Dragon Day 2018: Top Ten Prehistoric Animals named after Dragons

Happy Dragon day, the fourth Sunday in October!  

Wait a minute, you ask yourself, why are you talking about mythical animals? Isn’t this blog about real animals? Why haven’t you posted more often? 

First of all, yes, I do need to post more often. Second, I will talk about real animals. And finally, in reverse order, dragons are still awesome and I still feel compelled to talk about mythical animals. Dinosaurs have basically become the dragons to the 20^th century. Watch a dinosaur movie, look at a piece of art-these real animals get their most bizarre and fearsome qualities played up. Dinosaurs fulfill the same narrative device. Authors like Adrienne Mayor, Don Glut, and Allen Debus have all made the parallel. Dinosaur bones were indeitifed with dragons, and dinosaurs have been given dragonish qualities in art and literature from the very beginning. A big scary reptile is going to look like a dragon, period.

So, in honor of dragon day, inspired by Christopher dePiazza’s amazing blog and art, http://prehistoricbeastoftheweek.blogspot.com/2015/04/here-be-dragonsor-dinosaurs.html , I am going to give you my top ten prehistoric animals named after Dragons! 

10. Lingwulong shenqi

Eventually I’ll get to dicreaosaurs, the bizarre short-necked, whip-tailed sauropods that died out in the early Cretaceous. Their origins and distribution have been a mystery. At first they seemed restricted to Africa, but Amargasaurus and Brachytrachelopan in South America and Suuwassea in North America extended their range. They seem to have been late Jurassic for the most part, but Amargasaurus extends their range to the early Cretaceous. And earlier this year, 2018, a new stunning discovery was made: A Dicraeosaur not only in China of all places, but in the Middle Jurassic, a time where China was dominated by more basal sauropods like Omeiosaurus and Datousaurus. And not just the Middle Jurassic, but actually predating the now-classic Dashanpu faunas.  Like the first bird Anchiornis, this Chinese dinosaur puts evolutionary trends earlier and in new locations.

It was discovered by a team of Chinese paleontologists led by the great Xu Xing, who has described 50 other dinosaurs in his career. The name means The Dragon of Lingwu, Lingwu being the main city in Ningxia.  This unique dinosaur raises interesting ideas about sauropod evolution, and I hope we find more on the Dicraeosaurs, where they came from, and their extinction. 

9. Dilong paradoxus

Xu loves his dragons.  This one is another discovery of his, and another fascinating look at the origins of dinosaur lineages. This one is from the most famous dinosaur lineage: The Tyrannosaurs. Tyrannosaur origins have been a mystery for a long time, with its coelurosaur affinities only confusing matters.  Were they American based on Marshosaurus? European like Proceratosaurus or Compsognathus? Even African?  When did they diverge?

In 2004, however, there was a sudden explosion of theropod discoveries in Liaoning. The Yixian Formation, an Early Cretaceous series of beds, proved not to only have incredible diversity of theropod dinosaurs, but perfectly preserved their skeletons up to their feathers. These discoveries were instrumental in learning about coelurosaur evolution in general and bird evolution in particular.   

One of the Yixian theropods was Dilong, and in 2004, it was the earliest Tyrannosauroid.

In Chinese astrology and traditional worship, elements, seasons, and the forces of nature are manifested as dragons. In accordance to Taoist symmetry, the Heavenly Tianlong has a counterpart, the Earth Dragon Dilong. The word Dilong has later been used for more mundane uses, such as the serpentine earthworm. This humble invertebrate is given the dragon’s poetic name.   With a dragonlike dinosaur found buried in the earth, the name Dilong encapsulates its significance. Tyrannosaurs have invoked dragons ever since their discovery, and Dilong seemed to be the very first one. 

8. Yinlong downsi

Another primitive animal described by Xu also gets a dragon name. In this case, it’s a ceratopsian. The Asian origins of the family were established first by Roy Chapman Andrews’ Protoceratops and Psitaccosaurus, described by Henry Fairfield Osborn in the 1920s.  However, it looks like the lineage dried up. There seemed to be nothing before 130 mya, and no predecessors in the Jurassic.  As Gargoyleosaurus and Myrmoorapelta solved Ankylosaur origins in the Jurassic, a new ceratopsian would push the Ceratopsians back, too.

