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Tom Dudgeon

@tom-dudgeon.bsky.social
171 followers 166 following 57 posts

Rebanks Research Fellow at the Royal Ontario Museum Functional morphology, cranial biomechanics, palaeontology 🦖 🐊🦈 PhD from the University of Toronto He/Him Opinions are my own

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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The holotype of Infernogallus jamesi is now on display at @romtoronto.bsky.social in the newly revitalized #dinosaur gallery, come check it out for yourself! [15/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
This project was a delight to work on, and I owe a big shoutout to project lead Greg Funston, and coauthors David Evans, Jade Simon, Danielle Dufault, @boydpaleo.bsky.social, @denverfowler.bsky.social, and Phil Currie. [14/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
All together, Infernogallus demonstrates exciting and unprecedented ecological specializations among dinosaurs, and shows how we're still finding bizarre new species even in T. rex's backyard. [13/15] (Art by Danielle Dufault)
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The small body size is particularly interesting, since it's been thought that dinosaurs went extinct primarily because their large body sizes made them vulnerable to ecosystem collapse. Clearly, extinction dynamics were more complex than we thought. [12/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Bone histology shows this individual was fully grown, making it one of the smallest known caenagnathids, and one of the smallest dinosaurs in the Hell Creek ecosystem. [11/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The next surprise was its size. Just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving, Infernogallus was about the size of a turkey 🦃, weighing only 25 lbs (~12 kg). [10/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
We next ran diversity analyses to compare the timing of caenagnathid evolution with large fleshy fruits. Excitingly, we found an evolutionary correlation that isn't recovered in other dinosaurs, supporting the hypothesis that they had a close ecological relationship. [9/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
All of these features together are only converged on in one living group of birds - obligate fruit-eating parrots... This was the first line of evidence to suggest that these dinosaurs were specialized for eating fruits. [8/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The palate and braincase were where things got really weird - the small braincase and swooped palate modified the orientations of the jaw muscles, making the jaws slide forwards and backwards easily but also making them weak at closing vertically. [7/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The beak shape and jaw joint are classic adaptations in living beaked herbivores that are specialized for soft plant material to let the jaws slide and mash these foods, but are unusual for a dinosaur. [6/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
We set out to run comparative analyses with related dinosaurs and modern birds to understand the potential function of these features. [5/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The jaws were also clearly specialized, where the jaw joint formed a distinct ridge-and-saddle, and the beak had an alternating set of ridges and grooves that interlocked with one another. [4/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The first surprise was its skull, which differed from related species in having large eyes, yet reduced muscle attachments for the jaws. Most unusual was the palate, which swooped down into the cavity of the mouth. [3/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Infernogallus was a caenagnathid, a group of beaked dinosaurs that was poorly known due to the rarity of their fossils. Here, we describe Infernogallus using a nearly complete skull and skeleton and other isolated bones that give us exciting insights into their biology. [2/15]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Absolutely thrilled to share Infernogallus jamesi, a new theropod from the Hell Creek with bizarre features that we argue were specializations for eating fruits. A thread 🧵 [1/15] www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Fruit-eating adaptations in a Late Cretaceous oviraptorosaur (Theropoda) - Nature Communications
Dinosaurs coexisted with flowering plants, but it’s unclear whether they ate them. The study presents a new small theropod dinosaur with remarkable jaw adaptations for eating fruit, providing one of t...
