Dino Duels!
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This episode is brought to you by Colorado Northwestern Community College. Join them for two weeks digging up dinosaur bones from the Jurassic period in northwest Colorado this summer. For details, go to cncc.edu slash dino dig.

Hello and welcome to I Know Dino. Keep up with the latest dinosaur discoveries and science with us. I'm Garrett. And I'm Sabrina. And today in our 529th episode, we're doing a dino duels competition. Basically, it is similar to a certain tournament, which shall remain nameless because it is trademarked with very litigious names.

enthusiastic lawyers involved that happens in the spring. Happens in the third month of the year. Yes. It involves brackets. So basically it's going to be a fun competition where you can predict which dinosaurs will win in a head-to-head matchup and then we'll have voting going on on our Patreon. We're just using Patreon so we can make sure people aren't voting a whole bunch for the one that they want to win. And then we'll

If you have the best bracket, you'll be able to win a prize. Yes, and you can be a paid or free member of our Patreon to participate. No purchase necessary.

This is also the last probably episode that we're pre-recording before our parental leave. So next time you hear from us, we might be really tired. We'll also probably have a lot of news to catch up on. Yes, that is very true. But we'll be continuing with this bracket of dinosaur duels because...

If you've ever seen how any of these single elimination tournaments go, you know, everybody goes through the first round and then there's got to be a second round, third round, fourth round in this case. So there'll be 16 dinosaurs to start out with. A sweet 16, you could say, because that's the one that isn't trademarked. Yes. We also have our dinosaur of the day, Cumnoria, which is another dinosaur that was considered to be Camptosaurus for a while.

And a fun fact that's related to this dino duels competition. To sports. To sports. To basketball. John Wooden is the most successful coach in the history of college basketball, and he guided UCLA to 10 national championships, but one of his streaks was broken by a dinosaur. Da-da-da. When an eagle swooped in and stole the...

basketball right out of his hand. You're not on the right track. Okay. We'll get to it. But before we get into all of that, we have some patrons to thank, and they are Micah Marcos Music, Yedit, DC Cassandra, Big Sheep, Daniel McGill, Xenorama, Dino Dork, Darren and Miss Olive, Wayne, and Joaquin. Yep.

Yes, thank you so much for being part of our Dino It All community. And we especially appreciate everybody who's been part of our community while we've been taking some time off. Yes. And like Sabrina said earlier, if you want to vote on these dino duels, then you should join our Patreon. You can join as a free member to vote. It's really just to make sure it's the easiest way we could come up with to do voting, which is well validated into not a lot of people submitting multiple responses.

And you can do all that at patreon.com slash inodino. Of course, if you join one of the paid tiers, you get a lot of perks too. So happy third month of the year.

It is March. Yes, March. Like you said, Garrett, we're celebrating with a friendly dino duels competition. And again, if that reminds you of a certain annual basketball related event in the US, then so be it. We're starting with 16 of the sweetest dinosaurs. The sweet 16. Yes. And they represent each of the three periods of the Mesozoic. Specifically, we've broken them down into late Triassic slash early Jurassic,

Middle and Late Jurassic, Early Cretaceous, and Late Cretaceous. They happen to be also the most popular dinosaurs on our YouTube channel, so you'll probably recognize them all. Some are more famous than others, and we'll announce all of them in just a moment, but first we're going to go over how all this works. Yes.

Yeah, it was fun putting together the top 16. We looked through a few different ways to pick the top 16 dinosaurs. One thought I had was we could just do the first 16 episodes that we recorded because those are 16 of the most popular dinosaurs. But then we came up with what about just doing the 16 most popular dinosaurs in our catalog.

It's a little confusing if you use our regular episodes because that's mixed in with interviews and news and all sorts of stuff. So it's hard to tell which dinosaur of the days were the most popular. But on our YouTube channel, we separate them out individually. So I went through and pulled out the top 16 from there. And it is really weird. Well.

Like I said, some are very recognizable. A couple of them, but most of them are not the ones I would have picked. Because I think what happens is we just have good SEO for some of these dinosaurs that aren't in a lot of other YouTube videos. So if you search for this dinosaur, our thing is the top hit. And sometimes they're really weird dinosaurs. So...

Yeah, I had to look up some of them to remember which part of the Mesozoic they were in, you know, because I picked the top four from I wanted to do Triassic, Jurassic, early Cretaceous, late Cretaceous. But there are so few Triassic to choose from that I got to three and then you had to go so far down the list to get a fourth one that I ended up just pulling one from the early Jurassic.

