At 4/26/25 01:25 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:15 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:10 PM, OnixDark wrote:DID ANYBODY SAY DINOSAURS?

wasn't there a manga about a dinosaur zoo?

nice to see how i revived an old club with a single message i wrote from boredom

when i saw this club i was like: HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS CLUB BEFORE?
by the way, found the manga name: Dinosaur Sanctuary

At 4/26/25 01:26 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:25 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:15 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:10 PM, OnixDark wrote:DID ANYBODY SAY DINOSAURS?

wasn't there a manga about a dinosaur zoo?

nice to see how i revived an old club with a single message i wrote from boredom

when i saw this club i was like: HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS CLUB BEFORE?
by the way, found the manga name: Dinosaur Sanctuary

Lol, I just clicked on the community tab, selected clubs & crews and got all the way back to the last page

At 4/26/25 01:31 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:26 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:25 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:15 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:10 PM, OnixDark wrote:DID ANYBODY SAY DINOSAURS?

wasn't there a manga about a dinosaur zoo?

nice to see how i revived an old club with a single message i wrote from boredom

when i saw this club i was like: HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS CLUB BEFORE?
by the way, found the manga name: Dinosaur Sanctuary

Lol, I just clicked on the community tab, selected clubs & crews and got all the way back to the last page

good thing the rules about necro bumping allow reviving dead clubs if we add something to them.

i went to a dinosaur park the other day that had live-sized models and BOY, was that argentinosausus huge?

At 4/26/25 01:34 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:31 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:26 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:25 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:15 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:10 PM, OnixDark wrote:DID ANYBODY SAY DINOSAURS?

wasn't there a manga about a dinosaur zoo?

nice to see how i revived an old club with a single message i wrote from boredom

when i saw this club i was like: HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS CLUB BEFORE?
by the way, found the manga name: Dinosaur Sanctuary

Lol, I just clicked on the community tab, selected clubs & crews and got all the way back to the last page

good thing the rules about necro bumping allow reviving dead clubs if we add something to them.

i went to a dinosaur park the other day that had live-sized models and BOY, was that argentinosausus huge?

damn... remember my message about the dinosaur stickers i had in a shop near my house? well, the main prizes for collecting all 200 of them were a vr set and a ticket to a dinosaur park like that... sadly, i got none of them (vr sets were out of stock, and somebody else won the ticket before me), but i still have the book with all those stickes somewhere

At 4/26/25 01:39 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:34 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:31 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:26 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:25 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:15 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:10 PM, OnixDark wrote:DID ANYBODY SAY DINOSAURS?

wasn't there a manga about a dinosaur zoo?

nice to see how i revived an old club with a single message i wrote from boredom

when i saw this club i was like: HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS CLUB BEFORE?
by the way, found the manga name: Dinosaur Sanctuary

Lol, I just clicked on the community tab, selected clubs & crews and got all the way back to the last page

good thing the rules about necro bumping allow reviving dead clubs if we add something to them.

i went to a dinosaur park the other day that had live-sized models and BOY, was that argentinosausus huge?

damn... remember my message about the dinosaur stickers i had in a shop near my house? well, the main prizes for collecting all 200 of them were a vr set and a ticket to a dinosaur park like that... sadly, i got none of them (vr sets were out of stock, and somebody else won the ticket before me), but i still have the book with all those stickes somewhere

ouch.
i remember this video rental i used to rent movies from having a trade points for items system and they had a bunch of miniature dinosaurs available. guess what i traded all of my points for :3

At 4/26/25 01:41 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:39 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:34 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:31 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:26 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:25 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:15 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:10 PM, OnixDark wrote:DID ANYBODY SAY DINOSAURS?

wasn't there a manga about a dinosaur zoo?

nice to see how i revived an old club with a single message i wrote from boredom

when i saw this club i was like: HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS CLUB BEFORE?
by the way, found the manga name: Dinosaur Sanctuary

Lol, I just clicked on the community tab, selected clubs & crews and got all the way back to the last page

good thing the rules about necro bumping allow reviving dead clubs if we add something to them.

i went to a dinosaur park the other day that had live-sized models and BOY, was that argentinosausus huge?

damn... remember my message about the dinosaur stickers i had in a shop near my house? well, the main prizes for collecting all 200 of them were a vr set and a ticket to a dinosaur park like that... sadly, i got none of them (vr sets were out of stock, and somebody else won the ticket before me), but i still have the book with all those stickes somewhere

ouch.
i remember this video rental i used to rent movies from having a trade points for items system and they had a bunch of miniature dinosaurs available. guess what i traded all of my points for :3

i had two dinosaur figures too, one small mosasaur and a giant green cartoon-like brontosaur. i loved playing with them!... eh, i was so stupid when i was nine and said to my parents that i dont need any of my toys anymore :(

At 4/26/25 01:42 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:41 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:39 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:34 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:31 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:26 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:25 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:15 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/26/25 01:10 PM, OnixDark wrote:DID ANYBODY SAY DINOSAURS?

wasn't there a manga about a dinosaur zoo?

nice to see how i revived an old club with a single message i wrote from boredom

when i saw this club i was like: HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS CLUB BEFORE?
by the way, found the manga name: Dinosaur Sanctuary

Lol, I just clicked on the community tab, selected clubs & crews and got all the way back to the last page

good thing the rules about necro bumping allow reviving dead clubs if we add something to them.

i went to a dinosaur park the other day that had live-sized models and BOY, was that argentinosausus huge?

damn... remember my message about the dinosaur stickers i had in a shop near my house? well, the main prizes for collecting all 200 of them were a vr set and a ticket to a dinosaur park like that... sadly, i got none of them (vr sets were out of stock, and somebody else won the ticket before me), but i still have the book with all those stickes somewhere

ouch.
i remember this video rental i used to rent movies from having a trade points for items system and they had a bunch of miniature dinosaurs available. guess what i traded all of my points for :3

i had two dinosaur figures too, one small mosasaur and a giant green cartoon-like brontosaur. i loved playing with them!... eh, i was so stupid when i was nine and said to my parents that i dont need any of my toys anymore :(

i still have my toy dinosaurs here somewhere. i loved them too much to part ways.

