Here it is, our final This Mesozoic Month of 2017, but our first in our new home! I’ve really enjoyed this format for our periodical roundups, and hope you have as well.

In the News

HALSZKARAPTOR! This incredibly weird and cool dromaeosaur made a splash early this month in Nature. The goosey lil’ devil. Read more about the “murder-swan” from NYT, Newsweek, Cosmos, Tristan Stock, and our own Asher Elbein for Audubon.

Prof. Julia Clarke has used crocodile and bittern vocalizations to make a guess at what T. rex may have sounded like, and it’s quite creepy. Check out more from the Telegraph and Lisa Buckley.

The origin of plesiosaurs has been bumped up considerably: we now have Rhaeticosaurus, a Triassic plesiosaur. Read more from Brian Switek.

We’ve got some more tyrannosauroid remains from the Eastern US. Read more from Chase Brownstein at The Tetanurae Guy

New research looks at the forelimb anatomy of Chilesaurus, as well as the presence of automatic arm folding throughout archosauria. Read more from Zach Miller at Waxing Paleontological.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

Victoria Arbour has dived deep into the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s collection of natural history images and come back to us bearing gifts: early examples of skeletal diagrams of extant taxa. A cool look at a format that has, of course, become standard in the visual vocabulary of paleontology.

Sue, you know, the big T. rex at the Field Museum, gave a pretty great interview to Chicago Magazine regarding her popular Twitter account.

The PLoS team has been writing profiles for each of the top 10 open source fossil taxa of the year. Check them all out here.

At Equatorial Minnesota, Justin Tweet sums up a bunch of recent hadrosaur research.

Thea Boodhoo interviews paleontologist Ali Nabavizadeh for EARTH Magazine.

The Dinosaur Toy Blog reviews the new Safari Malawisaurus figure.

Meet the Fish Ripper, Two-O-Saurus, and more: new art from Dougal Dixon, translating children’s drawings of their imagined prehistoric beasts.

Paleoaerie offers a summary of the year in paleontology, all told 2003 new species. Check out the Guardian’s wrap-up of the top discoveries of the year, as well.

Albertonykus headed to PalAss 2017 conference, and writes up the whole adventure at Raptormaniacs.

Meet the Raven Shark: Chris DiPiazza writes about and illustrates Squalicorax.

The Empty Wallets Club

Speaking of Chris DiPiazza, he recently updated his offerings in his shop, so you should head over and check it out.

Some sweet new additions to the Palaeoplushies shop: Anzu and Gryposaurus!

The LITC AV Club

The Royal Tyrrell Museum takes you into the prep lab in a recent video feature.

Crowdfunding Spotlight

The Prehistoric Kingdom game is looking really wonderful! If you’re into paleontology (well, yeah you are) and tycoon-style park simulation, check it out at Kickstarter.

A Moment of Paleoart Zen

Oh, gosh, I know. A tyrannosaur got this spot two roundups in a row. I’m sure you’ll be able to deal, considering that this month’s feature is the beautiful, exhaustively researched Nanuqsaurus piece entitled Alice in Wonderland by Raven Amos. Raven was also featured in January, so she’s bookending 2017!

Keep up with Raven at her site with Scott Elyard, Cubelight GFX, as well as the Cubelight Twitter. They’ve also recently opened up shop on Gumroad, and many of their pieces are available there as prints on canvas or framed prints, including her er… awesome… design “Science made Dinosaurs Awesome” which features this Nanuqsaurus.