And that's why we have the weird Triassic slash early Jurassic and then middle late Jurassic. And then there are so many from the early and late Cretaceous that those are separate. Another way to look at it is we're keeping it interesting. Yeah, and it's kind of like how tournaments go, right? There's always a couple that you really expect to be there. And then there's a lot of oddballs. And it's like, wow, look at them making the tournament. Good for them. So it's going here too. So for our dino duels competition, as we're calling it,

The bracket is now available. It's at bit.ly slash dino duels brackets, or you can get there by going to bit.ly slash dino duels rules. That's the rules page. I really like that URL. So the brackets have to be completed within six days after this publishes. That's on March 11th, 2025. And really what I should say is that the Google form needs to be completed within six days after this publishes because it's

There wasn't an easy way to get a bracket with a bunch of dinosaur names to automatically select winners. So the best way I could come up with is to do it in a Google form. But if you try to pick the winners of 15 contests with a whole bunch of options, it's very messy. So what I would recommend is making the bracket using bit.ly slash dino duels bracket. And then there's a link right in there to the Google form. And

And then you can click over to that and actually put in the ones that you decided using the bracket. It's a little bit more than I wanted. I was trying to figure out a way to do it in one step, but I think that's the cleanest and easiest because I know everybody will have access to Google Forms. We use that all the time. So I wanted to stick with that to make it accessible to everybody and not use some weird software you might not be able to get into.

So there are going to be four rounds of the dino duels. The first one is going to start with 16 dinosaurs and every one that you pick right will give you one point. So if you pick all eight of the winners correct, you will get eight points. That's going to start right after the next episode comes out. So it'll go March 12th to March 14th. That's when the voting will be live on our Patreon.

Because there isn't an easy way to decide which dinosaur would just win. There's no right answer. And really, you can vote for it on any criteria you want. You can pick it because you like it the best. You could pick it because you think it would win in a fight. You could pick it because you think it's cooler or it had more interesting teeth or the fossil discovery was from the country or state that you're in. There's no rules. Yeah.

for how you vote for the dinosaur you want to win when we have the polls on our patreon they're just going to be very short periods just a couple days each so that we have time to record who the winner is and then set up the next poll for the next week because as the tournament goes on a lot of these dinosaurs are going to be getting eliminated until you finally have just the one winner the

The one to rule them all. Yep. And just to round it out for clarity, when we're down to eight dinosaurs, each of those that you pick right, you'll get two points. When we're down to four dinosaurs, each of those you pick right, you'll get four points. And when we're down to two dinosaurs in the championship, you'll get eight points if you pick that one right. So at each round level, there are eight possible points. But obviously, if you pick the champion, that's better than just picking one that won one of the earlier rounds. Probably familiar with that if you've ever filled out a bracket before.

So if you win, that's the big question. Why would you want to win? You will get six months of our Triceratops tier on our Patreon for free. I guess that's another good reason to sign up on our Patreon. Because if you just fill out the bracket and then don't sign up for free on the Patreon, I don't know how you're going to get the free Triceratops tier. Oh, that's true. You'll be well set up. Yeah.

And if you're already a patron, you will also get six months of the Triceratops tier. I'm pretty sure you can do that. If not, we'll figure out a different prize of equal value. Yes. But that's the plan as of now.

Unfortunately, since this is officially a sweepstakes, we can only offer it in the US, Canada, except Quebec and the UK. I'm sorry that we can't offer the sweepstakes in Quebec, Australia or Europe, where I know we have a fair number of listeners. I tried really hard to find a way to make the sweepstakes available everywhere that we have listeners, but unfortunately, a lot of jurisdictions put up barriers that as a two person team, we just can't manage to meet.

deal with. So for example, in case you're wondering, with Quebec, I was

I was really excited to see that in late 2023, they repealed their rules requiring posting a bond and registering with their government in order to do a sweepstakes there. But unfortunately, they still require everything to be translated into French. And we don't speak French. So we can't comply with the Quebec regulations to do a sweepstakes there, which is a bummer. I was so excited. I was Googling it and I saw that. I was like, yeah, we can finally add Quebec. But unfortunately, we can't. Maybe another time. Yes.

And then with Australia, they require the sweepstakes to be based in Australia. Obviously, we can't do that since we're in the US. And for Europe, some countries ban sweepstakes. Others have country-specific laws that we can't feasibly comply with. Most of those are translating everything into the official language of that country and

We don't speak any languages fluently other than English. So unfortunately, we can't do that outside of the UK. So we're left with the US, UK and Canada, except Quebec. But even though you can't officially enter the contest, you could still fill out a bracket on bit.ly slash dino duels bracket and just see how you do. Get bragging rights. Exactly.

So just a quick reminder, if you want to fill out your bracket to figure out who you think is going to win the whole championship, that's the easiest way to do it because you go through the process of elimination. You can do that at bit.ly slash dino duels bracket. And then if you want to fill out the Google form in order to officially enter the contest, you can do that at bit.ly slash dino duels picks bracket.

We'll have these links in our show notes as well. Yes. And that they're linked to each other everywhere too. So if you go to one of them, you should be able to get to the other two as well. And then if you want the complete rules, they are at bit.ly slash dino duels rules. I love saying that so much. And we will talk about the dinosaurs that we'll be dueling in just a moment. But first we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors.

This episode is brought to you by Colorado Northwestern Community College. If you're looking for an amazing way to spend your summer, there's no better choice than working with Dinosaur Bones.

You've probably heard us talk before about Colorado Northwestern Community College, CNCC, because they have fantastic programs. Yeah, they have both a field program and a lab program. And between the two, if you take both of them, which is an option, you can get up to eight college credits, although it's not just for college students.

Each course is two weeks long, so you can spend up to four weeks if you do both the dig program and the fossil prep lab course. Ooh. Yeah.