At 4/26/25 08:01 PM, ShangXian wrote:Speaking of dinosaurs, here two photos of dinosaur fossils I took when I went to Trieste:

Ciro
Scipionyx samniticus. This is the holotype, SBA-SA 163760, which dates from the early Albian, about 110 million years old, and consists of an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile individual, lacking only the end of the tail, the lower legs and the claw of the right second finger. Extensive soft tissues have been preserved but no parts of the skin or any integument such as scales or feathers. The species was discovered in the spring of 1981 by Giovanni Todesco, an amateur paleontologist, in the small Le Cavere quarry at the edge of the village of Pietraroja, approximately seventy kilometers northeast of Naples. The specimen was preserved in the marine Pietraroja Formation, well known for unusually well-conserved fossils. The nickname "Ciro" was given by the Italian magazine Oggi, and Ciro is a typical Neapolitan boy's name. This was an idea by chief-editor Pino Aprile. In early 1993 Todesco, who had nicknamed the animal cagnolino, "little doggie", after its toothy jaws, brought the specimen to the attention of paleontologist Giorgio Teruzzi of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, who identified it as the juvenile of a theropod dinosaur and nicknamed it Ambrogio after the patron saint of Milan, Ambrose. In 1993 Teruzzi and Leonardi scientifically reported the find (1).

fun facts about the name: the generic name Scipionyx comes from the Latin name Scipio and the Greek ὄνυξ, onyx, the combination meaning "Scipio's claw", and you know what's fun? The fact Scipio both refers to the famous Roman consul who fought Hannibal AAANNND the 18th century geologist who wrote the first description of the formation in which the fossil was found, Scipione Breislak. But do you want to know an even more fun fact that links to my favourite dinosaur? Several other names had been considered but rejected, such as "Italosaurus", "Italoraptor" and "Microraptor" (2). The last name has since been used for the well-known dromaeosaurid found in China, lol.


Size?


Scipionyx holotype SKIPPY size 01.jpg by Conty, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Because the holotype is a hatchling of perhaps only a few days old, it is hard to determine the build of the adult animal but some general conclusions can be reliably made. Scipionyx was a small bipedal predator. Its horizontal rump was balanced by a long tail. The neck was relatively long and slender. The hindlimbs and especially the forelimbs were rather elongated. Dal Sasso & Maganuco considered it likely that a coat of primitive protofeathers was present, as these are also known from some direct relatives (3). If you look carefully in the photo, you can see the gut region. Scipionyx is unique in preserving in some form examples from most major internal organ groups: blood, blood vessels, cartilage, connective tissues, bone tissue, muscle tissue, horn sheaths, the respiratory system and the digestive system. Nervous tissue and the external skin, including possible scales or feathers, are absent (4). Here you can see the main organs in this diagram:


Scipionyx speculative anatomy.jpg by PaleoEquii, 31 October 2018, digitally drawn on top of a Wikipedia image of Scipionyx (File:Scipionyx_samniticus.JPG), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

The digestive tract of Scipionyx is generally short but wide. The overall length of the intestines — shorter than what was expected — indicates Scipionyx could process food very efficiently. The efficiency would be improved by the visible intestine folds, the plicae circulares, enlarging the absorption surface. Dal Sasso & Maganuco emphasised that a short tract does not necessarily imply that the processing time was short too; retention could have been prolonged to optimise digestion. Most extant vertebrate predators are capable of extracting about 75% of the energetic value of the prey flesh (5).

Antonio
Tethyshadros insularis, the fella you see in the photo is the holotype SC 57021. Tethyshadros is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Calcare di Aurisina (previously thought to come from the younger Liburnia Formation) of Trieste, Italy. The type and only species is T. insularis. In the 1980s, Alceo Tarlao and Giorgio Rimoli reported finding fragments of dinosaur bone while prospecting for rare bones. The abandoned quarry these were found in was only 100m inland, at Villagio del Pescatore, Trieste Province, Italy. It was from this quarry that a nearly complete hadrosaur skeleton was discovered in 1994. Once finally recovered, it was brought to the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Trieste (MCSNT) in the city of Trieste, though it was catalogued as property of the Italian State (SI) rather than under the museum.

The specimen underwent 2800 hours of preparation and was finished in December 2000, when the specimen was publicly presented. It was at this point that the specimen gained the nickname "Antonio", given to it in press reports. In 2004, a book on dinosaurs in Italy by Cristiano Dal Sasso was published which dedicated a chapter to the subject of the hadrosaurs from Trieste (6). The genus was named and described by Dalla Vecchia in 2009 and the genus name refers to the Tethys Ocean and the Hadrosauroidea. The specific name means "insular" or "of the island" in Latin, a reference to the fact that species would have lived on one of the larger islands of the European Archipelago (7). An additional extensive skeleton of Tethyshadros was found at this site, SC 57247, nicknamed "Bruno" (here the link because I ran out of characters....again XD)


