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Austroraptor β Dinosaur Concepts: Langdon's reptile of Muttaburra
Published: 2015-08-26 03:24:09 +0000 UTC; Views: 1634; Favourites: 50; Downloads: 0
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Description
Muttaburrasaurus langdoni, one of the most iconical Australo-Antartic animals, yet one of the most poorly understood, for once, we don't know exactly where it falls on the ornithischian evolutionary tree, recent studies put it close to Rhabdodontids, yet we don't know exactly where to put "Rhabdodontids" on the ornithischian evolutionary tree, or if they are actually a monophyletic group. Mutta for one, shows some very primitive features that may place it near Thescelosaurs or even earlier, but we just don't have enough to say at the moment. Decided to give it a fuzzy covering as some Β more basal ornithischians were recently found out to have it and this creature was actually far more primitive than we gave credit for, so i guess it just isn't crazy to assume it might have had fuzz of some sort, plus it lived in Bloody Australo-Antartica where, while it wasn't polar cold like today, it would still be very chilly and such a creature could benefit from some insulation.Related content
Comments: 7
IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE
I wasn't aware of it's basal position. That's very interesting!
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It basically boils down to the fact that it was last assigned as a "Rhabdodontid" which might very well be a wastebasket taxon just like "Hypsilophodontidae" and "Compsognathidae", basically, whenever a large ornithopod is found to not fit in any of the conventional groups its called a "Rhabdodontid". Some of these animals may be as advanced as later iguanodontians while others might be earlier than thescelosaurs, which might very well be Mutta's case.
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I see. Very interesting.
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Nice--love that large ornithischians are being portrayed as woolly more often these days. 
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Indeed! and considering its uncertain placement on the ornithischian tree and its location (which was very chilly and cold) it really baffles me that mine is the first fuzzy muta out there.
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Yeah, there's just too many conservative paleo people out there that NEED evidence of feathers in order to accept that a dinosaur was fuzzy, even though most of the evidence at this point suggests that at least half of non-avian dinosaurs were covered in a rather dense coat!
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