But no matter what you choose, expert paleontologists will lead you through every step of the way. We actually met one of their paleontologists on our first ever dinosaur dig 10 years ago. Oh yeah, I can't believe it's been 10 years already. That was a great dig. It was. And CNCC has two dig sessions as well as two lab sessions, one each from early to mid-July and another from late July to early August.

Last year, we had several listeners sign up and space is limited. So if you want to guarantee your spot, you should sign up soon. Just go to cncc.edu slash dino dig to get all the details. Make sure you register online by May 31st. Again, that's cncc.edu slash dino dig. So now on to the dinosaurs that will be dueling.

I'll start with the picks for the late Triassic slash early Jurassic. We've got our first seed, Gojirasaurus, versus the fourth one, Eoraptor. Yeah, we're following the same standard protocol of the top ranked team, or in this case, Dinosaur, versus the lowest ranked team.

Because that's how they usually do it. In theory, it's supposed to give the advantage to the top-ranked ones. So you're supposed to get a little bit of a benefit if you did really well in the regular season when you're getting to the playoffs. But in this case, it's super weird because, like I was saying, those YouTube views, even if you're the most viewed thing in our YouTube channel, it seems to have little to nothing to do with how popular of a dinosaur it actually is. So it comes up with some interesting matchups that you wouldn't expect. Yes. Yeah.

So, yeah, all of these dinosaurs we covered in our Dinosaur of the Day at some point, but, you know, we're coming up to 530 episodes. That's a lot of Dinosaur of the Days. And I understand if you don't remember them all. I don't remember all of them. Well, I'll give a brief overview here. So, Gojirasaurus was a coelophysoid that lived in the Triassic in what is now New Mexico in the U.S. It was our Dinosaur of the Day back in episode 165.

The genus name Gojirosaurus means Godzilla lizard, although it may be a dubious genus. So why pick Gojirosaurus? Well, it was one of the largest carnivores of the Triassic. It was estimated to be about 18 feet or five and a half meters long, though it may have gotten even bigger. That's pretty big for the Triassic. I always think of Gojirosaurus as tiny, like Coelophysis level tiny, but I guess it was bigger than that. It's living up to its name. It is.

I guess if you're a big Godzilla fan, that's a good choice too. Yeah. Then we've got Eoraptor, a sauropodomorph that lived in the late Triassic in what is now Argentina. That was our dinosaur of the day in episode 60. The genus name Eoraptor means dawn plunderer. It's not a raptor, but it did have a grasping hand like raptors.

So why pick Eoraptor? Well, it was one of the earliest dinosaurs. It was also a fast runner. Yeah, Eoraptor is pretty cool. It's one of the most important early dinosaur finds. It's much earlier in the Triassic than Gojirosaurus. Gojirosaurus is like 210-ish million years ago, whereas Eoraptor is more like 230. So it's still technically late Triassic, but it's approaching middle Triassic.

It's before the midpoint of the Triassic, which just because of naming conventions, it's still late Triassic. But it's a cool dinosaur. It is. Definitely changed things when it was discovered. Yes. But it is smaller, so it wouldn't win in a fight if they had somehow ever met. But it could maybe win in a race because it was so fast. Or in a hiding competition. Yeah. Professional hide and seeking. Yeah.

In the next bracket, we've got the second pick, Herrerasaurus, versus the third pick, Heterodontosaurus. I love this combination. It's like two of the weirdest dinosaurs in the late Triassic, early Jurassic. It's so cool that they randomly got matched up together. Yeah. Now, Herrerasaurus was a Saurischian that lived in the late Triassic in what is now San Juan, Argentina. It was our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 27.

The genus name Herrerasaurus means Herrera's lizard. It's named after the local rancher Don Victorino Herrera, who discovered it. And it had this sliding joint in its lower jaw to help it bite, which suggests it was a predator. So why pick Herrerasaurus? Well, it is another early dinosaur. And it had a body shaped like large carnivores such as Allosaurus, but it lived during a time when dinosaurs were small and not at all dominant.

The other cool thing about Herrerasaurus is that it's so weird that some people don't even consider it to be a dinosaur.

it's very difficult to place it in the dinosaur family tree. It's been considered to be a basal theropod, also a basal sauropodomorph, sometimes like you said, just a saurischian. Other times it's outside of that even, or outside of all of Dinosauria. And it's just a very strange dinosaur. This is another very old one. It's around 230 million years ago. So it's sort of like Eoraptor in those very early days of

The dinosaurs? Yes, when it was hard to pick out what's a dinosaur. Yeah, it's right on that gray fuzzy line of like, is this a dinosaur? Is it too weird? Maybe it's not quite really fully developed into a dinosaur yet.

And then we've got Heterodontosaurus, which was an Ornithischian that lived in the early Jurassic in what is now South Africa. That was our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 279. The genus name Heterodontosaurus means different-toothed lizard. It does have different teeth. Right? Well, it had a beak, it had small incisor-like teeth, a couple long canine-like tusks, and chisel-like cheek teeth. So why pick Heterodontosaurus? Well...