Through the 1990s, expeditions to the Shishugouo formation have found it a strong bed of Jurassic Dinosaurs, a good supplement to the classic Dashanpu Formation. A Chinese-American expedition in 2006 found more good material from there.  Xu Xing, Catherine Forster, Jim Clark, and Mo Jinyou found a particularly interesting little animal there: Yinlong.  Yinlong is represented by a nearly complete skeleton, allowing for good anatomical comparisons with other dinosaurs. In this case, the body follows the basal ornithiscian plan seen in animals like Othnielosaurus. However, the skull is unique: The triangular head, the beak, the large attachments for jaw muscles, and most importantly the large squamosal bone in the back and the beginnings of the rostral bone unique to ceratopsians.

  This discovery seemingly came out of no where-so Xu and company decided on a pun name. The film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had been a huge international hit, so this unexpected dinosaur became called Yinlong-the hidden dragon.

7. Hippodraco scutodens

 Change of pace: we’re going to North America, and looking at Greek names. Iguanodonts aren’t new to the Americas-the discovery of Iguanodon lakotaensis in 1989 (now Dakotadon) shook up the paradigm. But a 2010 discovery showed a sudden change in what we knew about their diversity. Iguanodon itself was split into various species over the years, and two very different genera were discovered in Utah.  One was the massive, long-limbed Iguanocolossus, and the other the small, slender Hippodraco.

Hippodraco was discovered in the Cedar Mountain Formation, a very rich fossil formation from Utah and described by a team consisting of Andrew T. McDonald, James I. Kirkland, Donald D. DeBlieux, Scott K. Madsen, Jennifer Cavin, Andrew R. C. Milner, and Lukas Panzarin. Hippodraco is a small, basal Iguanodont, only 15 feet long and similar to Colorado’s later Theiophytalia. They seem to represent the existence of more basal animals in the Early Cretaceous, midway between Jurassic Uteodon and Camptosaurus and the bigger, more derived Hadrosauriforms from Eurasia.  As of now, there is a slab from Utah currently being studied containing not only another Hippodraco, but several Utahraptor of various ages. 

6. Guanlong wucaii

For the last Xu-described animal, we’re following up Dilong. Only two years after the most basal Tyrannosaur in Asia had been found, a new animal was discovered. The same Chinese-American team that discovered Yinlong also discovered the ancestor to Dilong and the entire Tyrannosaur lineage  in the Shishougo Formation.

Guanlong is a Proceratosaur, an almost entirely Eurasian group of Jurassic Coelurosaurs ancestral to the Tyrannosaurs. This family still has 3 fingers on the hand, and magnificent crests on the head, and Guanlong has both traits.  Guanlong pushed the date of Tyrannosaur evolution even further than before to the late Jurassic, and before the other coelurosaurs had branched off into their own families. 

The name Guanlong means Crowned Dragon, referring to the great head crest that stretches from the eyes and the nostrils and is as high as the skull itself. I must say that the Chinese-American team came up with the perfect name for this flashy little ancestor of great tyrant kings.

5. Azhdarcho lanicollis

For most of my life, I only knew of publications before in 1974. What I mean by that is that I only knew pterosaurs as Dimetrodontids, Rhamphorhynchids, and Pterodactylids. The first had big heads and ate bugs, the second were long tailed, small Jurassic animals, and the third had tiny tails but took over the Cretaceous as giant toothless fishers.  The famous giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus was 

portrayed at a small-crested scavenging Pteranodon.

Then Soviet scientist Lev A Nesov discovered a new pterosaur in Uzbekistan. It genuinely puzzled him the same way Quetzalcoatlus had puzzled Lawson. It seemed to be a marine animal, but the long stiff neck was hard to explain. Still in the Pteranodon Paradigm, Nesov proposed it was a skimmer, but identified it as a close king to Quetzalcoatlus.  He named it Azhdarcho, after Azdaha, Persian for Dragon.

