"New Giant Dinosaur Was the Apex Predator Before T-Rex" Topic

"A newly discovered 4-ton predatory dinosaur dominated Earth long before T-Rex appeared on the scene.

Calculations suggest that Siats meekerorum was at least 30 feet long, making it the third largest predator ever found in North America. But that's a conservative estimate because the bones found were from a juvenile, and a full-grown Siats (pronounced see-atch) may have been even bigger, says paleontologist Lindsay Zanno of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, who discovered the species.

"This thing is gigantic," Zanno said. "There's simply nothing even close in this ecosystem to the size of this animal that could've been interpreted as an apex predator."

The giant dinosaur was discovered in 2008 when Zanno and her colleague Peter Makovicky of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History saw fragments of black fossilized bones poking out of the hills in Utah's Cedar Mountain Formation. They named the dinosaur Siats meekerorum after man-eating monsters in Ute tribal legend and the Meeker family, which has supported early career paleontologists at the museum. The results of the study were published today in Nature Communications…"

Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Interesting. I thought it was this…..

DM

Darnit Manser! You need to give a guy a warning before throwing something scary like that here. About gave me a heart attack!

Scary!. (smile).

Amicalement
Armand

So you need funding and you need permission to poke around tribal lands. Thus you name the next bunch of bones ya find after these folks that "helped – made themselves a tax break" add a dash of american aboriginal doh-dah ( even if the beast never ever saw a human) and hey presto. This dude will never break big time ( well Thunder lizard just sounds impressive as does his title. Tyrannosaurus Rex) but I spose these Paleontologists have to pay bills as well. Sad, nice looking proto rex though.

Manser, it was found in Utah, not California.

Zargon, I don't see how anything you point to is "sad."

I think Tyrannosaurus Rex means 'Tyrant King.' 'Thunder Lizard' was Brontosaurus, but sadly that name ended up in the trash and it's now Apatasaurus (and has a new head too), but I do get your point that the name is rather unmemorable.

Siats (pronounced see-atch) will end up being pronounced 'see-ats' by millions of school children.

I do so dislike it when words aren't pronounced the way they are spelt.
Trying to teach my young kids to read it annoys me so much. But what annoys me more are people who expect you to know the correct pronounciation when it looks nothing like the original word.

Roger, unless you're a paleontologist or a kid who eats, sleeps, and breathes dinosaurs (guilty, although I'm no longer a kid!) you can use Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus interchangeably.

"Apatosaurus" won out over "Brontosaurus" because Othniel Marsh discovered and named the beast two years before Cope did. Interestingly, Marsh and Cope thought they had discovered two different dinosaurs, but Marsh's Apatosaurus was a juvenile Brontosaurus.

And Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus didn't get a *new* head, it got the *right* head. Edward Cope accidentally gave his Brontosaurus body a Camarasaurus head.

I do so dislike it when words aren't pronounced the way they are spelt.

I know, right? On Wednesday, February Eighth, I bought some dough to make zucchini bread, but the thought of all that exhausting kneading quashed my scheme.

I meen, I noe, ryt? On Wensday, Febyooerry Ayth, I bot sum doe too mayk zookeenee bred, but thee thot uv oll that exosting needing kwashed mie skeem.

Personally, I *like* learning new words, and Siats is one I'd never encountered before.

>>>I meen, I noe, ryt?

Proper Philersey (pronounced flerzee) would be:

Yeah, ah neuow roight? I kneouw I seen it suumplace. Naut fer nuthin I deuont use Mayeou on nuthin neouhal. Ferget it. You cumin alt tanoit?

DM

>>>Manser, it was found in Utah, not California.

They're ubiquitous.

DM

They're ubiquitous.

Who cares about their religion, they're dinosaurs.

Who cares about their religion, they're dinosaurs.

The missionarysaurus cared much about what those heathen dinosaurs in the new world worshiped.

Eddie Izzard explains about religion and dinosaurs (among other things): YouTube link

Lots of swearing, not safe for work. Contains minor transvestism and blasphemy.