It had the tusks, the canine-like tusks, which might have helped it with its food. It's also different from its close relatives in that it doesn't seem to have replaced its teeth continuously, but instead replaced them sometimes, also known as episodically. So weird. Yeah. Such a weird little dinosaur. It was tiny too, but it had those tusks on it that just...

Yeah, they are different teeth. It's almost like different if you put a little bit of emphasis on it to be like, that's different. Very weird. Very weird little dinosaur. They're

But this one is actually in the early Jurassic, not in the Triassic. It's the only of the four which aren't in the Triassic. So maybe if you prefer a Triassic dinosaur, you're not into Heterodontosaurus. But if you like a weirdo that has tusks inexplicably for an early dinosaur, it's a pretty good one.

We usually like the weirdos. We do. But between Herrerasaurus and Heterodontosaurus, I'm kind of bummed that they're going up against each other because that means one of them is going to get eliminated because they're both so weird and enjoyable. All right. Moving on to the middle slash late Jurassic. In the first bracket, we've got the first seed, Megalosaurus, versus the fourth one, Miragaya.

Megalosaurus. That's one of the more well-known ones, I would say. Yeah. The OG dinosaur. Yeah. It was a theropod. It lived in the middle Jurassic in what is now England. It was our dinosaur of the day. We revisited it back in episode 482. Yeah. Don't worry about the first time we talked to it. You don't want to listen to that one. There's some good stuff in there. We took a different angle when we revisited it. The genus name means great lizard.

It was thought to be a giant amphibious lizard up to 70 feet long when it was first described, but more recent estimates have it closer to 20 feet or six meters long. I mean, they didn't have a lot of fossils to go with and it being the first ever dinosaur and before the name dinosaur was even coined, they didn't have a lot to work with. So you can forgive them being a little off the mark in terms of their total body constructions. You're getting into my why pick megalosaurus. Oh, sorry.

Because, well, not only is it the first non-avian dinosaur named, it's one of the three original dinosaurs in Dinosauria. It was named in 1824 and Dinosauria wasn't a term until 1842. But it was probably the first dinosaur fossils ever described, at least the way we describe fossils today. There was a leg bone described in the late 1600s, though at the time people thought it came from a large elephant or a giant human. Scrotum humanum. Well, that's...

We get into that when the dinosaur of the day, because it turns out it's a little more nuanced than we had previously thought. I forgot the nuances. I'll have to go back and listen to it.

Then we've got Miragaia. That's a stegosaur that lived in the late Jurassic and what is now Portugal. That was our dinosaur of the day in episode 504. We also revisited it because new research came out. The genus name Miragaia means wonderful goddess of the earth, which is a pretty cool name. It is a good one. And being a stegosaur, it had large spines over most or the whole of its tail.

So why pick Myrrigaea? Well, it had the longest known neck of any stegosaur with at least 17 neck vertebrae, which is more neck bones than many sauropods. It also probably used its tail as defense to strike at predators with high speed. Yeah, one really cool thing about Myrrigaea is it has crazy long tail spikes. There is a potential species named Myrrigaea longispinus.

It is a very epic Thagomizer, and I like how this battle is a Stegosaur versus a Theropod. Usually we're talking about Stegosaurus and Allosaurus.

That's what you might expect in a battle in the middle Jurassic, middle to late Jurassic. But instead, what we have is Miragaya versus Megalosaurus. Yep. Not what you would think would be the top two, but it's basically the same thing. It's an Allosaurus type thing versus a Stegosaur. So I guess if you were going to pick Allosaurus in that battle or you're going to pick Stegosaurus, you can go with your choice.

relevant dinosaur there. I think that's a pretty fun matchup. It is a good one. They didn't live at the same time, though, because Megalosaurus was middle Jurassic, so it was about 166 million years ago, whereas Miragaya was late Jurassic, probably more like 150 million years ago, so there was a pretty big time gap in between the two. So unlike Megalosaurus,

Allosaurus and Stegosaurus, which actually did fight each other. We've got holes in Allosaurus bones that look like a Stegosaur poked right through it. Yeah, still a good matchup. Yes. And then the other matchup, we've got the second seed, Yangtranosaurus versus the third one, Giraffatitan.

Yangchuanosaurus was a metriacanthosaurid theropod that lived in the middle to late Jurassic in what's now Yangchuan, China. It was our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 210. It's very similar to Allosaurus in size and appearance.

Spoilers, Allosaurus isn't one of the picks. Yeah. So if you like Allosaurus, maybe Yangchuanosaurus is your pick. This is the one I saw on the list and I was like, Yangchuanosaurus? That one made the top 16, the top four in the late Jurassic. We've got no like Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Brachiosaurus.

Diplodocus, Allosaurus, but we've got Yangtuanosaurus. We've also got Giraffatitan. That's similar to Brachiosaurus. True. But first, why pick Yangtuanosaurus, other than it being like an Allosaurus? Well, it was the biggest, baddest predator in its habitat. It had this giant head with powerful jaws full of large serrated teeth, and it was estimated to be up to 36 feet or 11 meters long. That's on the larger size of estimates.

I mean, it's a cool dinosaur and the head alone is probably over a meter approaching four feet long and body mass of roughly four tons. Maybe it's a big individual, right? So I can see why people like it. It is like a extra large Allosaurus. Very cool. Just amazing.