References and footnotes:
(1) Leonardi, G. & Teruzzi, G., 1993, "Prima segnalazione di uno scheletro fossile di dinosauro (Theropoda, Coelurosauria) in Italia (Cretacico di Pietraroia, Benevento)", Paleocronache 1993: 7-14
(2) Cristiano Dal Sasso & Giuseppe Brillante, 2001, Dinosauri italiani, Marsilio pp 256
(3) Cristiano dal Sasso & Simone Maganuco, 2011, Scipionyx samniticus (Theropoda: Compsognathidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Italy — Osteology, ontogenetic assessment, phylogeny, soft tissue anatomy, taphonomy and palaeobiology, Memorie della Società Italiana de Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano XXXVII(I): 1-281
(4) Ibidem
(5) Ibidem
(6) Dal Sasso, Cristiano; Brillante, Giuseppe (2004). "'Antonio' and the Hadrosaurs of the Triestine Karst". Dinosaurs of Italy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indina University Press. pp. 99–113. ISBN 0-253-34514-6.
(7) Dalla Vecchia, F. M. (2009). "Tethyshadros insularis, a new hadrosauroid dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Italy". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 29 (4): 1100–1116. Bibcode:2009JVPal..29.1100D. doi:10.1671/039.029.0428. S2CID 198128196
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/14075

At 4/27/25 02:08 PM, OnixDark wrote:

At 4/26/25 08:01 PM, ShangXian wrote:Speaking of dinosaurs, here two photos of dinosaur fossils I took when I went to Trieste:

Ciro
Scipionyx samniticus. This is the holotype, SBA-SA 163760, which dates from the early Albian, about 110 million years old, and consists of an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile individual, lacking only the end of the tail, the lower legs and the claw of the right second finger. Extensive soft tissues have been preserved but no parts of the skin or any integument such as scales or feathers. The species was discovered in the spring of 1981 by Giovanni Todesco, an amateur paleontologist, in the small Le Cavere quarry at the edge of the village of Pietraroja, approximately seventy kilometers northeast of Naples. The specimen was preserved in the marine Pietraroja Formation, well known for unusually well-conserved fossils. The nickname "Ciro" was given by the Italian magazine Oggi, and Ciro is a typical Neapolitan boy's name. This was an idea by chief-editor Pino Aprile. In early 1993 Todesco, who had nicknamed the animal cagnolino, "little doggie", after its toothy jaws, brought the specimen to the attention of paleontologist Giorgio Teruzzi of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, who identified it as the juvenile of a theropod dinosaur and nicknamed it Ambrogio after the patron saint of Milan, Ambrose. In 1993 Teruzzi and Leonardi scientifically reported the find (1).

fun facts about the name: the generic name Scipionyx comes from the Latin name Scipio and the Greek ὄνυξ, onyx, the combination meaning "Scipio's claw", and you know what's fun? The fact Scipio both refers to the famous Roman consul who fought Hannibal AAANNND the 18th century geologist who wrote the first description of the formation in which the fossil was found, Scipione Breislak. But do you want to know an even more fun fact that links to my favourite dinosaur? Several other names had been considered but rejected, such as "Italosaurus", "Italoraptor" and "Microraptor" (2). The last name has since been used for the well-known dromaeosaurid found in China, lol.


Size?


Scipionyx holotype SKIPPY size 01.jpg by Conty, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Because the holotype is a hatchling of perhaps only a few days old, it is hard to determine the build of the adult animal but some general conclusions can be reliably made. Scipionyx was a small bipedal predator. Its horizontal rump was balanced by a long tail. The neck was relatively long and slender. The hindlimbs and especially the forelimbs were rather elongated. Dal Sasso & Maganuco considered it likely that a coat of primitive protofeathers was present, as these are also known from some direct relatives (3). If you look carefully in the photo, you can see the gut region. Scipionyx is unique in preserving in some form examples from most major internal organ groups: blood, blood vessels, cartilage, connective tissues, bone tissue, muscle tissue, horn sheaths, the respiratory system and the digestive system. Nervous tissue and the external skin, including possible scales or feathers, are absent (4). Here you can see the main organs in this diagram:


Scipionyx speculative anatomy.jpg by PaleoEquii, 31 October 2018, digitally drawn on top of a Wikipedia image of Scipionyx (File:Scipionyx_samniticus.JPG), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

The digestive tract of Scipionyx is generally short but wide. The overall length of the intestines — shorter than what was expected — indicates Scipionyx could process food very efficiently. The efficiency would be improved by the visible intestine folds, the plicae circulares, enlarging the absorption surface. Dal Sasso & Maganuco emphasised that a short tract does not necessarily imply that the processing time was short too; retention could have been prolonged to optimise digestion. Most extant vertebrate predators are capable of extracting about 75% of the energetic value of the prey flesh (5).

Antonio
Tethyshadros insularis, the fella you see in the photo is the holotype SC 57021. Tethyshadros is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Calcare di Aurisina (previously thought to come from the younger Liburnia Formation) of Trieste, Italy. The type and only species is T. insularis. In the 1980s, Alceo Tarlao and Giorgio Rimoli reported finding fragments of dinosaur bone while prospecting for rare bones. The abandoned quarry these were found in was only 100m inland, at Villagio del Pescatore, Trieste Province, Italy. It was from this quarry that a nearly complete hadrosaur skeleton was discovered in 1994. Once finally recovered, it was brought to the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Trieste (MCSNT) in the city of Trieste, though it was catalogued as property of the Italian State (SI) rather than under the museum.