In 2008 or so, pterosaur workers like Mark Witton and Darren Naish had accumulated enough Azhdarchid material to conclude that these animals emerged from other Pterodactyloids in the middle Cretaceous and assumed a new niche. The biggest of these, including Quetzalcoatlus, were most likely generalists that also hunted on land for smaller animals, but could easily feed on fish or carrion if necessary.  Azhdarcho would have lived on the islands and bays that made up Central Asia 90 Million years ago, hunting small animals, fish, and dinosaurs. 

4. Dracorex hogwartsia

One of the least understood and strangest groups of dinosaurs are the Pachycephalosaurs. These thick-skulled animals of the Cretaceous North have been poorly studied and represented-they’re rare. We don’t know how they used their domes, why their tails are unique, why their torsos are large and round, or even if the skull changed shape during individual growth

One of the most controversial animals is Dracorex. Dracorex was discovered in 2004, in South Dakota. What we do know about this animal is that it is nearly an adult but still not fully grown, it’s about 8 feet long, and that it was found in the Hell Creek Formation where animals like Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, Ankylosaurus and Torosaurus have also been known.  It would be among the last of the dinosaurs.  The unique thing about it is the flat skull, lacking the dome of other Pachycephalosaurs but still having long horns on the back of the head.   Aside from the flat skull and controversial status as other paleontologists have insisted it is a juvenile of Pachycephalosaurus, it’s most notable for its name: Dracorex, the dragon king.  Hopefully someday we’ll get some definitive evidence for or against Dracorex. I’m leaning that it is valid-the people behind the lumping have an agenda against dinosaur biodiversity at the end of the Cretaceous. Besides, that name is too cool to lose.  

3. Dracovenator regenti

The early Jurassic period is little-understood. Oftentimes it’s ignored-Walking With Dinosaurs jumped right from Coelophysis to Allosaurus, skipping over 120 million years. The only dinosaur people remember from that time is DIlophosaurus, and that’s only because of the success of the Jurassic Park novel and film. Crichton wanted a weird animal with venom (which was a fringe theory even back then), Spielberg made it look and act even weirder, and so on.

I do plan on making a blog about the Elliot beds. A wide variety of animals are known, especially sauropodomorphs. The prosauropod Massospondylus is particularly well known and represented, having been discovered as far back as 1854.  However, what the top predator was has been unknown. The biggest predator known for years was Megapnosaurus (sometimes called Syntarsus or conflated with Coelophysis)

Appropriately enough, this top predator was found in the Drakensburg Mountains by South African paleontologists James Kitching and Regent Huma in the 1980s. It was only in 2006 that the material was identified as a new, relatively giant theropod by Adam Yates (check out his blogs http://dracovenator.blogspot.com/  http://gondwanafragment.blogspot.com/ ).  The material is scanty, but firmly places it as a Dilophosaur, the first family of large predatory dinosaurs. Along with North America’s Dilophosaurus, Asia’s Sinosaurus, and Antarctica’s Crylophosaurus, Dracovenator would have been the largest terrestrial carnivore, reaching almost 1,000 lbs. It would have been a predator of the many sauropodomorphs of that locale-the name Dracovenator, dragon hunter, not only locates it as from the Drakensburg, but also identifies it as a predator of giant dinosaurs.

2. Ankalagon saurognathus

Among these dragons…is a mammal. I suppose Falcor from the Neverending Story counts as a dragon, then a mammal counts. 

Let’s start in the Paleocene. The dinosaurs are gone, and now mammals are filling all the niches. But what about top predators? Well, there’s the Panzer Crocs, as I’ve written about before, but still relatively rare. There’s the Diatryamas, but Gastornis is at least an omnivore, possibly a herbivore, and not cursorial at all.

Enter the Ungulates. The first ungulates were small omnivores, and one family diverged into predators, the Mesonychids. One of them, Dissacus, was made of several species, came in numerous sizes, and found on multiple continents. One specimen of Dissacus, AMNH 2454 was bigger than usual, but simply put into a new species, D. saurognathus.  In 1980, Leigh Van Valen took a look at it, and realized it was a new genus. Further expeditions to its location in New Mexico’s Nacimiento formation found more specimens: it was enormous. The sheer size of it led Van Valen to conclude it was a 300-500 lb animal. He named it Ankalagon, after Ancalagon the Black, Morgoth’s deadly firedrake from Tolkien’s epic The Silmarillion.  The genus Ancalagon had inexplicably already been taken by a Cambrian worm, so he changed the spelling.