In terms of name recognition, I did not. It was a very surprising one. And I didn't remember much about Yangtuanosaurus until I was reading about it again. All you have to do is look at our notes since we covered it. Yeah, back in episode 210, six years ago. So it's going up against Giraffatitan. That was a sauropod that lived in the late Jurassic in what is now Tanzania. That was our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 153.

The genus name Giraffatitan means giant giraffe. And like I mentioned, it's closely related to Brachiosaurus. Both are depicted as keeping their heads held high in a giraffe-like way, one might say. They might. So why pick Giraffatitan? Well, it's a huge dinosaur and it looked a little like a giraffe. That's pretty cool.

It's estimated to be up to 82 feet or 25 meters long and have a shoulder height of 22 feet or 6.8 meters. And it had long forelimbs or the front legs and a long neck. Yep.

So just like how there is no Allosaurus, if you like Allosaurus, you might want to vote for Yangchuanosaurus. But if you like Brachiosaurus, you might want to vote for Giraffatitan. Or really, if you like sauropods in general, because there are very few sauropods in this list. And I think there might be no Ankylosaurus, which is a bummer. But at least you got your sauropod or two. Yeah, there are at least a couple.

Which brings me to the next section. Time period. Time period. Thank you. Early Cretaceous. So we've got the first pick, Nigerosaurus, versus the fourth pick, Deinonychus. Speaking of sauropods. So Nigerosaurus was a ribocasaurid sauropod that lived in the Cretaceous and was now Niger. It was our dinosaur of the day back in episode 246. And the genus name Nigerosaurus means Niger reptile.

It was a small sauropod, similar in size to an elephant today. It was estimated to be about 30 feet or 9 meters long and weigh over 2 to 4.4 tons or 1.9 to 4 metric tons. Why pick Nigerosaurus? Well, it's really cool. It had this wide snout full of more than 500 teeth. It was really flat on the front too. Yeah.

It replaces teeth also about every 14 days. And it's been described as a Mesozoic cow. Yeah. It's fantastic. It is. It's a fantastic animal. The entire group of those...

many of which have those flat fronts to their mouths are so enjoyable to look at. Something I had no idea existed when I was a kid. For some reason, I always missed those in the drawings. I mean, I guess Nigerosaurus wasn't discovered when I was a kid. That might have been part of the problem. Or you weren't paying enough attention to the sauropods. Yeah, that could also be the case. It's also kind of cool because Nigerosaurus is a diplodocoid and...

Giraffa titan is a macronarian, so we've got two of the major groups of sauropods in contention. So if they meet again later, you can pick your favorite clade of sauropod. That's true. Then we've got Deinonychus, which is a dromaeosaurid theropod or raptor that lived in the early Cretaceous in what is now the U.S. And that was our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 500, where we revisited it.

because the episode was all about raptors. The genus name Deinonychus means terrible claw. It was probably covered in feathers, and it had the large sickle-clawed second toes for cutting and slashing. Why might you pick Deinonychus? Well, it's the dinosaur that changed the way paleontologists thought about dinosaurs, and it kicked off the dinosaur renaissance, where people started thinking of dinosaurs as more active and agile rather than sluggish and tail-dragging.

It also possibly pinned down its prey and then bit into it. Yeah, Deinonychus is super cool. This is not one that I was surprised was on the list. Yeah. I kind of thought Velociraptor might have made the cut.

But it didn't. But Deinonychus is close. And I could see how you've probably or the average person searching on YouTube might already think they know everything they need to know about Velociraptor. But you might hear about Deinonychus being an important dinosaur that's like Velociraptor and want to learn more about it. So I could see how that one made the top 16. Exactly. It's a cool dinosaur. Yes.

In the next bracket, we've got the second seed, ichthyovenator, versus the third one, hypsilophodon. So ichthyovenator, or I guess ichthyovenator,

depending how you want to pronounce it, was a spinosaur that lived in the early Cretaceous and what is now Laos. It was our dinosaur of the day in episode 304. The genus name Ixiovenator means fish hunter. And like its relatives, other spinosaurs, it had the tall neural spines that made a sail on its back. Why pick Ixiovenator?

Because it's a spinosaur. And it's the only spinosaur in the list. Yeah. It had a long, narrow snout, teeth for going after fish, and strong arms with large thumb claws. Yeah. We've done spinosaurus twice.

And neither of those videos were in the top 16. But ichthyovenator was not the one I would have expected of the spinosaurus. I think my most likely would have been spinosaurus. After that, I think maybe I would have guessed succamimus, maybe irritator. Baryonyx? Baryonyx, yes.

Icthyovenator, not what I was expecting. But it's a good name for a Spinosaurid, right? It is. Basically fish hunter is a solid description of what we think Spinosaurus did, whether it was swimming through the water in order to get those fish or just dunking its head in. Either way, we know based on the fish remains that are inside some of these gut contents, it was in fact a fish hunter. Yes, gut contents of Spinosaurids.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not necessarily ichthyovenator. Yes. I think the closest thing we have to direct evidence of ichthyovenator specifically eating fish is that there were just ray fin fish in the area where it was fossilized. Better evidence is that its relatives, other spinosaurids, were eating fish. Yes.