The specimen underwent 2800 hours of preparation and was finished in December 2000, when the specimen was publicly presented. It was at this point that the specimen gained the nickname "Antonio", given to it in press reports. In 2004, a book on dinosaurs in Italy by Cristiano Dal Sasso was published which dedicated a chapter to the subject of the hadrosaurs from Trieste (6). The genus was named and described by Dalla Vecchia in 2009 and the genus name refers to the Tethys Ocean and the Hadrosauroidea. The specific name means "insular" or "of the island" in Latin, a reference to the fact that species would have lived on one of the larger islands of the European Archipelago (7). An additional extensive skeleton of Tethyshadros was found at this site, SC 57247, nicknamed "Bruno" (here the link because I ran out of characters....again XD)


References and footnotes:
(1) Leonardi, G. & Teruzzi, G., 1993, "Prima segnalazione di uno scheletro fossile di dinosauro (Theropoda, Coelurosauria) in Italia (Cretacico di Pietraroia, Benevento)", Paleocronache 1993: 7-14
(2) Cristiano Dal Sasso & Giuseppe Brillante, 2001, Dinosauri italiani, Marsilio pp 256
(3) Cristiano dal Sasso & Simone Maganuco, 2011, Scipionyx samniticus (Theropoda: Compsognathidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Italy — Osteology, ontogenetic assessment, phylogeny, soft tissue anatomy, taphonomy and palaeobiology, Memorie della Società Italiana de Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano XXXVII(I): 1-281
(4) Ibidem
(5) Ibidem
(6) Dal Sasso, Cristiano; Brillante, Giuseppe (2004). "'Antonio' and the Hadrosaurs of the Triestine Karst". Dinosaurs of Italy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indina University Press. pp. 99–113. ISBN 0-253-34514-6.
(7) Dalla Vecchia, F. M. (2009). "Tethyshadros insularis, a new hadrosauroid dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Italy". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 29 (4): 1100–1116. Bibcode:2009JVPal..29.1100D. doi:10.1671/039.029.0428. S2CID 198128196
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/14075

if anybody ever revives dinosaurs somehow, i would want that skippy one as a pet. so tiny! i wonder if it ate vertebrates or insects... maybe carrion?

if anybody ever revives dinosaurs somehow, i would want that skippy one as a pet. so tiny! i wonder if it ate vertebrates or insects... maybe carrion?

To directly answer your question:

the fossil provides direct information about the diet of Scipionyx because remains of a complete series of consecutive meals have been preserved. These confirm what already could be concluded from its phylogenetic affinities and general build: that Scipionyx was a predator. In the oesophagus tract about eight scales and some bone fragments are present. Dal Sasso & Maganuco considered it likely that these had not been swallowed as loose elements but were the remains of a meal. In the stomach position itself, a cluster of small bones is visible. These include an ankle with a three millimeter wide metatarsus consisting of five metatarsals attached, a tail vertebra and the upper end of an ulna. If the remains represent a single prey animal, it is likely either a member of the Mesoeucrocodylia or some lepidosaurian lizard-like animal.

At 4/26/25 08:01 PM, ShangXian wrote:Speaking of dinosaurs, here two photos of dinosaur fossils I took when I went to Trieste:

Ciro
Scipionyx samniticus. This is the holotype, SBA-SA 163760, which dates from the early Albian, about 110 million years old, and consists of an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile individual, lacking only the end of the tail, the lower legs and the claw of the right second finger. Extensive soft tissues have been preserved but no parts of the skin or any integument such as scales or feathers. The species was discovered in the spring of 1981 by Giovanni Todesco, an amateur paleontologist, in the small Le Cavere quarry at the edge of the village of Pietraroja, approximately seventy kilometers northeast of Naples. The specimen was preserved in the marine Pietraroja Formation, well known for unusually well-conserved fossils. The nickname "Ciro" was given by the Italian magazine Oggi, and Ciro is a typical Neapolitan boy's name. This was an idea by chief-editor Pino Aprile. In early 1993 Todesco, who had nicknamed the animal cagnolino, "little doggie", after its toothy jaws, brought the specimen to the attention of paleontologist Giorgio Teruzzi of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, who identified it as the juvenile of a theropod dinosaur and nicknamed it Ambrogio after the patron saint of Milan, Ambrose. In 1993 Teruzzi and Leonardi scientifically reported the find (1).

fun facts about the name: the generic name Scipionyx comes from the Latin name Scipio and the Greek ὄνυξ, onyx, the combination meaning "Scipio's claw", and you know what's fun? The fact Scipio both refers to the famous Roman consul who fought Hannibal AAANNND the 18th century geologist who wrote the first description of the formation in which the fossil was found, Scipione Breislak. But do you want to know an even more fun fact that links to my favourite dinosaur? Several other names had been considered but rejected, such as "Italosaurus", "Italoraptor" and "Microraptor" (2). The last name has since been used for the well-known dromaeosaurid found in China, lol.


Size?


Scipionyx holotype SKIPPY size 01.jpg by Conty, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Because the holotype is a hatchling of perhaps only a few days old, it is hard to determine the build of the adult animal but some general conclusions can be reliably made. Scipionyx was a small bipedal predator. Its horizontal rump was balanced by a long tail. The neck was relatively long and slender. The hindlimbs and especially the forelimbs were rather elongated. Dal Sasso & Maganuco considered it likely that a coat of primitive protofeathers was present, as these are also known from some direct relatives (3). If you look carefully in the photo, you can see the gut region. Scipionyx is unique in preserving in some form examples from most major internal organ groups: blood, blood vessels, cartilage, connective tissues, bone tissue, muscle tissue, horn sheaths, the respiratory system and the digestive system. Nervous tissue and the external skin, including possible scales or feathers, are absent (4). Here you can see the main organs in this diagram:


Scipionyx speculative anatomy.jpg by PaleoEquii, 31 October 2018, digitally drawn on top of a Wikipedia image of Scipionyx (File:Scipionyx_samniticus.JPG), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

The digestive tract of Scipionyx is generally short but wide. The overall length of the intestines — shorter than what was expected — indicates Scipionyx could process food very efficiently. The efficiency would be improved by the visible intestine folds, the plicae circulares, enlarging the absorption surface. Dal Sasso & Maganuco emphasised that a short tract does not necessarily imply that the processing time was short too; retention could have been prolonged to optimise digestion. Most extant vertebrate predators are capable of extracting about 75% of the energetic value of the prey flesh (5).

