Meet Ubirajara jubatus, a newly discovered Brazilian Dinosaur with a mane

[ceratopsian]

Here's the link to the abstract - paywalled, so I can't pick up more details.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195667120303736?fbclid=IwAR20YvdE4iZHMaORZo9yCVf4v3T8K-Jk3oSpulWnnIbKcYwTKGSK2vqa4r4

It's described as a maned compsognathid theropod.  So sounds interesting....

[Faelrin]

Very interesting. Honestly I'm quite impressed with how many well preserved compsognathids there are (which are also tragically underrepresented, for the majority anyways). I had a look at the abstract and glimpsed at the pics. And a first find for such integument from Gondwana too? That's a big deal. This kind of find there may hopefully open the doors in the future to finding more.

I am hoping there will be some more reporting on this so folks can get a better look at this find. Being paywalled kind of gets in the way of that unfortunately.

[ceratopsian]

I'm hoping that @Halichoeres will help us out here!

[CityRaptor]

A maned Compsognatid? Interesting and also a great find, but perhaps not too surprising given what we know about them.

[irimali]

There's a few images from the paper on twitter:

https://twitter.com/search?q=ubirajara&src=typed_query&f=image





And some more artwork further down.

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

Apparently one of the authors of the paper is a little dodgy to say the least but that doesn't  discount the paper

[Shonisaurus]

I hope that Collecta, Safari, PNSO, GR Toys, Vitae or Favorite or another brand of scientific toy dinosaurs will be encouraged to reproduce in figure the ubirajara jubatus is an interesting dinosaur and its discovery, judging by the article, is extremely interesting, give me the redundancy.

[Libraraptor]

So are there spines protruding from its shoulders?

[ceratopsian]

Seems so. At least Bob Nicholls, the artist, commented that they were very straight.

So are there spines protruding from its shoulders?

[Piltdown 龍]

Fossil was illegally smuggled out of Brazil. The Brazilian palaeontologists on Twitter are understandably fuming.

This is hardly the first time papers have been written on illegally obtained specimens. What that says about the authors' morality...

[Halichoeres]

I'm hoping that @Halichoeres will help us out here!

Of course! Anyone who wants a pdf, just pm me your email address and I'll send it your way.

Cretaceous Research shouldn't have published this in its current form. Martill has a pattern of flouting laws regarding specimen provenance, as we saw when Tetrapodophis was published. It's hard to know which other authors were aware that this was unethical, but Martill surely did.

So are there spines protruding from its shoulders?

They're long, straight, stiff feathers, maybe similar to what you'd see in birds of paradise.

[ceratopsian]

I didn't realise initially that the provenance was dodgy in the extreme.  "Crato" and "Martill" should have put me on the alert.

[Faelrin]

@MagicGlueLong Thank you for bringing to light about this having been smuggled out of its home country, and the lack of ethics regarding this paper being published on it. Would the publisher need to retract it, or have a statement added about this issue, assuming anything of the sort has been done in the past?

[Piltdown 龍]

@MagicGlueLong Thank you for bringing to light about this having been smuggled out of its home country, and the lack of ethics regarding this paper being published on it. Would the publisher need to retract it, or have a statement added about this issue, assuming anything of the sort has been done in the past?

I am not familiar with the ethical policies of scientific journals, but I suspect nothing will happen to him. After all, as @Halichoeres noted above, this is not the first time he has done this, and he emerged unscathed last time, so he probably thinks he can now act with impunity, without blowback from dinosaurphiles. Given how many depictions and drawings of Ubirajara are now flooding Twitter he is correct in his assessment.

By the way, he could easily resolve this ethical quandary by simply including a Brazilian author on the paper. He did not because, as he said during his last scandal, he would also have to include a woman, a Black, a "cripple" [sic!] and a homosexual to balance things out. I am not a woke person but I find such gratuitous insults to be rather offensive.

I also noticed very, very few of the non-Brazilian palaeontologists on Twitter have condemned Martil_. Consider about what that says about dinosaurology.

[Faelrin]

@MagicGlueLong Really a shame someone like that is in the field.

