This morning saw the publication of my new paper with Colin Boisvert, Brian Curtice, and Ray Wilhite: Boisvert, Colin, Curtice, Brian, Wedel, Mathew, &amp; Wilhite, Ray. 2024. Description of a new specimen of Haplocanthosaurus from the Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry.

Western University of Health Sciences

Matt Wedel

{.wp-image-22282 .size-large aria-describedby=“caption-attachment-22282” loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“22282” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2024/06/18/new-paper-out-today-on-the-dry-mesa-haplocanthosaurus/boisvert-et-al-2024-fig-2-dry-mesa-haplo-skeletal-inventory/” orig-file=“https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/boisvert-et-al-2024-fig-2-dry-mesa-haplo-skeletal-inventory.jpg” orig-size=“3568,1573” comments-opened=“1”

New paper out today on the Dry Mesa <i>Haplocanthosaurus</i>

New paper out today in PeerJ: Lei R, Tschopp E, Hendrickx C, Wedel MJ, Norell M, Hone DWE. 2023. Bite and tooth marks on sauropod dinosaurs from the Morrison Formation. PeerJ 11:e16327 http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16327 This one had a long gestation.

::: {.mceTemp}
 
:::

::: {#attachment_21361 .wp-caption .aligncenter shortcode="caption" style="width: 1034px"}
[![](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg?w=480){.wp-image-21361
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permalink="http://svpow.com/2023/11/14/new-paper-theropod-bite-marks-on-morrison-sauropod-bones/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close/"
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image-title="Bitten Apatosaurus ischium MWC 4011 distal end close"
image-description="" image-caption=""
medium-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg?w=300"
large-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg?w=1024"
width="480" height="360"
srcset="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg?w=480 480w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg?w=960 960w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg?w=150 150w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg?w=300 300w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg?w=768 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-distal-end-close.jpg)

Distal end of MWC 4011, an ischium of *Apatosaurus louisae* that got
munched on by a large theropod, probably *Allosaurus* or *Ceratosaurus*.
On display at Dinosaur Journey in Fruita, Colorado.
:::

New paper out today in PeerJ:

[Lei R, Tschopp E, Hendrickx C, Wedel MJ, Norell M, Hone DWE. 2023. Bite
and tooth marks on sauropod dinosaurs from the Morrison Formation. PeerJ
11:e16327
http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16327](https://peerj.com/articles/16327/)

This one had a long gestation. The earliest trace I can find of it in my
Gmail archive is this bit I sent Dave Hone back in February of 2015:

> Sorry to not have gotten around to sending the sauropod bite mark
> stuff. I still have the note in my phone, I'll get on it ASAP. 

I have no idea what earlier conversation that was referencing ---
wherever it happened, my end of it apparently wasn't in Gmail. I also
apparently did not follow through, because on April 26, 2018, Dave wrote
to me, "I'm vaguely trying to resurrect a survey of sauropod bite
marks," referencing that 2015 message.

At that point I did actually kick into gear and started sending him
photos and refs. Which is how, about a month later, he sent one of
kindest messages I've ever received:

> This is starting to get silly, you've already turned up more examples
> than I've managed and you've also provided papers and photos too!
> Bearing that in mind, it seems ridiculous not to formally invite you
> in on this --- are you up for continuing to supply some Morrison
> sauropod bites?

At that point I was the third on the project, with Dave and Emanuel.
Later Mark Norell, Christophe Hendrickx, and Roberto Lei would join us,
with Christophe serving as our resident theropod tooth expert, and
Roberto in particular doing a lot of the heavy lifting of turning our
findings into a paper.

::: {#attachment_21363 .wp-caption .aligncenter shortcode="caption" style="width: 1034px"}
[![](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg?w=480){.wp-image-21363
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attachment-id="21363"
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image-title="Bitten Apatosaurus ischium MWC 4011 oblique"
image-description="" image-caption=""
medium-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg?w=300"
large-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg?w=1024"
width="480" height="300"
srcset="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg?w=480 480w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg?w=960 960w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg?w=150 150w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg?w=300 300w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg?w=768 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-ischium-mwc-4011-oblique.jpg)

The rest of MWC 4011.
:::

So what's the upshot? For one, a few good-sized sauropod elements are
bitten through, showing that at least some Morrison theropods were
capable of inflicting real damage on big bones. So right off the bat we
have a survivorship problem: in a collections-based survey like the one,
we can only tally bite marks on bones that survived being bitten in good
enough shape to be collected and identified as sauropod bones. Bones
that were consumed by theropods, or shattered beyond the ability to be
preserved, recognized, or collected, are not available to us.\* In other
words, we can only tally bones in the "Goldilocks zone" of being
*directly chomped on but not too much* --- careful bites that stripped
meat from a bone without biting in are invisible, and so are bites so
violent or forceful that they destroyed the bone. This is sort of like
the osteological paradox in paleopathology (see [this
post](https://svpow.com/2022/02/19/sauro-throat-part-4-the-osteological-paradox/)),
just applied to individual bones instead of individual animals.