Antonio
Tethyshadros insularis, the fella you see in the photo is the holotype SC 57021. Tethyshadros is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Calcare di Aurisina (previously thought to come from the younger Liburnia Formation) of Trieste, Italy. The type and only species is T. insularis. In the 1980s, Alceo Tarlao and Giorgio Rimoli reported finding fragments of dinosaur bone while prospecting for rare bones. The abandoned quarry these were found in was only 100m inland, at Villagio del Pescatore, Trieste Province, Italy. It was from this quarry that a nearly complete hadrosaur skeleton was discovered in 1994. Once finally recovered, it was brought to the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Trieste (MCSNT) in the city of Trieste, though it was catalogued as property of the Italian State (SI) rather than under the museum.

The specimen underwent 2800 hours of preparation and was finished in December 2000, when the specimen was publicly presented. It was at this point that the specimen gained the nickname "Antonio", given to it in press reports. In 2004, a book on dinosaurs in Italy by Cristiano Dal Sasso was published which dedicated a chapter to the subject of the hadrosaurs from Trieste (6). The genus was named and described by Dalla Vecchia in 2009 and the genus name refers to the Tethys Ocean and the Hadrosauroidea. The specific name means "insular" or "of the island" in Latin, a reference to the fact that species would have lived on one of the larger islands of the European Archipelago (7). An additional extensive skeleton of Tethyshadros was found at this site, SC 57247, nicknamed "Bruno" (here the link because I ran out of characters....again XD)


References and footnotes:
(1) Leonardi, G. & Teruzzi, G., 1993, "Prima segnalazione di uno scheletro fossile di dinosauro (Theropoda, Coelurosauria) in Italia (Cretacico di Pietraroia, Benevento)", Paleocronache 1993: 7-14
(2) Cristiano Dal Sasso & Giuseppe Brillante, 2001, Dinosauri italiani, Marsilio pp 256
(3) Cristiano dal Sasso & Simone Maganuco, 2011, Scipionyx samniticus (Theropoda: Compsognathidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Italy — Osteology, ontogenetic assessment, phylogeny, soft tissue anatomy, taphonomy and palaeobiology, Memorie della Società Italiana de Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano XXXVII(I): 1-281
(4) Ibidem
(5) Ibidem
(6) Dal Sasso, Cristiano; Brillante, Giuseppe (2004). "'Antonio' and the Hadrosaurs of the Triestine Karst". Dinosaurs of Italy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indina University Press. pp. 99–113. ISBN 0-253-34514-6.
(7) Dalla Vecchia, F. M. (2009). "Tethyshadros insularis, a new hadrosauroid dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Italy". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 29 (4): 1100–1116. Bibcode:2009JVPal..29.1100D. doi:10.1671/039.029.0428. S2CID 198128196
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/14075

At 4/27/25 04:05 PM, WumbleWare95 wrote:

At 4/26/25 08:01 PM, ShangXian wrote:Speaking of dinosaurs, here two photos of dinosaur fossils I took when I went to Trieste:

Ciro
Scipionyx samniticus. This is the holotype, SBA-SA 163760, which dates from the early Albian, about 110 million years old, and consists of an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile individual, lacking only the end of the tail, the lower legs and the claw of the right second finger. Extensive soft tissues have been preserved but no parts of the skin or any integument such as scales or feathers. The species was discovered in the spring of 1981 by Giovanni Todesco, an amateur paleontologist, in the small Le Cavere quarry at the edge of the village of Pietraroja, approximately seventy kilometers northeast of Naples. The specimen was preserved in the marine Pietraroja Formation, well known for unusually well-conserved fossils. The nickname "Ciro" was given by the Italian magazine Oggi, and Ciro is a typical Neapolitan boy's name. This was an idea by chief-editor Pino Aprile. In early 1993 Todesco, who had nicknamed the animal cagnolino, "little doggie", after its toothy jaws, brought the specimen to the attention of paleontologist Giorgio Teruzzi of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, who identified it as the juvenile of a theropod dinosaur and nicknamed it Ambrogio after the patron saint of Milan, Ambrose. In 1993 Teruzzi and Leonardi scientifically reported the find (1).

fun facts about the name: the generic name Scipionyx comes from the Latin name Scipio and the Greek ὄνυξ, onyx, the combination meaning "Scipio's claw", and you know what's fun? The fact Scipio both refers to the famous Roman consul who fought Hannibal AAANNND the 18th century geologist who wrote the first description of the formation in which the fossil was found, Scipione Breislak. But do you want to know an even more fun fact that links to my favourite dinosaur? Several other names had been considered but rejected, such as "Italosaurus", "Italoraptor" and "Microraptor" (2). The last name has since been used for the well-known dromaeosaurid found in China, lol.


Size?


