/S. Brusatte)

The paper is available at the Nature Communications website or by sending me an email. There is coverage on the AMNH and LMU websites. The story has been covered by various blogs and news sources, including The New York Times, Live Science, Discovery News, Spiegel online, N24, the Guardian, Time, Stern and the Smithsonian Dinosaur Tracking blog.   

- Richard