Hello blog friends! Today I’d like to highlight an important funding campaign that needs your help: Save Mongolia’s Dinosaurs! This campaign is organized by Bolortsetseg Minjin and Thea Boodhoo through the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs; you may have encountered Bolor’s name during the episode involving the Tarbosaurus auction in New York a … Continue reading Save Mongolia’s Dinosaurs!
Most of my publications (and supplementary files) can be downloaded from my ResearchGate profile. Books: Arbour VM, Evans DC. 2019. Zuul: Life of an Armoured Dinosaur. Royal Ontario Museum Press. Persons WS, Currie PJ, Arbour VM, Vavrek M, Koppelhus EB, Edwards J. 2019. Dinosaurs 101: What everyone should know about dinosaur anatomy, ecology, evolution, and … Continue reading Publications
Sustut Basin, British Columbia As an undergrad at Dalhousie University way back in 2005-2006, I described what turned out to be the first dinosaur remains that had ever been collected from British Columbia. In August 2017, I got to fulfill a longstanding goal of mine to go look for more! With generous support from National … Continue reading Field Expeditions
The Evolution of Weaponry Weaponry is a common feature of modern animals (think of deer, antelopes, rhinos – the list goes on!), but most modern animals wield their weapons on their heads. However, some extinct animals had specialized tail weaponry, either in the form of tail clubs or flails/whips. Over the course of my career … Continue reading Research
Elsewhere in the Mesozoic, parts of the field crew were working away at Cretaceous dinosaurs in the Mussentuchit Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation. In may we worked at Crystal Geyser Quarry, which is in the Yellow Cat Member of the same formation and is about 125 million years old, in a part of the … Continue reading Fortunate Son
Sydney Mohr is a friend and colleague of mine whose art you will have seen in the news lately, if you are inclined to read about ankylosaurs. She’s done amazing reconstructions of two ankylosaurs for me in the last year – Ziapelta and Gobisaurus – and so I asked her to take a few minutes … Continue reading Burgers and Hot Dogs
Ankylosaur tail clubs are odd structures, odder than they are usually given credit for. They represent substantial modifications to two different skeletal systems – the endoskeleton, in the form of the caudal vertebrae, and the dermal skeleton, in the form of the caudal osteoderms. The centra of the caudal vertebrae lengthen but stay robust, and … Continue reading How the ankylosaur got its tail club
So with all of those posts about ankylosaur taxonomy over the last few weeks, what have we learned about the evolution of this group? Over the course of my PhD research, I was able to identify a bunch of new characters that seemed useful for understanding ankylosaur phylogenetic relationships, including characters related to the cranial … Continue reading Know Your Ankylosaurs: Everybody’s in this Together Edition
I’m back in civilization, so let’s get back to ankylosaurs! Ready Set Go!
I’ve covered many of the North American ankylosaurs in my previous papers and blog posts. In 2013, I argued that what we thought was Euoplocephalus was more likely 4 taxa – Anodontosaurus, Dyoplosaurus, Scolosaurus, and Euoplocephalus proper. Then in 2014 we described a newankylosaurid, Ziapelta, from New Mexico. There are a few other taxa that … Continue reading Know Your Ankylosaurs: North American Odds and Ends Edition
pseudoplocephalus 