HAOLONGGOOD - New for 2024

[Flaffy]

I'm very happy Haolonggood has produced a theropod again and that they are releasing two figures at the same time.  However, Majungasaurus isn't a species that interests me...  I wish companies would give representation to Abelisaurus, Aucasaurus or Skorpiovenator...  I guess Majungasaurus is popular though, so it gets attention after Carnotaurus...  I'm happy lots of people are pleased by this figure.

A Skorpiovenator would be a dream. Would've complemented their recent Argentinosaurus nicely too as both were found in the Huincul Formation of Argentina.

[Turkeysaurus]

Haolonggood PLEASE I can't TAKE this anymore, simply too many good releases, I can't keep up anymore hahah

We really are in a golden age of dinosaur collecting, so many good releases from so many companies clearly passionate about their work. My wallet is definitely not in a golden age though... 

It's still stone age here where i am from. lol. Can't order anything over 30 euros and that includes shipping too.

[DefinitelyNOTDilo]

I'm very happy Haolonggood has produced a theropod again and that they are releasing two figures at the same time.  However, Majungasaurus isn't a species that interests me...  I wish companies would give representation to Abelisaurus, Aucasaurus or Skorpiovenator...  I guess Majungasaurus is popular though, so it gets attention after Carnotaurus...  I'm happy lots of people are pleased by this figure.

A Skorpiovenator would be a dream. Would've complemented their recent Argentinosaurus nicely too as both were found in the Huincul Formation of Argentina.

While I would have loved a more obscure species, Majungasaurus is sorta a classic, and it's good to finally get a good figure in this scale. While something like Skorpiovenator would be nice, it's important to remember that Majungasaurus is about as far as you can get from Carnotaurus both morphologically and phylogenetically, so it makes sense to start out as diverse as possible.

[DefinitelyNOTDilo]

I also take the lack of jaw articulation as a good sign for the size, I think if they could have made it articulate they would have, but it was just too small, which hopefully means it's just small enough lol.

[Flaffy]

I'm very happy Haolonggood has produced a theropod again and that they are releasing two figures at the same time.  However, Majungasaurus isn't a species that interests me...  I wish companies would give representation to Abelisaurus, Aucasaurus or Skorpiovenator...  I guess Majungasaurus is popular though, so it gets attention after Carnotaurus...  I'm happy lots of people are pleased by this figure.

A Skorpiovenator would be a dream. Would've complemented their recent Argentinosaurus nicely too as both were found in the Huincul Formation of Argentina.

While I would have loved a more obscure species, Majungasaurus is sorta a classic, and it's good to finally get a good figure in this scale. While something like Skorpiovenator would be nice, it's important to remember that Majungasaurus is about as far as you can get from Carnotaurus both morphologically and phylogenetically, so it makes sense to start out as diverse as possible.

I agree that Majungasaurus is a good choice for their second abelisaur. Plus it fills a hole in the market that would've been occupied by the 1/35 Wild Past version had it released. I do hope the Majungasaurus will sell well enough to justify HLG doing a series of abelisaurs.

[bmathison1972]

Abelisaurs are such funky critters, it would be nice to see more representation

[DefinitelyNOTDilo]

Now that they've made Majunga I'd love to see an Ekrixinatosaurus or Skorpiovenator. I'd also love a Rugops but that's probably too small. What I'd love more than anything though is either a Ceratosaurus or any sort of noasaur, such as Deltadromeus or Elaphrosaurus.
V @vampiredesign just in case you're listening lol.

[oscars_dinos]

now pnso is going to release a majunga lol

[oscars_dinos]

Also I'll wait to see more pics of the styraco, its honestly good but yeah, Pnso for the skin detailing alone beats this guy out, but I will say not by much... HLG kept improving (I be it sparatically) so I believe I did the right thing by waiting to se this figure before deciding which styraco is right for me.

[dinofelid]

Sure, I agree it's reasonable to use horizontal length as a first approximation, but with more accurate measures the scale estimates can be refined--if you take the PNSO model as being 1:35 and compare it to the fossil Dodson describes, it'd be 34% larger based on hip height of 1.65 m, 39% larger if you use the centrum length of 5.1 meters I got using proportions from the Scott Hartman skeletal, and 48% larger with a femur length of 83 cm (though it's hard to judge exactly where the ends of the femur would be under the skin and muscle in the model, I could see it being as little as 3.2 cm rather than 3.5 cm, in which case it'd be more like 35% larger). Based on the numbers you mention it may be that for some large herbivores this is plausible for a large individual compared to an average one (assuming Dodson's was about average), for others well outside the range of what's been measured. For example in the case of African Elephants, p. 550 of this paper gives an average male shoulder height of 320 cm, and this page mentions the largest male on record was 3.96 meters at the shoulders, or about 24% taller.

How do we know if the holotype? described by Dodson is an average sized, small or large individual?

We don't know, but if it's the only reasonably complete postcranial skeleton of an adult Styracosaurus albertensis, it's probably statistically unlikely that it would be dramatically smaller than average. And if some of the other more fragmentary finds with pieces of the skull were known to be significantly larger than the corresponding parts of the holotype, I'd think that would be noted when giving length estimates based on the holotype. (The book does indicate it's the holotype, Dodson says on p. 140 that the type skeleton was dug up by Sternberg and described by Lambe in 1913, then on p. 167 says 'As a footnote, in 1935 the University of Toronto investigated the site where C. M. Sternberg had collected S. albertensis 22 years earlier. Some bone was exposed at the site, and further excavation resulted in the recovery of the missing lower jaws and a good portion of the skeleton. These bones have never been described but were eventually traded to Ottawa to accompany the type skeleton.' This history is also mentioned in the first paragraph of the Holmes, Ryan & Murray paper linked below.)