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Lastly, the ontogenetic changes in cranial stress distribution may reflect the changes that occurred through crest evolution in iguanodontians, from early diverging crestless taxa to derived crested lambeosaurines. Direct testing of this hypothesis is forthcoming. [12/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Few modern species have the same ontogenetic trend in muscle size as Corythosaurus, suggesting that having proportionately large jaw muscles early in ontogeny was an important adaptation to increase diet breadth for this species, and potentially hadrosaurids generally. [11/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Our results have important implications: Ontogenetic resource partitioning in Corythosaurus was primarily size-mediated, where larger individuals could access a wider range of plant materials, but ontogenetic changes in the relative size of the jaw muscles were evident. [10/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Excitingly, these results are similar to our previous study that compared the mature Corythosaurus individual to the crestless hadrosaurine Gryposaurus, supporting our hypothesis that crest development altered cranial function during feeding. [9/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
This ontogenetic shift in stress distribution matches the development of the bony cranial crest and may represent an adaptation to direct the pressures from feeding away from the delicate structure. [8/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Our analysis also revealed an interesting pattern in stress distribution - juveniles experienced stress throughout the cranium, including the snout, whereas the subadult and especially the adult experienced stress concentrated posteriorly in the braincase. [7/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Unusually, juvenile Corythosaurus had larger, stronger jaw muscles than expected for their small size, which we propose represents an adaptation to increase muscle size, and therefore bite force and diet breadth, at small body sizes when dietary constraints were highest. [6/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Jaw muscle orientation and mechanical efficiency did not change through ontogeny, despite the shape changes in the skull roof associated with crest development. Bite force was higher in larger individuals, as expected, suggesting an ontogenetic trend towards tougher foods. [5/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Here, we reconstruct four skulls and jaws of Corythosaurus and subject them to muscle reconstruction and Finite Element Analysis to investigate the potential for an ontogenetic shift in resource consumption, and to test how crest development impacted feeding performance. [4/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Hadrosaurids are of interest here because of their taxonomic diversity and complex feeding system, but within hadrosaurids, lambeosaurines are unique in experiencing extreme changes to the skull where the premaxillae and nasals form large bony crests for display. [3/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Many dinosaurs grew through a range of sizes, from a few kg to multiple tons. It’s generally accepted that large plant-eating dinosaurs shifted resource consumption as they matured, but quantitative evaluations of skull biomechanics through ontogeny have not been done. [2/12]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Happy to present the latest work from my PhD as an advance article in @journal-evo.bsky.social today! David Evans and I present an analysis of feeding mechanics in an ontogenetic series of the hadrosaurid Corythosaurus, the first of its kind in dinosaurs. A thread [1/12] doi.org/10.1093/evol...
doi.org
Ontogenetic changes in the cranial biomechanics of a crested hadrosaurid dinosaur
Abstract. Mesozoic ecosystems differed from the present in the abundance of large-bodied herbivores that grew through several feeding envelopes, raising th
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Some really bizarre anatomy in a hadrosauroid, raising even more questions given the recent Muttaburrasaurus redescription. Congrats to the team!
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Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. @arctomet.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Huang, J., Wu, W., Mao, L. et al. Cellular-level preservation of cutaneous spikes in an Early Cretaceous iguanodontian dinosaur. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s415...
doi.org
Cellular-level preservation of cutaneous spikes in an Early Cretaceous iguanodontian dinosaur - Nature Ecology & Evolution
A juvenile iguanodontian from the Lower Cretaceous of China preserves both spikes and scales in its skin that are different from integumentary structures in either non-avian dinosaurs or extant squama...
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The Anatomical Record @anatrecord.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Lambeosaurine crests! New work compares internal nasal anatomy of adult Corythosaurus & Lambeosaurus vs juveniles & Hypacrosaurus. Strong genus-level differences, but surprisingly little variation between Corythosaurus species. Dudgeon et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Putting the finishing touches on the @romtoronto.bsky.social shark workshop! Tomorrow we'll be diving into shark evolution and diversity, from the earliest jawed fish, to Megalodon and the mako. #FossilFriday
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Cass Morrison @cretaceous-cass.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Very special #FossilFriday, pleased to announced that we have a new paper out on reconstructing the ecosystem of Dry Mesa Quarry in the Morrison Formation We used modern ecological techniques to quantity and model the ecosystem Feel sorry for the baby Sauropods 😞 🦕🦕 Sergey Krasovskiy +Pedro Salas