Scipionyx holotype SKIPPY size 01.jpg by Conty, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Because the holotype is a hatchling of perhaps only a few days old, it is hard to determine the build of the adult animal but some general conclusions can be reliably made. Scipionyx was a small bipedal predator. Its horizontal rump was balanced by a long tail. The neck was relatively long and slender. The hindlimbs and especially the forelimbs were rather elongated. Dal Sasso & Maganuco considered it likely that a coat of primitive protofeathers was present, as these are also known from some direct relatives (3). If you look carefully in the photo, you can see the gut region. Scipionyx is unique in preserving in some form examples from most major internal organ groups: blood, blood vessels, cartilage, connective tissues, bone tissue, muscle tissue, horn sheaths, the respiratory system and the digestive system. Nervous tissue and the external skin, including possible scales or feathers, are absent (4). Here you can see the main organs in this diagram:


Scipionyx speculative anatomy.jpg by PaleoEquii, 31 October 2018, digitally drawn on top of a Wikipedia image of Scipionyx (File:Scipionyx_samniticus.JPG), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

The digestive tract of Scipionyx is generally short but wide. The overall length of the intestines — shorter than what was expected — indicates Scipionyx could process food very efficiently. The efficiency would be improved by the visible intestine folds, the plicae circulares, enlarging the absorption surface. Dal Sasso & Maganuco emphasised that a short tract does not necessarily imply that the processing time was short too; retention could have been prolonged to optimise digestion. Most extant vertebrate predators are capable of extracting about 75% of the energetic value of the prey flesh (5).

Antonio
Tethyshadros insularis, the fella you see in the photo is the holotype SC 57021. Tethyshadros is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Calcare di Aurisina (previously thought to come from the younger Liburnia Formation) of Trieste, Italy. The type and only species is T. insularis. In the 1980s, Alceo Tarlao and Giorgio Rimoli reported finding fragments of dinosaur bone while prospecting for rare bones. The abandoned quarry these were found in was only 100m inland, at Villagio del Pescatore, Trieste Province, Italy. It was from this quarry that a nearly complete hadrosaur skeleton was discovered in 1994. Once finally recovered, it was brought to the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Trieste (MCSNT) in the city of Trieste, though it was catalogued as property of the Italian State (SI) rather than under the museum.

The specimen underwent 2800 hours of preparation and was finished in December 2000, when the specimen was publicly presented. It was at this point that the specimen gained the nickname "Antonio", given to it in press reports. In 2004, a book on dinosaurs in Italy by Cristiano Dal Sasso was published which dedicated a chapter to the subject of the hadrosaurs from Trieste (6). The genus was named and described by Dalla Vecchia in 2009 and the genus name refers to the Tethys Ocean and the Hadrosauroidea. The specific name means "insular" or "of the island" in Latin, a reference to the fact that species would have lived on one of the larger islands of the European Archipelago (7). An additional extensive skeleton of Tethyshadros was found at this site, SC 57247, nicknamed "Bruno" (here the link because I ran out of characters....again XD)


References and footnotes:
(1) Leonardi, G. & Teruzzi, G., 1993, "Prima segnalazione di uno scheletro fossile di dinosauro (Theropoda, Coelurosauria) in Italia (Cretacico di Pietraroia, Benevento)", Paleocronache 1993: 7-14
(2) Cristiano Dal Sasso & Giuseppe Brillante, 2001, Dinosauri italiani, Marsilio pp 256
(3) Cristiano dal Sasso & Simone Maganuco, 2011, Scipionyx samniticus (Theropoda: Compsognathidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Italy — Osteology, ontogenetic assessment, phylogeny, soft tissue anatomy, taphonomy and palaeobiology, Memorie della Società Italiana de Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano XXXVII(I): 1-281
(4) Ibidem
(5) Ibidem
(6) Dal Sasso, Cristiano; Brillante, Giuseppe (2004). "'Antonio' and the Hadrosaurs of the Triestine Karst". Dinosaurs of Italy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indina University Press. pp. 99–113. ISBN 0-253-34514-6.
(7) Dalla Vecchia, F. M. (2009). "Tethyshadros insularis, a new hadrosauroid dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Italy". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 29 (4): 1100–1116. Bibcode:2009JVPal..29.1100D. doi:10.1671/039.029.0428. S2CID 198128196
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/14075

I can't say that I fully understand all of this, but it was super fascinating to read about and to see these photos as well. Thanks for sharing!

At 4/27/25 04:18 PM, ShangXian wrote:

At 4/27/25 04:05 PM, WumbleWare95 wrote:

At 4/26/25 08:01 PM, ShangXian wrote:Speaking of dinosaurs, here two photos of dinosaur fossils I took when I went to Trieste:

Ciro
Scipionyx samniticus. This is the holotype, SBA-SA 163760, which dates from the early Albian, about 110 million years old, and consists of an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile individual, lacking only the end of the tail, the lower legs and the claw of the right second finger. Extensive soft tissues have been preserved but no parts of the skin or any integument such as scales or feathers. The species was discovered in the spring of 1981 by Giovanni Todesco, an amateur paleontologist, in the small Le Cavere quarry at the edge of the village of Pietraroja, approximately seventy kilometers northeast of Naples. The specimen was preserved in the marine Pietraroja Formation, well known for unusually well-conserved fossils. The nickname "Ciro" was given by the Italian magazine Oggi, and Ciro is a typical Neapolitan boy's name. This was an idea by chief-editor Pino Aprile. In early 1993 Todesco, who had nicknamed the animal cagnolino, "little doggie", after its toothy jaws, brought the specimen to the attention of paleontologist Giorgio Teruzzi of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, who identified it as the juvenile of a theropod dinosaur and nicknamed it Ambrogio after the patron saint of Milan, Ambrose. In 1993 Teruzzi and Leonardi scientifically reported the find (1).

fun facts about the name: the generic name Scipionyx comes from the Latin name Scipio and the Greek ὄνυξ, onyx, the combination meaning "Scipio's claw", and you know what's fun? The fact Scipio both refers to the famous Roman consul who fought Hannibal AAANNND the 18th century geologist who wrote the first description of the formation in which the fossil was found, Scipione Breislak. But do you want to know an even more fun fact that links to my favourite dinosaur? Several other names had been considered but rejected, such as "Italosaurus", "Italoraptor" and "Microraptor" (2). The last name has since been used for the well-known dromaeosaurid found in China, lol.