Most of the Styracosaurus albertensis finds mentioned on this paleofile page only seem to consist of pieces of skulls, only others with postcranial bones I see are the find written up in "Holmes, Ryan & Murray, 2006" (probably referring to this paper although here it's dated 2007) and the earlier "Ryan, 2003" (probably Ryan's 2003 Ph.D. dissertation listed in the references section of that paper), along with a different find written up in "Sweeney & Boyden, 1993" (not available online but googling shows it's titled 'A first report of the southernmost occurrence of the ceratopsian dinosaur, Styracosaurus albertensis, the first found in the United States', the 1993 'Abstracts of Papers' in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology is available on sci-hub here and lists this as a 'poster presentation' on p. 23A, with the abstract on p. 59A). So it looks like the Holmes, Ryan & Murray is the only one available online, and it mainly consists of a redescription of the holotype starting on p. 949 rather than a different find, though pages 955-960 describe "other specimens referred to Styracosaurus albertensis", the only one I see with postcranial bones is TMP 89.97.1 which is said to be a subadult.

[GnastyGnorc]

now pnso is going to release a majunga lol

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised lol

[Sim]

Deltadromeus is literally the worst choice for a figure. I don't get why people suggest it. It has morphology that is unique to it and Gualicho, no close relatives to fill in the skull, it's uncertain whether it was carnivorous or herbivorous, it's uncertain what kind of theropod it was, it's uncertain if it had a beak or teeth..

[DefinitelyNOTDilo]

Deltadromeus is literally the worst choice for a figure. I don't get why people suggest it. It has morphology that is unique to it and Gualicho, no close relatives to fill in the skull, it's uncertain whether it was carnivorous or herbivorous, it's uncertain what kind of theropod it was, it's uncertain if it had a beak or teeth..

Delta has an incredibly unique morphology for a theropod for one. For two, we know more about it than people seem to think. Thanks to Gualicho the skull is basically the only unknown. And using other noasaurs it's fairly easy to fill in.

[DefinitelyNOTDilo]

I've done a recon of it recently. It's not perfect, but I'd say it's pretty good, assuming a mosque position. (Which if you ask me is way more likely than a megaraptoran one)

Edit: Just realized I never posted it so I'm adding it here.

[thomasw100]

We don't know, but if it's the only reasonably complete postcranial skeleton of an adult Styracosaurus albertensis, it's probably statistically unlikely that it would be dramatically smaller than average.

My point was that because we have only one reasonably complete postcranial skeleton there is absolutely no way of knowing if this is an average, large or small individual. We could calculate the probability of finding the average, smallest or largest if we knew the size distribution. And we would have to know that the size is normally distributed and not bimodally (like two sub-populations because of sexual dimorphism).

And on top there are of course growth stages from juveniles through subadults and fully grown adult. Juveniles can be recognized because of less fusion of bones, but telling apart subadults from fully grown adults is more difficult.

Lets do a thought experiment. I make 100 3D prints of Styracosaurus models ranging from 14 to 18 cm in size and the size being normally distributed around an average of 16 but you do not know the size distribution because I am not telling you. You are then permitted to randomly draw one model out of the bag. How do you know if this is the average, smallest or largest model in the bag?

This is the situation we are facing with extinct species in case we don only have a handful of fossil individuals.

[Sim]

Precisely because of Deltadromeus's unique morphology it's a terrible choice for making into a figure. It's clearly very different to anything else except for Gualicho, and there's no way of knowing what the skull of these two is like. As I said before, there's no way to tell if Deltadromeus (and all this applies to Gualicho too) had a beak or teeth, whether it was a carnivore or herbivore, if its skull looked like Masiakasaurus's or Limusaurus's or like neither of these two. Noasaurids with known skulls are basically just those two and they look very different to any other dinosaur's skull so in other words it's not known if their skulls are normal for noasaurids or if there was a normal skull type for this group (it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't, considering all the weird and unique morphologies in the group). And all this is without considering if Deltadromeus and Gualicho are allosauroids, or even something else. I'm now reminded of the ridiculous "official" reconstruction of Gualicho which gave it basically a dragon's head that didn't look like any theropod's head. Now that I'm thinking about it, the same was done for Deltadromeus.

[crazy8wizard]

I even remember seeing a (pretty much entirely disputed) paper or article suggesting that Deltadromeus was an ornithomimid!
I have no idea if this was an actual peer reviewed paper or if it was just a paper submitted to a publishing company but I just wanted to point out the instability of reconstructing the animal.

[Flaffy]

I wouldn't mind more noasaurids on the market. Deltadromeus wouldn't be my first pick, but we've certainly seen species with less remains be turned into figures.

[Sim]

Also, Deltadromeus and Gualicho are much larger than Masiakasaurus and Limusaurus. To assume they had the same skull as either of the smaller ones isn't based on strong evidence.

[crazy8wizard]

Masiakasaurus also fits into a weirdly reoccurring paleontological trend where the most well known genus in a family happens to be one of the more unique or unusual members.