@Paleodude123 @paleoacker

It's also neat that for such an iconic group that we've known of for well over 100 years, this is a bone we've never seen before. And 2026 has been a good year for pachycephalosaur 'missing bones', 'cause we've found, and are reporting on, the two that were 'missing' 😎

We also question hyoids as reliable osteohistological recorders of growth - but we didn't, nor are we wading into any ontogimorph debates (but "Draco" ain't a real thing...)

It's not a 'stop the presses' kind of finding, but it suggests neat things about pachycephalosaur anatomy and feeding behavior: like, these weirdos probably had large and really developed tongues for moving food around in their mouths (makes sense with the short arms).

And not just any pachycephalosaur - it's from the never debated, nor controversial *holotype* of "Dracorex" (and yes, I know what you're thinking: this bone was never reported in the holotypic description)

First, the paper: The first occurrence of a probable pachycephalosaurian hyoid element peerj.com/articles/21719/

HA! I beat @TomHoltzPaleo *AND* Ben Creisler in posting a new paleo paper!  Just published in @thePeerJ, a paper with @histo_holly, Laura Rooney, & Joe Frederickson on what we believe is the *first* ceratobranchial (aka hyoid) ever found/reported from a pachycephalosaur! 🧵

(*also, Sally & I did not plan to color coordinate... But, I got to the Institute first that day, so she's the one who needs to change...)

If I had a nickel for every paleontologist with a pachycephalosaur tattoo posing with a pachycephalosaur fossil, I’d have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Here's Sally Hurst & I with a HUGE specimen of Prenocephale we're working on.

🎉🎉 *IT'S HUNTER'S BIRTHDAY*!!!! 🎉🎉 My baby boy turns *7* today! 7?! How can it be 7 years already?! Here's a big birthday steak for the big birthday man, and here's to the bestest boy! (and per tradition, the annual birthday growth curve)

Which I think is hella cool & goes to show that sauropods just simply didn't get big throughout their evolutionary history. Throughout their history & throughout various clades, there were various ways - & various combos of those ways, that they achieved their immense sizes. -fin

"These findings suggest that sauropod gigantism was sustained by lineage-specific combinations of femoral geometry, internal architecture and articular soft tissues." (fig 6 from Silva Junior et al)

2) "Narrow" vs "wide-gauge" posture has a *rich* history in the sauropod literature. Silva Junior et al examined this via stress distribution, structural, and microanatomical analyses. Their findings suggest that:

"Locally, the results suggest that, in most species, the bones of the braincase and the maxilla were especially susceptible to sustaining and enforcing major spatial constraints, which probably channeled their morphological evolution." (📷figs 4 & 5 from Schuurman et al)

1) *HOW* did this paper slip under my radar for so long?! Doing an *INSANELY* cool study where they examined topological modules consisting of 42 nodes and 105 edges, Schuurman et al found (that & I have to quote them because it's a great line):

First, here are the links to the papers: 1) doi.org/10.1111/pala.70079 2) doi.org/10.1098/rsos.261186

Holy cow! 😲 Here are two great sauropod (🦕) papers that I've completely spaced on mentioning: 1) Anatomical network analysis of sauropodomorph cranial topology. 2) Built for bulk: posture, microanatomy and soft tissue shaped gigantism in Sauropoda. 🧵

Mongolian Institute of Paleontology (I wish there wasn't the character limit that made me only put the abbreviation)

I swear I was gonna do a tyrannosaur #FossilFriday even before Tromerosaurus dropped! 😅 Each time I'm at the MIP, even I have to admire and drool over the 'baby' Tarbosaurus MPC-D 107/7. Check out the 'chicken wing'-sized articulated arm from this specimen!!!!🤩

Thank you!