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Lastly, our results emphasize the importance of performing complete adductor muscle reconstructions when running FEAs, and analyses that simplify muscle vectors to single points will possibly miss key data on functional performance. [11/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Size mediated resource partitioning is common in modern systems, suggesting that although hadrosaurids, ceratopsids, and ankylosaurians were specialized for different plants, within-group partitioning was subtle and ecological signals cannot be found, apart from size. [10/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Our results have important implications: Resource partitioning between hadrosaurids was size mediated, where similarly sized animals had similar potential for food processing. Larger hadrosaurines had stronger bites than lambeosaurines, and likely had a wider diet breadth. [9/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
This difference in stress distribution is likely a product of extreme cranial anatomy in Corythosaurus, where the lambeosaurine cranial crest resulted in a change to cranial biomechanics. Further testing of other lambeosaurines is underway to explore this possibility. [8/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Curiously, our analysis also reveals that Gryposaurus and Corythosaurus skulls dissipated stress very differently from each other. Gryposaurus had the typical tetrapod stress distribution, but Corythosaurus differed in experiencing very little stress in the snout. [7/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
These differences in muscle size and efficiency mean similarly sized Gryposaurus and Corythosaurus had similar bite forces. However, Gryposaurus could attain much larger skull sizes than Corythosaurus, meaning adults had higher bite forces and could eat tougher plants. [6/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Our analyses reveal biologically relevant differences in the arrangement of the jaw muscles in these animals, where Gryposaurus had proportionately larger jaw muscles than Corythosaurus, but those of Corythosaurus had better leverage and could impart a greater force. [5/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Here, we sought out to test whether there are differences in feeding mechanics between the hadrosaurine Gryposaurus, and the coexisting lambeosaurine Corythosaurus from the DPF using Finite Element Analysis. [4/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Hadrosaurids are particularly interesting when discussing adaptations for feeding because of their high diversity, complex feeding system, and the frequent co-occurrence of multiple hadrosaurid species within an ecosystem. [3/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
The DPF is unusual in the large number of herbivores that coexisted, and is commonly explained by resource partitioning. Evidence for resource partitioning between major groups has frequently been found, but evidence within groups, like hadrosaurids, has been subtle. [2/11]
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
I’m thrilled to present the latest work from my PhD! David Evans and I evaluated feeding mechanics in two hadrosaurids from the Dinosaur Park Fm, and the differences were quite exciting. A thread [1/11] doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
doi.org
Disparate feeding mechanics between two hadrosaurid dinosaurs support the potential for resource partitioning | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
The Dinosaur Park Formation (DPF) of western Canada is well known for its diverse fossil assemblage, preserving over a dozen species of large-bodied herbivorous dinosaurs. The high density of large herbivores has raised questions of how these animals were ...
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Dr Dave Hone @davehone.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
After an incredibly long gestation period, I have a new paper out reviewing all the data and evidence we have on the pterosaurian uropatagium. Full link to the paper is in the blogpost linked below: archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2025/09/16/t...
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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
If you don't have access to Nature, but would like to read our paper on the new specimen of #Spicomellus, you can read it online at this link with no subscription: rdcu.be/eCJK3
rdcu.be
Extreme armour in the world’s oldest ankylosaur
Nature - The ankylosaurian dinosaur Spicomellus afer possessed a tail weapon and uniquely elaborate dermal armour.
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Ever wonder what dinosaurs might have sounded like? Courtney Brown and Cezary Gajewski developed Dinosaur Choir, a mix of palaeo and music that turns hadrosaurs into instruments. It was a blast to consult, this opens new doors for palaeo reconstructions... www.fastcompany.com/91291997/din...
fastcompany.com
This wild new instrument brings a dinosaur back to life
A new instrument called the Dinosaur Choir uses CT scans and 3D modeling to recreate actual the sounds of a Corythosaurus.
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PaleoJim @paleojim.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
A while back we posted a fairly low res. 3D model of a complete skull of the Early Cretaceous therizinosaurus Beipaiosaurus from Liaoning with proto-feathers. sketchfab.com/3d-models/be... Fun to play with. I'm curious if it is printable. @paleontologizing.bsky.social @utahpaleo-ufop.bsky.social
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Professor John R. Hutchinson @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Oh groovy, our paper on the hindlimb biomechanics of the Triassic dinosauriform Lagosuchus is out! A quick thread for now. We uCT-scanned most of the existing skeletal material for this important outgroup to Dinosauria. We sorted through the elements and chose the best ones to make a 3D model from.
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Professor Anjali Goswami FRS @evoswami.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
New paper! For all of you working with 3d scans (e.g. micro-CT, MRI), check out SPROUT, a rapid open-source tool for generating segmented and parcellated data, meaning your scans are separated into the individual elements without any manual labelling or training. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Figure showing diverse datasets analysed with SPROUT, including a skink skeleton, aardvark skull, human heart, concrete block, and foraminifera.
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Tom Dudgeon @tom-dudgeon.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Thanks Ali!
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