Wednesday, April 6, 2011

April fools! A bit late but who's counting?

UPDATE!
This is a late-arriving April Fools joke. Got me!

Archaeocursor. The bahariasaurid (yes, new family) with feathers. Commence head explosions.

Paul C. Sereno, Oliver Rauhut, Xing Xu, Wang, Y., Zhu, T., Gao, X. & Gong, D. (2011). "Basalmost theropod with filamentous integumentary structures and new clade of basal 'carnivorous' dinosaurs". Kirtlandia 37: 82-113.

I haven't seen any discussion of this, save that it's been added to Wikipedia. Apparently from the Tiaojishan formation, the same beds that have yielded Anchiornis and Tianyulong. Also, note the scare quotes around "carnivorous." Could their proximity to Limusaurus mean bahariasaurids are partially or wholly herbivorous? Just idle speculation for now. More if/when I get my hands on this paper.

7 comments:

  1. Was it perhaps added to wikipedia in april 1st?
    That is so mindblowing that I can't help but to be skeptical, especially when it's apparently published in Kirtlandia instead of Science or Nature.

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  2. "Archaeocursor" isn't real. It's an April Fool's Joke that started on a Polish forum dedicated to dinosaurs, here (in Polish):

    http://www.forum.dinozaury.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3927

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  3. It appears to have been added April 6th. So if it's a joke, this editor is a real piece of work :P

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  4. This is exactly why I don't use names of real scientists in my April Fools posts.

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  5. Argh, what a let down. Good thing I saw the update before the original post.

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  6. If Sereno was really involved I think it'd be all over the science media by now. And yeah, published in Kirtlandia - wtf?

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  7. i almost believed it, till i read it was an herbivore.
    but there was really a new bahariasaurid found, in brazil in the same formation as oxalaia. they have found a chin, fingers and other parts i dont remember now, but it also proves Bahariasaurs were carnivores.

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