Troll_Man
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WWD: "Leaellynasaura amicagraphica"
🕑 Added 2023-07-04 22:38:57 +0000 UTCThis is definitely the most ambitious of the episodes of the original series. This was an ecosystem which had been discovered only about a decade prior and all the animals of it were incredibly obscure and poorly known. Still the effort is appreciated in the attempt to be cutting edge in dinosaur science, to dispel the notion that the age of dinosaurs was just endless tropical jungles and swamps. Here was evidence that some dinosaurs inhabited regions that were very cold.
Also rather innovative is that the protagonist of the episode is a rather "generic" dinosaur that is very poorly known, one of many small bipedal ornithischians known from the region. Perhaps the cold, extremely seasonal environment was easier to survive for such types of animals. Although the fact they could simply recycle the earlier Othnielia model probably had something to do with it.
Virtually all of the information presented about Leaellynasaura in the episode is speculative, although that is sort of a given considering the fragmentary nature of its fossils. I've reconstructed it here with an extraordinarily long tail based on a fossil from the same location assigned to the species, but its classification to Leaellynasaura is tentative at best due to lack of body overlap; a 2013 study found the only remains that were conclusively of the species was the holotype partial cranium. For this reason I've put the name in quotations due to the chimeric nature of Leaellynasaura fossils used in it.
The episode depicted Leaellynasaura weathering the harsh polar winter aboveground, but fossils found since indicate many small ornithischians were probable burrowers, with fossilized burrows likely belonging to animals like Leaellynasaura known from the region, making it more likely they had dens they could shelter in from the chill. The extraordinarily long tail lacked the ossified tendons known in many dinosaurs, so it was very bendy; coupled with the idea that it would've been shaggy like a fox or squirrel's tail, the idea it could drape its tail over itself like a blanket is tantalizingly plausible.
Also, this should be old news by now, but fossils have indicated that small ornithischians had feathers. The idea of any non-avian dinosaurs having feathers was very new at the time, so Leaellynasaura is completely scaly, but in hindsight it seems very likely it had feathers considering the fact it was a small, warm-blooded animal, that did not hibernate and could not migrate, and had to endure months of subzero temperatures every year.
Also, also, the evidence of the species having unusually large eyes, supposedly evidence of it being adapted to half a year of near-total continuous darkness, was discredited in a 2010 study which suggested that the large eyes were because the fossil belonged to a juvenile rather than being an adaptation for nocturnality.