\*In a field-based study, it's possible to partially offset this by
collecting and analyzing *everything*, not just the identifiable bits.
Julia McHugh and colleagues did exactly that in their "nugget bucket"
study (McHugh et al. 2023), an IMHO brilliant follow-up to their papers
on theropod feeding traces (Drumheller et al. 2020) and invertebrate
feeding traces (McHugh et al. 2020) on dinosaur bones from the
Mygatt-Moore Quarry. One reason I'm so happy that Julia is at Dinosaur
Journey is that she keeps thinking of interesting stuff to do with that
collection.

I've [argued
before](https://svpow.com/2016/02/18/dinosaur-life-histories-are-plicomcated/#comment-141177)
that baby sauropods left few bones because most of them either grew up,
or --- vastly more commonly --- got processed into theropod poop. I felt
like that quip was coming back to haunt me in this project; I find it
perversely difficult to think clearly about evidence that I never get to
see!

::: {#attachment_21371 .wp-caption .aligncenter shortcode="caption" style="width: 1034px"}
[![](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg?w=480){.wp-image-21371
.size-large aria-describedby="caption-attachment-21371" loading="lazy"
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image-title="Bitten Apatosaurus pubis MWC 861" image-description=""
image-caption=""
medium-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg?w=300"
large-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg?w=1024"
width="480" height="300"
srcset="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg?w=480 480w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg?w=960 960w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg?w=150 150w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg?w=300 300w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg?w=768 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/bitten-apatosaurus-pubis-mwc-861.jpg)

MWC 861, a pubis of *Apatosaurus louisae* with an extensively bitten
distal end. Definitely from the same quarry as MWC 4011 --- the
Mygatt-Moore Quarry, in far western Colorado --- and possibly from the
same individual. Also on display at Dinosaur Journey.
:::

Interestingly, we found zero examples of healed bites on Morrison
sauropod bones. So all of the bite marks we found were either from
successful predation events, or scavenging. And in fact we didn't find
that many bitten sauropod bones, period. We found 68 Morrison sauropod
bones with bite marks, out of the 600 or so that we actively surveyed.
That's about 11%, compared to 14% in later tyrannosaur-dominated faunas
(Jacobsen 1998). But also, we found a lot of wear on the teeth of large
Morrison theropods, which suggests that they were processing tough
stuff, including bones.

We suspect that big Morrison theropods were primarily targeting juvenile
and subadult sauropods, and scavenging dead adults when they could get
them. We think that partly because younger sauropods must have been more
numerous than adults (and maybe *vastly* more numerous), and partly
because almost all predators prefer easy fights to difficult ones. As I
wrote [back
when](https://svpow.com/2016/02/27/giant-oklahoma-apatosaurus-mount-from-above/#comment-141485),

> Even assuming that max-sized individuals were around -- which may not
> always have been the case... -- the theropods would have to walk right
> past a whole boatload of smaller, easier targets to get to them,
> ignoring winnable fights and achievable calories just to roll the dice
> in the most dangerous possible encounters.

Naturally Dave has explored a lot of these ideas in his previous papers,
especially Hone and Rauhut (2010) --- this new paper is basically a
spiritual successor to that one. Dave has his own blog post up about the
new paper,
[here](https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2023/11/14/theropods-bit-sauropods-too/). 

::: {#attachment_21368 .wp-caption .aligncenter shortcode="caption" style="width: 1034px"}
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image-title="Galeamopus_scenaB_V2_Davide_Bonadonna" image-description=""
image-caption=""
medium-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/galeamopus_scenab_v2_davide_bonadonna.jpg?w=300"
large-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/galeamopus_scenab_v2_davide_bonadonna.jpg?w=1024"
width="480" height="273"
srcset="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/galeamopus_scenab_v2_davide_bonadonna.jpg?w=480 480w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/galeamopus_scenab_v2_davide_bonadonna.jpg?w=960 960w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/galeamopus_scenab_v2_davide_bonadonna.jpg?w=150 150w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/galeamopus_scenab_v2_davide_bonadonna.jpg?w=300 300w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/galeamopus_scenab_v2_davide_bonadonna.jpg?w=768 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/galeamopus_scenab_v2_davide_bonadonna.jpg)

*Allosaurus* munching on a dead *Galeamopus* while a pair of ceratosaurs
look on hungrily. Art courtesy of Davide Bonadonna
([www.davidebonadonna.it](http://www.davidebonadonna.it))
:::

