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Can anyone identify this dinosaur?
Opium
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So the other day I went to the Museum of Natural History and in the fossil hall I saw this beauty hanging from the ceiling:
Unfortunately though, I forgot to write down the specific name of this specimen and now that I am going through the photographs I made that day and storing them with species labels etc., this is the only one that I can't seem to find the name of by Googling or on the AMNH website (they only have a few of their fossils listed, not all). So I was hoping a dinosaur expert or AMNH connoisseur here can tell me the exact species name. I know it must be some kind of pliosaur, but which exactly?
Unfortunately though, I forgot to write down the specific name of this specimen and now that I am going through the photographs I made that day and storing them with species labels etc., this is the only one that I can't seem to find the name of by Googling or on the AMNH website (they only have a few of their fossils listed, not all). So I was hoping a dinosaur expert or AMNH connoisseur here can tell me the exact species name. I know it must be some kind of pliosaur, but which exactly?
Opium on
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i know i looked at that
but i totally forget
Yes, technically a dinosaur walks on land and is called that based on its hip structure.
I'm not 100% that skeleton is an ichthyosaur, though. It probably is but the picture is taken at a weird angle and I can't really get a bead on what the skull looks like, but that's probably what it is.
It's been a long time since I took that class, though, so somebody else can probably clarify much better than I can.
EDIT: Looks like Dimetrodon was actually a theropsid, or a mammal-like reptile and did in fact live in the Permian period. Neato.
There are both "bird hipped" and "lizard hipped" dinosaurs. Ornithischian are the bird hipped, and Saurischian = lizard hipped. But, Dimetrodon wasn't a dinosaur, and it didn't stand up like dinosaurs...it's legs were more out to the side like a komodo dragon, or many of todays lizards.