About that Saurophaganax abstract

The Rebor model of Saurophaganax “Notorious BIG Jungle Variant”, photo from the Big Bad Toy Store.

The SVP 2024 abstract book dropped earlier this week. You can download it here.

I’m not on Twitter, but friends inform me that there’s a lot of discussion going on about the Danison et al. abstract on which I’m an author (pp. 164-165 in the abstract book, or I excerpted it as a separate file at this link).

Left: unpainted cast of the thumb claw of the giant Oklahoma allosaurid (referred to Saurophaganax, as of this writing and for at least a little while longer). Right: a commercially available cast of a big Allosaurus thumb claw (dunno which one, I bought this in the Dinosaur National Monument gift shop a few years ago, maybe some CLDQ specimen?). Old school wooden ruler for scale.

I’m not going to give any more technical information right now than you can read in the abstract. But if you want more, I have two pieces of good news. First, if you’re going to SVP you can catch Andy Danison’s talk on Friday morning in the Theropoda 1 session.

Second, and of more global reach, we — the same author team from the abstract — have a long, lavishly illustrated paper in revision at an open access journal. The paper goes into far more detail, and with all the evidence we could bring to bear, on the identity of the type and referred material of Saurophaganax. And it will be freely available to the world once it’s published.

This tweet is flattering (misspelled name notwithstanding). It hits on something important, though: all of us on the author slate knew this was a big swing, and that it would be heavily scrutinized by both professional paleontologists and folks with an avocational interest, and we wouldn’t have put our names to it if we weren’t pretty darned sure we were right. That doesn’t mean our hypothesis is any more correct! Science runs on evidence, not reputations (or at least it should). But we are all putting our reputations on the line here to some extent, which at least tells you what we think of the evidence. So, yeah, as the abstract says, in our estimation the axial elements used to diagnose Saurophaganax, including the holotype, belong to one or more sauropods. (If you disagree, that’s cool. I’m not going to engage in any skirmishes right now when our battleship will be in range shortly.)

That still leaves a big pile of material from a really big allosaurid. Obviously any taxonomic acts coming out of this project will be in the paper, and not in the talk or the abstract. With any luck, we won’t have long to wait.

And, like Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.

Atterholt and Wedel (2022: fig. 3) ” data-medium-file=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/atterholt-and-wedel-2022-figure-3.jpg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/atterholt-and-wedel-2022-figure-3.jpg?w=480″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” class=”size-large wp-image-19899″ src=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/atterholt-and-wedel-2022-figure-3.jpg?w=480″ alt=”" width=”480″ height=”256″ />

Paramedullary diverticula in ostriches. If you like this sort of thing…hold onto your butts! Atterholt and Wedel (2022: fig. 3).

Since I don’t know if I’ll get around to posting again before SVP, I should shout out a couple more presentations. One is the Atterholt et al. talk on paramedullary diverticula in extinct ornithodirans, including pterosaurs, non-avian dinosaurs, and fossil birds — that’s the other one on which I’m an author. Abstract on page 85 of the abstract book, and Jessie’s talk will be on Friday afternoon. Another is the Hart et al. poster on a vertebra of the tomistomine croc Thecachampsa. Abstract on page 243, poster will be Saturday afternoon. I’m not an author on this one, not involved in the research, but if you read the abstract in light of recent activity here, you’ll know why I’m stoked about it!

References

• Atterholt, J., Wedel, M., Benito, J., and Field, D.J. 2024. Evidence of paramedullary diverticula in extinct ornithodirans. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 84th Annual Meeting Program, p. 85.
• Danison, A., Woodward, H.N., Barta, D.E., Wedel, M., Lee, A.H., Flora, H., and Snively, E. 2024. Osteohistology, probable chimerism, and taxonomic revision of Saurophaganax maximus. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 84th Annual Meeting Program, pp. 164-165.
• Hart, W.J., Hill, R.V., and Bennington, J.B. 2024. A caudal vertebra from Thecachampsa sp. (Crocodylia: Tomistominae) with comments on systematics. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 84th Annual Meeting Program, p. 243.