Size?


Scipionyx holotype SKIPPY size 01.jpg by Conty, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Because the holotype is a hatchling of perhaps only a few days old, it is hard to determine the build of the adult animal but some general conclusions can be reliably made. Scipionyx was a small bipedal predator. Its horizontal rump was balanced by a long tail. The neck was relatively long and slender. The hindlimbs and especially the forelimbs were rather elongated. Dal Sasso & Maganuco considered it likely that a coat of primitive protofeathers was present, as these are also known from some direct relatives (3). If you look carefully in the photo, you can see the gut region. Scipionyx is unique in preserving in some form examples from most major internal organ groups: blood, blood vessels, cartilage, connective tissues, bone tissue, muscle tissue, horn sheaths, the respiratory system and the digestive system. Nervous tissue and the external skin, including possible scales or feathers, are absent (4). Here you can see the main organs in this diagram:


Scipionyx speculative anatomy.jpg by PaleoEquii, 31 October 2018, digitally drawn on top of a Wikipedia image of Scipionyx (File:Scipionyx_samniticus.JPG), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

The digestive tract of Scipionyx is generally short but wide. The overall length of the intestines — shorter than what was expected — indicates Scipionyx could process food very efficiently. The efficiency would be improved by the visible intestine folds, the plicae circulares, enlarging the absorption surface. Dal Sasso & Maganuco emphasised that a short tract does not necessarily imply that the processing time was short too; retention could have been prolonged to optimise digestion. Most extant vertebrate predators are capable of extracting about 75% of the energetic value of the prey flesh (5).

Antonio
Tethyshadros insularis, the fella you see in the photo is the holotype SC 57021. Tethyshadros is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Calcare di Aurisina (previously thought to come from the younger Liburnia Formation) of Trieste, Italy. The type and only species is T. insularis. In the 1980s, Alceo Tarlao and Giorgio Rimoli reported finding fragments of dinosaur bone while prospecting for rare bones. The abandoned quarry these were found in was only 100m inland, at Villagio del Pescatore, Trieste Province, Italy. It was from this quarry that a nearly complete hadrosaur skeleton was discovered in 1994. Once finally recovered, it was brought to the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Trieste (MCSNT) in the city of Trieste, though it was catalogued as property of the Italian State (SI) rather than under the museum.

The specimen underwent 2800 hours of preparation and was finished in December 2000, when the specimen was publicly presented. It was at this point that the specimen gained the nickname "Antonio", given to it in press reports. In 2004, a book on dinosaurs in Italy by Cristiano Dal Sasso was published which dedicated a chapter to the subject of the hadrosaurs from Trieste (6). The genus was named and described by Dalla Vecchia in 2009 and the genus name refers to the Tethys Ocean and the Hadrosauroidea. The specific name means "insular" or "of the island" in Latin, a reference to the fact that species would have lived on one of the larger islands of the European Archipelago (7). An additional extensive skeleton of Tethyshadros was found at this site, SC 57247, nicknamed "Bruno" (here the link because I ran out of characters....again XD)


References and footnotes:
(1) Leonardi, G. & Teruzzi, G., 1993, "Prima segnalazione di uno scheletro fossile di dinosauro (Theropoda, Coelurosauria) in Italia (Cretacico di Pietraroia, Benevento)", Paleocronache 1993: 7-14
(2) Cristiano Dal Sasso & Giuseppe Brillante, 2001, Dinosauri italiani, Marsilio pp 256
(3) Cristiano dal Sasso & Simone Maganuco, 2011, Scipionyx samniticus (Theropoda: Compsognathidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Italy — Osteology, ontogenetic assessment, phylogeny, soft tissue anatomy, taphonomy and palaeobiology, Memorie della Società Italiana de Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano XXXVII(I): 1-281
(4) Ibidem
(5) Ibidem
(6) Dal Sasso, Cristiano; Brillante, Giuseppe (2004). "'Antonio' and the Hadrosaurs of the Triestine Karst". Dinosaurs of Italy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indina University Press. pp. 99–113. ISBN 0-253-34514-6.
(7) Dalla Vecchia, F. M. (2009). "Tethyshadros insularis, a new hadrosauroid dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Italy". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 29 (4): 1100–1116. Bibcode:2009JVPal..29.1100D. doi:10.1671/039.029.0428. S2CID 198128196
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/14075

I can't say that I fully understand all of this, but it was super fascinating to read about and to see these photos as well. Thanks for sharing!

You are welcome^^ sorry if I may be too technical, it's the way I am after being taught how to write in a more academic fashion at University. If you have questions don't hesitate to ask. I love dinosaurs and Science in general.

At 4/27/25 04:32 PM, Placeholder456 wrote:

At 4/27/25 04:18 PM, ShangXian wrote:

At 4/27/25 04:05 PM, WumbleWare95 wrote:

At 4/26/25 08:01 PM, ShangXian wrote:Speaking of dinosaurs, here two photos of dinosaur fossils I took when I went to Trieste:

Ciro
Scipionyx samniticus. This is the holotype, SBA-SA 163760, which dates from the early Albian, about 110 million years old, and consists of an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile individual, lacking only the end of the tail, the lower legs and the claw of the right second finger. Extensive soft tissues have been preserved but no parts of the skin or any integument such as scales or feathers. The species was discovered in the spring of 1981 by Giovanni Todesco, an amateur paleontologist, in the small Le Cavere quarry at the edge of the village of Pietraroja, approximately seventy kilometers northeast of Naples. The specimen was preserved in the marine Pietraroja Formation, well known for unusually well-conserved fossils. The nickname "Ciro" was given by the Italian magazine Oggi, and Ciro is a typical Neapolitan boy's name. This was an idea by chief-editor Pino Aprile. In early 1993 Todesco, who had nicknamed the animal cagnolino, "little doggie", after its toothy jaws, brought the specimen to the attention of paleontologist Giorgio Teruzzi of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, who identified it as the juvenile of a theropod dinosaur and nicknamed it Ambrogio after the patron saint of Milan, Ambrose. In 1993 Teruzzi and Leonardi scientifically reported the find (1).