And then we've got Hypsilophodon. That was a Neo-Ornithischian that lived in the early Cretaceous in what's now England. It was our dinosaur of the day in episode 28. That goes way back. The genus name Hypsilophodon means high-crested tooth. It was relatively small, estimated to be about 7.5 feet or 2.3 meters long, and the fossils were first found also way back in 1849.

So why pick Hypsilophodon? Well, so many specimens have been found, like maybe over a hundred. So we know a lot about this dinosaur. Also, it had these thin pointy bones over the top half of its eyes to give it shade, which kind of made it look fierce, at least in skeletal form. And I guess some people originally thought it was armored and lived in trees. That's kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah.

Hypsilophodon is one that I often think of as being an earlier dinosaur than it actually was because it was in the early Cretaceous. But for some reason, its small body and just sort of weird vibes makes me think Triassic, early Jurassic. Weird vibes. Definitely weird vibes. I don't have a lot of hope for Hypsilophodon winning against Ichthyovander. You never know. Could happen. It made it. We weren't expecting that. It's true.

Alright, and last we've got the late Cretaceous picks, starting with

The first seed Tyrannosaurus versus the fourth one Albertosaurus. Yeah, Tyrannosaurus, a number one seed. This was the least surprising thing in the data set for sure. And then we've got it against another Tyrannosaurid. I kind of like that because then it's not just going to be like Tyrannosaurids dominating later down the bracket. You got to pick your Tyrannosaurid right off the gate. Yes, exactly.

So Tyrannosaurus was a Tyrannosaurid theropod. It lived in the late Cretaceous in what is now Western North America. It was our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 200. We also revisited that one. Well, that was the revisited one. It was our first episode as well. Oh, yes. And then we learned a lot more, so we felt like it needed to be revisited. Yep. The genus name Tyrannosaurus means tyrant lizard.

It had relatively short arms, but it was still ridiculously strong and fierce. Yes, I like that you said relatively short arms because on an absolute scale, its arms were more like our leg. At least in terms of strength, they might have been a little bit smaller, but not that wimpy of arms, not like Carnotaurus. Yeah.

Well, why pick Tyrannosaurus? I don't know if I even need to give reasons, but it was the all-time apex predator of its time. It probably would be the apex predator in many different times if it was a time traveler.

And it had such a strong bite force, it could crush bone. Indeed. It's also the second most valuable fossil after Stegosaurus. Oh, yes. It's funny that that has changed. It is funny. Although Stegosaurus didn't make the list, so maybe it's getting the last laugh in this competition. Maybe. It's lucky it doesn't have to go up against the real dominant dinosaur. Just depends what your criteria is. Then we've got Albertosaurus.

It was a Tyrannosaurid theropod that lived in the late Cretaceous in what is now Alberta, Canada. It was our dinosaur of the day in episode 86. The genus name Albertosaurus means Alberta lizard. And the fossils were first found in 1884 by Joseph Burr Tyrrell, who has a museum named after him in Alberta. Perhaps you've heard of it, the Tyrrell Museum. The Royal Tyrrell Museum. Oh, yes. Thank you. So why pick Albertosaurus?

Well, it was also an apex predator in its habitat and could crush bone. More than 30 individuals have been found, so scientists know it pretty well. And it had a large head with a lot of sharp teeth and short arms with two fingers on each hand. So not too, too different from Tyrannosaurus. Another good reason to vote for it is if you're Canadian, because it's sort of like the Canadian T-Rex. There we go.

But a reason to vote against it is if you're a fan of Latin, because why didn't they name it Alberta Sora? That would have been a much better name. Alberta Sora.

They made it Alberto-saurus. Oh, I see. It always annoys me. Why isn't it Alberta-saurus? I'm guessing. I know what your pick would be. I don't know. I like an underdog. Although, in general, with the bracket, you want to vote for the one that you think is going to win, not the one that you want to win. And then when we get around to the voting on Patreon...

that's when you vote for the one you want to win. I already filled out my bracket, by the way. Okay. Partly to test it, but also because I wanted to actually do it so that I could see if I would win. See if you get bragging rights. I mean, yeah, it would only be bragging rights because obviously I can't win, but I want to see how I do.

All right. In the second bracket for the late Cretaceous, we've got the second seed, Styracosaurus, versus the third one, Chidi Poti. Styracosaurus was a ceratopsian that lived in the late Cretaceous in what is now North America. It was our dinosaur of the day in episode 42, and the genus name means spiked lizard. Maybe it lived in herds based on specimens being found in bone beds.

So why pick Styracosaurus? Well, it's got a really cool frill. It had four to six long spikes that extended from its neck frill. And it had cheek horns in addition to a long nose horn that may have been up to two feet or 60 centimeters long. Yeah, seriously long nasal horn. Yeah, it's possible that the large frill on its skull helped it to regulate its body temperature.