[DinoToyForum]

Was this specimen really "illegally smuggled out of Brazil"? The paper states:

"It was obtained from a stone quarry...[in]...Brazil and brought to Germany along with scientific samples in 1995 in accordance with the decree law No. 4146 from the 4th of March 1942. Authorisation for specimen export was granted on 1st February 1995 by an agent of the Crato office of the DNPM (Departamento Nacional de Produçao Mineral). The specimen is housed in the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe, Erbprinzenstrabe 13, D-76133 Karlsruhe, Germany (SMNK), and is available on request."

Which sounds legit. But is it more complicated than that?

[ceratopsian]

I looked through the paper last night and had also noticed this.  I don't know enough to understand if there are problems underlying the statement about legal export.  I would very much like to know the answer.

Was this specimen really "illegally smuggled out of Brazil"? The paper states:

"It was obtained from a stone quarry...[in]...Brazil and brought to Germany along with scientific samples in 1995 in accordance with the decree law No. 4146 from the 4th of March 1942. Authorisation for specimen export was granted on 1st February 1995 by an agent of the Crato office of the DNPM (Departamento Nacional de Produçao Mineral). The specimen is housed in the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe, Erbprinzenstrabe 13, D-76133 Karlsruhe, Germany (SMNK), and is available on request."

Which sounds legit. But is it more complicated than that?

[Piltdown 龍]

Amongst other things, Brazilian law seems to indicate that whenever a type specimen from Brazil is formally erected as a new species, a Brazilian paleontologist must be involved in writing the paper. On Twitter many Brazilian palaeontologists have cited the law, as well as other legal requirements. There are many other things I could say, but since many people here are personally acquainted with the authors just to avoid ill feelings I will forbear

[DinoToyForum]

Amongst other things, Brazilian law seems to indicate that whenever a type specimen from Brazil is formally erected as a new species, a Brazilian paleontologist must be involved in writing the paper. On Twitter many Brazilian palaeontologists have cited the law

The vast majority of palaeontologists have probably published on specimens with a different 'nationality' to their own, without the involvement of someone with the same 'nationality' as the specimen. I'm not a prolific author but just off the top of my head I can think of an example from my own publishing record.

I (British) co-described with a French colleague the type specimen of Meyerasaurus (German) in a German museum. There was no German co-author. Does that make me unethical? Maybe it is different because the specimen is in a German museum. But what if Germany retrospectively introduced a law to stipulate a German person must be on the authorship of papers describing German type specimens? Would I be unethical then?

To be clear, I have no objection collaborating with anyone who adds value to a paper, but adding a co-author of a particular nationality because it is legally mandated, regardless of the value that person adds to the paper – I'm not sure I agree with that. Ironically, I'm not sure that's ethical.

The other major issue is that the specimen belongs in a Brazilian museum and I understand that. But even on this matter a personal example comes to mind: Thaumatodracon, a plesiosaur from Britain (Lyme Regis) that was collected by a German and sold to a German museum. When my co-author (Portugese) and I published the paper describing it we named it after the German collector. It never occurred to me that the specimen should be repatriated to my home country and I don't think it should be. Does anyone? I was involved in the study because I'm a plesiosaur specialist, not because I'm British, but had my Portugese colleague published on this specimen without me then would he be under fire? Ethically, wouldn't the situation be identical to the Brazil case?

I'm probably experiencing this from a position of privilege and not seeing the full picture, but my feeling is that the ethics of this is all a little messier and less clear-cut than the commentary on Twitter makes out.

For the record, I'm personally aquainted with two of the authors of the Ubirajara paper, Martill (who was my lecturer at university - I learned a lot from him), and Rivera-Sylva (who is also a friend, we were in the same cohort at university).

[Martwad]

@dinotoyforum , I mostly agree with you.  I agree that co-authors of a paper should also be experienced so that they add value to the research.  My only issue is in that if that nation's professionals aren't really qualified, they should be brought in as an educational opportunity so that they can become the future specialists to be capable of tackling further findings.  We, in the sciences, should be trying to expand our sphere of influence, rather than trying to make it an exclusive club.  Not that I'm saying you are doing that, but we all tend to exhibit clique behavior.