fun facts about the name: the generic name Scipionyx comes from the Latin name Scipio and the Greek ὄνυξ, onyx, the combination meaning "Scipio's claw", and you know what's fun? The fact Scipio both refers to the famous Roman consul who fought Hannibal AAANNND the 18th century geologist who wrote the first description of the formation in which the fossil was found, Scipione Breislak. But do you want to know an even more fun fact that links to my favourite dinosaur? Several other names had been considered but rejected, such as "Italosaurus", "Italoraptor" and "Microraptor" (2). The last name has since been used for the well-known dromaeosaurid found in China, lol.


Size?


Scipionyx holotype SKIPPY size 01.jpg by Conty, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Because the holotype is a hatchling of perhaps only a few days old, it is hard to determine the build of the adult animal but some general conclusions can be reliably made. Scipionyx was a small bipedal predator. Its horizontal rump was balanced by a long tail. The neck was relatively long and slender. The hindlimbs and especially the forelimbs were rather elongated. Dal Sasso & Maganuco considered it likely that a coat of primitive protofeathers was present, as these are also known from some direct relatives (3). If you look carefully in the photo, you can see the gut region. Scipionyx is unique in preserving in some form examples from most major internal organ groups: blood, blood vessels, cartilage, connective tissues, bone tissue, muscle tissue, horn sheaths, the respiratory system and the digestive system. Nervous tissue and the external skin, including possible scales or feathers, are absent (4). Here you can see the main organs in this diagram:


Scipionyx speculative anatomy.jpg by PaleoEquii, 31 October 2018, digitally drawn on top of a Wikipedia image of Scipionyx (File:Scipionyx_samniticus.JPG), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

The digestive tract of Scipionyx is generally short but wide. The overall length of the intestines — shorter than what was expected — indicates Scipionyx could process food very efficiently. The efficiency would be improved by the visible intestine folds, the plicae circulares, enlarging the absorption surface. Dal Sasso & Maganuco emphasised that a short tract does not necessarily imply that the processing time was short too; retention could have been prolonged to optimise digestion. Most extant vertebrate predators are capable of extracting about 75% of the energetic value of the prey flesh (5).

Antonio
Tethyshadros insularis, the fella you see in the photo is the holotype SC 57021. Tethyshadros is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Calcare di Aurisina (previously thought to come from the younger Liburnia Formation) of Trieste, Italy. The type and only species is T. insularis. In the 1980s, Alceo Tarlao and Giorgio Rimoli reported finding fragments of dinosaur bone while prospecting for rare bones. The abandoned quarry these were found in was only 100m inland, at Villagio del Pescatore, Trieste Province, Italy. It was from this quarry that a nearly complete hadrosaur skeleton was discovered in 1994. Once finally recovered, it was brought to the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Trieste (MCSNT) in the city of Trieste, though it was catalogued as property of the Italian State (SI) rather than under the museum.

The specimen underwent 2800 hours of preparation and was finished in December 2000, when the specimen was publicly presented. It was at this point that the specimen gained the nickname "Antonio", given to it in press reports. In 2004, a book on dinosaurs in Italy by Cristiano Dal Sasso was published which dedicated a chapter to the subject of the hadrosaurs from Trieste (6). The genus was named and described by Dalla Vecchia in 2009 and the genus name refers to the Tethys Ocean and the Hadrosauroidea. The specific name means "insular" or "of the island" in Latin, a reference to the fact that species would have lived on one of the larger islands of the European Archipelago (7). An additional extensive skeleton of Tethyshadros was found at this site, SC 57247, nicknamed "Bruno" (here the link because I ran out of characters....again XD)


References and footnotes:
(1) Leonardi, G. & Teruzzi, G., 1993, "Prima segnalazione di uno scheletro fossile di dinosauro (Theropoda, Coelurosauria) in Italia (Cretacico di Pietraroia, Benevento)", Paleocronache 1993: 7-14
(2) Cristiano Dal Sasso & Giuseppe Brillante, 2001, Dinosauri italiani, Marsilio pp 256
(3) Cristiano dal Sasso & Simone Maganuco, 2011, Scipionyx samniticus (Theropoda: Compsognathidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Italy — Osteology, ontogenetic assessment, phylogeny, soft tissue anatomy, taphonomy and palaeobiology, Memorie della Società Italiana de Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano XXXVII(I): 1-281
(4) Ibidem
(5) Ibidem
(6) Dal Sasso, Cristiano; Brillante, Giuseppe (2004). "'Antonio' and the Hadrosaurs of the Triestine Karst". Dinosaurs of Italy. Bloomington, Indiana: Indina University Press. pp. 99–113. ISBN 0-253-34514-6.
(7) Dalla Vecchia, F. M. (2009). "Tethyshadros insularis, a new hadrosauroid dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Italy". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 29 (4): 1100–1116. Bibcode:2009JVPal..29.1100D. doi:10.1671/039.029.0428. S2CID 198128196
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/RIPS/article/view/14075

I can't say that I fully understand all of this, but it was super fascinating to read about and to see these photos as well. Thanks for sharing!

You are welcome^^ sorry if I may be too technical, it's the way I am after being taught how to write in a more academic fashion at University. If you have questions don't hesitate to ask. I love dinosaurs and Science in general.

Man, I love your long-ass texts, lol