Theropods primarily attacking small sauropods would explain the patterns
that we see, better than any alternative we can think of. Of course the
Morrison covers a lot of space and time, and [animals do all kinds of
weird
stuff](https://svpow.com/2011/11/28/accurate-vs-familiar-vs-usual-in-paleoart/)
if you watch them long enough, including suicidal attacks on much larger
prey. But if theropods were preferentially attacking adult sauropods,
we'd expect to see at least some healed bite marks from failed attacks,
and we'd also expect to see more bite marks, period. Somehow big
Morrison theropods were managing to put a lot of wear on their teeth
without leaving many tooth-marked sauropod bones behind, which seems
like a big mismatch. The best explanation we can think of is that the
theropods were accumulating that wear munching on juvenile sauropods
(which we thought they were doing anyway), and consuming or destroying
their bones in the process (which the theropods were well-equipped to
do).

But even if we're right, there's a ton we don't know yet. We struggled
to match any of the bite marks that we found to specific theropod taxa.
Taphonomy and collector bias are probably both big filters, especially
for bones that were bitten through or shattered before fossilization.
There are definitely important differences between quarries --- for
example, Mygatt-Moore has a ton of bitten bones, and the Carnegie Quarry
at Dinosaur National Monument has almost none, and we don't know why.

In sum, there's a lot to do, with interesting, tractable, as-yet-undone
projects surrounding this paper in a quantum fuzz like an electron
shell. Hopefully other folks will get out there and start turning those
potential projects into real ones.

::: {#attachment_21366 .wp-caption .aligncenter shortcode="caption" style="width: 1034px"}
[![](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg?w=480){.wp-image-21366
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image-title="Wedel rocks dinos" image-description="" image-caption=""
medium-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg?w=300"
large-file="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg?w=1024"
width="480" height="480"
srcset="https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg?w=480 480w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg?w=960 960w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg?w=150 150w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg?w=300 300w, https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg?w=768 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/wedel-rocks-dinos.jpg)

MWC 4011, once more with feeling. And fiberglass. Photo by Brian Engh.
:::

## References

- [Drumheller, S.K., McHugh, J.B., Kane, M., Riedel, A. and D'Amore,
  D.C. 2020. High frequencies of theropod bite marks provide evidence
  for feeding, scavenging, and possible cannibalism in a stressed Late
  Jurassic ecosystem. PLoS One 15(5)
  p.e0233115.](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0233115)
- [Hone, D.W. and Rauhut, O.W. 2010. Feeding behaviour and bone
  utilization by theropod dinosaurs. Lethaia 43(2):
  pp.232-244.](https://www.idunn.no/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1502-3931.2009.00187.x)
- Jacobsen AR. 1998. Feeding behaviour of carnivorous dinosaurs as
  determined by tooth marks on dinosaur bones. Historical Biology
  13:17--26. DOI 10.1080/08912969809386569.
- [McHugh, J.B., Drumheller, S.K., Riedel, A. and Kane, M. 2020.
  Decomposition of dinosaurian remains inferred by invertebrate traces
  on vertebrate bone reveal new insights into Late Jurassic ecology,
  decay, and climate in western Colorado. PeerJ 8,
  p.e9510.](https://peerj.com/articles/9510/)
- Mchugh, J.B., Drumheller, S.K., Kane, M., Riedel, A. and Nestler,
  J.H. 2023. Assessing paleoecological data retention among disparate
  field collection regimes: a case study at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry
  (Morrison Formation). Palaios 38(5):233-239.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[doi:10.59350/txkht-ewp95](https://doi.org/10.59350/txkht-ewp95)


New paper: theropod bite marks on Morrison sauropod bones

[]{.embed-youtube style="text-align:center; display: block;"}

Last Thursday I gave a public lecture for the [No Man's Land Historical
Society](https://nmlhs.org/) in the Oklahoma Panhandle, titled
"Oklahoma's Jurassic Giants: the Dinosaurs of Black Mesa". It's now on
YouTube, on the [No Man's Land Museum's
channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCupK_8lLJO19gaQAD6Pqj9w/videos).

There's a point I want to make here, that I also made in the talk: we
can't predict the value of natural history collections. The first
sauropod vertebrae that Rich Cifelli and Kent Sanders and I CT scanned
back in the spring of 1998 belonged to what would become
*Sauroposeidon*, but most of the ones we scanned after that were
Morrison specimens collected by J. Willis Stovall's crews from the
Oklahoma Panhandle between 1934 and 1941. Those scans formed the core of
the pneumaticity research that fleshed out the *Sauroposeidon* papers
(Wedel et al. 2000a, b), and was more fully developed in my Master's
thesis and the papers that came out of that (Wedel 2003a, b).