Ankalagon would have been the top predator, as only conventional crocodiles and smaller Mesonychids have been found in that ecosystem. The common herbivore was the sheep-sized Pantolambda, which would have been easy prey: good motivation to evolve into the much larger Barylambda

1. Smok wawelski

My number one pick is a terrifying enigma from Triassic Poland.  Back in the Triassic, before the great dinosaur predators, the top predators that had succeeded the Permian gorgons were the Archosaurs.  I’ve already discussed Teratosaurus a few years ago, and I’ll discuss more in future articles, but this one is particularly interesting.

A University of Warsaw dig near Lisowice, Poland uncovered a fragmented skull, ZPAL V.33/15. They concluded it was a large theropod, perhaps related to Liliensternus or Halticosaurus. Nicknamed “The dragon of Lisowice”, it was assumed to be a basal tetanuran, ancestor to the later top predators of the Mesozoic. Further excavation discovered ribs, vertebrae, the pelvis, humeri, radii, and femurs.  The discover was compounded: this was a 20-foot apex predator, but what was it? The anatomy shared features of both theropod dinosaurs and raiuisuchians, but had features that excluded it from either.

In 2012, Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki described the animal-the basal archosaur was called Smok wawelski. The name refers to a legendary dragon of Krakow. A 13th bishop of Krakow, Wincenty Kadłubek, told the tale that Wawel Hill was once haunted by a monster,a fire breathing dragon who demanded the livestock of the people of Krakow…or their lives. The 8^th century King Krakus of Poland appointed his sons Lech and Krakus II to dispatch the monster. The brothers realized their swords and lances could not harm the creature, and they would be slain by the dragon’s flames, so they instead stuffed a calf’s skin with sulfur and fed it to the dragon as a show of submission. The sulfur ignited inside the dragon’s stomach, killing him. The happy ending is ruined the brothers quarreled amongst themselves-who murdered who depends on the version of the story you read, but it winds up with the murderer claiming the dragon slew his brother and then being exiled when the truth eventually is discovered. 

 

Hopefully further discoveries will establish what this creature really is, as well as its environment (an unnamed giant dicynodont was also discovered nearby). Smok represents the Triassic as an age of archosaurs, who would go on to rule the Mesozoic on land, sea, and sky and today still hold domain over water and air. 

Honorable mentions: Draconyx. Pantydraco, Xingxiulong  the early sauropodomorphs, Bolong the small basal hadrosauroid, Dracopelta the Jurassic European Ankylosaur, Dracoraptor the early Jurassic Coelophysid, Anhuilong  and Huangshanlong the big sauropods, Jianianhualong the early Troodont, Yunmenglong, Qiaowanlong and Yongjinglong  the Titanosaurs, the relatively small sauropod Qijianglong, the last ornithomimid in Asia Qiupalong, the small Asian carcharodontosaurs Datanglong and Shaochilong, the Chinese polacanthine Taohelong, the furry Heterodontosaur Tianyulong, the last Asian Oviraptor Tongtianlong, the oviraptors Beibeilong  and Wulatelong, the early hadrosauroids Datonglong , Yunganglong, Zuoyulong  and Xuwulong, the early Tyrannosaur Xiongguanlong, the mysterious maniraptoran Balaaur, the Iguanodont Zhanghenglong, the Dromeosaur Zhenyuanlong, the primitive Coelurosaur Zuolong, the giant ornithomimosaur Beishanlong, the Ankylosaur Chuanqilong, the Priapulid worm Ancalagon, and the fishing pterosaurs Ikrandraco and Dawndraco. 

Prehistory truly was a time of dragons-they may have not been the fire-breathing monsters of the human imagination, but they were every bit as fearsome and awe-inspiring. Happy dragon day!