No matter what it did, it looked really cool doing it. I think Styracosaurus is one of the coolest dinosaurs ever, which is why it was our first ever patch that we did for the Dino dolls because it's so cool with all those spikes sticking out of its head. I think we also made a coaster of it at one point. I love Styracosaurus. Any chance we have to...

draw Styracosaurus in some way. It's such a cool head. It's just amazing. Since Styracosaurus was found way back in the early 1900s, there have been other cool looking ceratopsians found like Diabloceratops and a lot of these that have big frill ornamentation on them. But to me, Styracosaurus is always like the original, really cool frill ornamentation. And it's sort of like the prototypical difference from Triceratops, whereas Triceratops has a very

plain frill which is much bigger and then the big brow horns and the small nose horn Styracosaurus is the exact opposite in every way it's got a smaller but way more decorated frill it's got like nothing above its eyes but this huge nose horn it's just the two of them combined to make a really cool demonstration of how varied ceratopsians could be yes

I'm guessing that was your pick. I don't even remember. Well, it's going up against Chidi Padi, which was an over-raptured theropod that lived in the late Cretaceous in what is now Mongolia. It was our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 81. The genus name Chidi Padi means funeral pyre lord, and it had a tall crest on its head similar to a cassowary, and it was probably covered in feathers.

So why pick Chidi Potti? Well, it's really cool because its discovery helped scientists understand that Oviraptorids weren't egg thieves, but they actually cared for their young. And one Chidi Potti embryo was found inside an egg. It finally righted the wrong that was that Oviraptor name of egg thief. It's one of the best known Oviraptorids too. And some have been found brooding on top of its nest. That's

how it was able to write that wrong. And one specimen even has the nickname Big Mama. Yeah, that was at the American Museum of Natural History. Very cool specimen. I think if you're going by quality of specimen, if that's your criteria in your voting, Chitty Potty definitely wins.

It doesn't hurt that it was found in Mongolia in that pretty soft sandstone that seems to have miraculous preservation so much of the time and so easy to remove and see all those bones and eggs in this case. Yes. Very cool dinosaur. So those are the sweet 16. Make your picks and vote. And we'll be announcing the winners moving on in our next episode.

We won't go through this whole list every time. We'll just announce the winners. Yeah. Because I'm sure we'll have a ton of news to talk about. Oh, yes. But yeah, if you want to enter the contest, make sure you get over to bit.ly slash dino duels picks. And if you want to visualize it better, you can use bit.ly slash dino duels bracket. And if you want the complete rules, bit.ly slash dino duels rules.

And then they all link to each other too. They're in the show notes and everything. Yes. Dino duels rules is probably the easiest one to remember. Yep. So you can go there and find the others. Well, good luck. We'll get to our dinosaur of the day in just a moment. But first, we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors. And now on to our dinosaur of the day, Kumnuria, which was a request from Tyrant King via our Patreon and Discord. So thanks.

It was a basal Iguanodontian that lived in the late Jurassic in what is now Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, found in the Kimmeridge Clay Formation. And Iguanodons, they started around the middle Jurassic and lived until the end of the Cretaceous. There's been some debate over whether or not Comnuria is a Camptosaurus. It did look similar to Camptosaurus. Another dinosaur that looked similar to Camptosaurus was Eutodon, our Dinosaur of the Day in episode 521.

but is now considered to be a species of Camptosaurus, depending on who you ask. Cumnuria was small and walked on two legs. It had shorter arms, a long tail, and a long-ish head. The holotype includes a partial skull and skeleton, and it had a slender build. It was about 11.4 feet or 3.5 meters long. The holotype, though, is probably a juvenile based on lack of fusion in the vertebrae and ribs.

In adult Iguanodontians, those bones are fused, and that's why the holotype's thought to be a juvenile. Even though the specimen's a juvenile, it doesn't affect it being classified as a basal Iguanodont because the characters used in ornithopod phylogenies aren't really influenced by changes in their growth. That sounds like somebody arguing for it being its own genus talking. Could be, but for now it's considered a basal Iguanodont.

It was well-preserved, there's not much crushing or distortion, and it was unique with features such as a prominent ridge on the shoulder bone and an oval muscle scar on its arm bone. It also had robust feet. The fossils were found at Cumnorhurst, a hill near Cumnor, Oxfordshire, in the UK. It was found in 1879. Whoa. Yeah. They were found while the area was being excavated for a tramway.

They first ended up in a dump heap, but then were later collected and shown to George Rolleston, an anatomist from Oxford University. He showed them to Joseph Prestwich in 1879, who said that they were a new species of Iguanodon, but didn't give it a species name. Then in 1880, Prestwich published an article on the stratigraphy of where the fossils were found. And later that year, John Hulke named the fossils Iguanodon prestwichii in honor of Prestwich.

In the first description, he wrote, quote, the skull is wanting, except a small fragment. So basically no skull, except for a tiny piece. Yeah. And in 1880, Hulk wrote that its, quote, head was lizard-like with large eyes and capacious nostrils.

He also wrote, quote, Unfortunately, as too frequently happens, the removal of the fossils by the unskillful hands of day laborers has occasioned much damage and many losses. The bones had already been much crushed by the pressure of the beds, but many of the fractures are plainly quite recent. Yeah, that happens a lot when something's getting excavated not for paleontology purposes. Yeah. And then you notice it later. But it wouldn't have been found if that tramway wasn't being built. Yeah. Probably. Probably.