::: {#attachment_19963 .wp-caption .aligncenter shortcode="caption" style="width: 1034px"}
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image-title="OMNH 1094 right lateral view" image-description=""
image-caption=""
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sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/omnh-1094-right-lateral-view.jpg)

OMNH 1094, a mid-cervical vertebra of *Brontosaurus* in right lateral
view. If you've seen one of my talks or my first few papers, you've seen
this vert. I just realized that I have almost all the photos I need to
do a proper multi-view; stand by for a future post on that.
:::

So the foundation of my career was built in large part from collections
that had been made 60 years earlier, decades before CT was invented.
I'll also note here that *Xenoposeidon* --- Mike's fourth paper (Taylor
and Naish 2007), but the one which really launched his career as a
morphologist --- is based on a specimen collected in the 1890s. Natural
history collections are not only resources for making comparisons, but
also the engines of future discovery, and building and maintaining them
is one of the most significant contributions to science that we can
make.

I thank a bunch of folks at the end of the talk, but I especially want
to thank Brian Engh for the use of his art, and Anne Weil for inviting
me to collaborate on the sauropod material from the Homestead Quarry.
Looking forward to more adventures!

## References

- [Taylor, Michael P., and Darren Naish. 2007. An unusual new
  neosauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Hastings Beds Group of
  East Sussex, England. Palaeontology
  50(6):1547-1564.](http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/pubs/taylor-and-naish2007/TaylorNaish2007-xenoposeidon.pdf)
- [Wedel, M.J. 2003a. Vertebral pneumaticity, air sacs, and the
  physiology of sauropod dinosaurs. Paleobiology
  29:243-255.](https://sauroposeidon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wedel-2003-sauropod-pneumaticity.pdf)
- [Wedel, M.J. 2003b. The evolution of vertebral pneumaticity in
  sauropod dinosaurs. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
  23:344-357.](https://sauroposeidon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wedel-2003-evolution-of-pneumaticity.pdf)
- [Wedel, M.J., Cifelli, R.L., and Sanders, R.K. 2000a. *Sauroposeidon
  proteles*, a new sauropod from the Early Cretaceous of Oklahoma.
  Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
  20:109-114.](https://sauroposeidon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wedel-et-al-2000-sauroposeidon-in-jvp.pdf)
- [Wedel, M.J., Cifelli, R.L., and Sanders, R.K. 2000b. Osteology,
  paleobiology, and relationships of the sauropod dinosaur
  *Sauroposeidon*. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica
  45:343-388.](https://sauroposeidon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wedel-et-al-2000-sauroposeidon-in-acta.pdf)


vrpa_20_108.109_114.tp

Last Thursday I gave a public lecture for the No Man’s Land Historical Society in the Oklahoma Panhandle, titled “Oklahoma’s Jurassic Giants: the Dinosaurs of Black Mesa”. It’s now on YouTube, on the No Man’s Land Museum’s channel. There’s a point I want to make here, that I also made in the talk: we can’t predict the value of natural history collections.

My talk on Oklahoma Morrison dinosaurs is now on YouTube

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Over the past few years I've dropped hints here and there about the work
I've been doing in the Morrison Formation of Utah with Brian Engh, John
Foster, ReBecca Hunt-Foster, Jessie Atterholt, and Thuat Tran. I've been
quiet about that (with [one notable
exception](https://svpow.com/2018/05/17/in-quest-of-monsters-last-weeks-utah-adventure/)),
but we're finally ready to show you all what we've been up to. Brian has
put together a short series of documentaries to take you into the
Morrison and show you what we've found and why we're excited about it.
Your journey begins here:

[]{.embed-youtube style="text-align:center; display: block;"}

We'll have a lot more to say about this, building up to a big reveal
this coming Thursday, so stay tuned!


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Welcome…to <i>Jurassic Reimagined</i>

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sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/tut-working-on-a-fossil.jpg)

Since 2015 I've been working in the Morrison Formation of Utah with
[Brian Engh](http://dontmesswithdinosaurs.com/), John Foster, ReBecca
Hunt-Foster, and more recently [Jessie
Atterholt](https://www.instagram.com/theladyanatomica/?hl=en) and Thuat
Tran. Other than a couple of very short, detail-free mentions ([like
this
one](https://svpow.com/2018/07/28/another-utah-trip-and-aquilops-on-display-at-dinosaur-journey/)),
I've been pretty quiet about most of our work out there---we all
have---but it's time to start showing everyone what we've been up to.
Check out this trailer for a pair of documentaries that Brian has been
working on. Coming soon!

[]{.embed-youtube style="text-align:center; display: block;"}


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Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

New paper out today on the Dry Mesa Haplocanthosaurus

New paper: theropod bite marks on Morrison sauropod bones

My talk on Oklahoma Morrison dinosaurs is now on YouTube

Welcome…to Jurassic Reimagined

Something big is coming