In 1888, Harry Seeley renamed those fossils as Cumnuria Prestwichi. So it got a separate genus. Yes. And just the one eye at the end. Oh, interesting. The genus name Cumnuria is after Cumnur, the village where it was found. But then in 1889, Richard Lydacker said that it was Camptosaurus Prestwichi, which many scientists over the years agreed with.

Then it was back to possibly being Comnuria in 2008 by Nation Martel. And then McDonald in 2011 said it was Comnuria, and that was reaffirmed in 2020 by Barrett and Wills. Susanna Maidman and others in 2023 re-described Comnuria, and they found it to be distinct from Camptosaurus and valid, with two unique features in the shoulder.

There's not many late Jurassic ornithopods from Europe that are known. There's only Calivosaurus, based on an isolated femur or thigh bone found in the UK. There's also Eostreosaurus and Draconics from Portugal, and then also Cumnuria. From the Kimmeridge Clay Formation of the UK, there's only four valid dinosaurs.

They include, of course, Comneria, but also the Stegosaur, Decentrurus, the Titanosauriform, Duriatitan, and the Tyrannosauroid, Duratyrant. The holotype of Comneria includes an incomplete skull, including a partial brain case, vertebrae from the neck, back, and tail, ribs, part of an arm, part of the hips, parts of the legs, and parts of the feet and a hand.

But we do need more fossils to better understand this dinosaur. A head might help. Yeah, a more complete one. Other animals that lived around the same time and place include sauropods, theropods, sea turtles, and pterosaurs. Watch out, sea turtles. There's sauropods afoot. They're fine. They were fine. And our fun fact for this Dino Duels competition episode is...

I feel like you did this one for your dad, who's a UCLA basketball fan. Yeah.

Which may have some resemblance to something else that happens. Yes. Specifically, that dinosaur was the Calgary dinos, which were then known as the University of Calgary dinosaurs. So UCLA won in 1964, 1965, and then they won again from 1967 every year through 1975. That's a lot of years in a row. Yes. But the Calgary dinos won in 1966. Broke up the streak. Yes.

Oh, as a side note, Wooden had the nickname the Wizard of Westwood, though apparently he didn't like that nickname. And he was renowned for his coaching and inspirational messages. He's known for his pyramid of success. That's his philosophical building blocks for succeeding at basketball and life. And he's won many awards and he had a long life and career. He died at age 99 in 2010. But back to the Calgary Dinos, because we're not a basketball show. Yeah.

So we're going to talk about this basketball team. Well, we're talking about the dinos that happen to be a team. In 1964, two years before the University of Calgary officially split from the University of Alberta, they adopted the dinosaur mascot to honor all the paleontological sites in the area. And their first iteration was this bipedal lizard snake-like creature, which has changed over the years. It's good to hear. Yeah. Yeah.

So in the 1960s, it walked on two legs. It had this yellow belly and the rest was red. It looked to me kind of like Pete the Dragon, but no wings or hair and a smaller, more snake-like head. I don't really know Pete the Dragon. Is that a kid's book? I know from the Disney movie, but I don't know if that's the original source. Okay. But that's the one you're talking about, Disney movie Pete the Dragon? Yeah. Okay. And then in the 1970s,

the Calgary dino, looked more fearsome. It still walked on two legs, but it had a lizard-like tongue and a very long dragging tail. Then, in the 1980s, they made it look much friendlier. It got more plump. It was white but wore red and carried a red flag. It was a bit Barney-like. It had four fingers on each hand, and it got a name, Dexter. And then, from 1998 to 2013, it looked more like a Jurassic Park velociraptor. It was fierce,

The mouth was full of sharp teeth and it was back to red. That's not too surprising. In the 90s, they would make it more raptor-like. And then from 2013 to now, I would say it's a little bit more cartoonish, but also more accurate. The teeth are more accurate. It clearly has two fingers.

So overall, just more scientifically accurate, which I know that they put a lot of effort into. So they made it like a T-Rex? I think it was always meant to be like a Tyrannosaur. Oh, really? Yeah. Because those other descriptions did not sound like T-Rex. No. But yeah, it's red with the yellow belly. Oh, and the present day mascot has a new name called Rexosaurus. So there you go, to answer your question.

Rex, like there's Tyrannosaurus and Rex. I guess they needed it to be unique. I'm surprised they weren't going for Albertosaurus. Yeah, that would have been a smart call. Maybe it's because they're not the University of Alberta. Oh, maybe. Although it's Albertosaurus, not Albertosaurus. Right, as you were saying earlier. Not the University of Alberto. Yes. Well, anyway.

The school has a saying, which I like. It's that once a dino, always a dino. That is good. Taking it back because a lot of people don't want to be called a dinosaur because sometimes that means like you're outdated. Not in our world. They're embracing it too. Yes. So that wraps up this episode of I Know Dino. Thank you for listening. Stay tuned in our next episode. We will be back. We'll probably have some new dinosaurs to talk about.

And of course, we'll be keeping up with the Dino Duels, which again, if you want to make your picks, head over to bit.ly slash Dino Duels picks. Or just go to bit.ly slash Dino Duels rules. Yes, that too. And the top of that will have links to the other places you might want to go. Thanks again. And until next time.