Dino of the Week: Lesothosaurus

Type Species: Lesothosaurus diagnosticus

Classification: Dinosauria - Ornithischia - Heterodontosauridae

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: South Africa

Diet: Opportunistic Omnivore

Lesothosaurus was an herbivorous or omnivorous heterodontosaur from South Africa. It lived in a semi-arid environment about 200-190 million years ago during the Early Jurassic. It could grow up to six feet in length. It had long, slender legs, small arms with four-fingered hands that weren’t great at grasping, and a slender tail. It was probably a fast runner. Its neck was short but flexible; its skull was short and flat; and it had large eye sockets. It had a short, pointed snout that ended in a horny beak. Behind the beak were leaf-shaped teeth lining the jaws, and near the front of the upper jaws it had twelve fang-like teeth. Lesothosaurus sliced up its food with the beak, but it wouldn’t have been able to chew very well. Studies of tooth wear show less abrasion on the teeth than are expected with an herbivore, indicating that Lesothosaurus was an opportunistic omnivore that fed on plants during the wet seasons and small animals during the dry seasons. It had a distinctive femoral head not seen in other dinosaurs, and it was likely gregarious, living in social groups. 

Dino of the Week: Heterodontosaurus

Type Species: Heterodontosaurus tucki

Classification: Dinosauria - Ornithischia - Heterodontosauridae

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: South Africa

Diet: Herbivore or Omnivore

Heterodontosaurus was an early ornithischian dinosaur that lived during the Hettangian and Sinemurian stages of the Early Jurassic some 200-190 million years ago. Its remains are part of the Upper Elliot Formation of South Africa; its environment was semi-dry, and it lived among prosauropods and other early ornithischians. The number of different ornithischian species in its habitat implies that ornithischians diversified wildly in the Early Jurassic, setting the stage for their continued dramatic variation throughout the Mesozoic, and that they were able to co-exist because of niche partitioning (while these early ornithischians were all herbivorous or at least omnivorous, they would’ve ‘shared’ the environment by different species focusing on different foodstuffs). 

Several Heterodontosaurus individuals have been found, including a complete skeleton (a rarity for fossilization). These individuals come in two different ‘sizes’, and though this may indicate two different species – one larger than the other – most paleontologists believe it’s a matter of sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism refers to anatomical differences between males and females of the same species, usually in regards to height or size but which can also be present in ornamentation. Sexual dimorphism is common among gregarious (i.e. ‘social’) animals, so sexual dimorphism in Heterodontosaurus would imply that they lived in groups. These animals reached between four feet and five and a half feet in length and weighed between four and twenty-two pounds. Their bodies were short with flexible tails. Their five-fingered forelimbs were long and robust and capable of grasping. The hind limbs were long, slender, and four-toed. Their skulls were elongated and narrow, and they were triangular when viewed from the side. Most scientists believe Heterodontosaurus had long, hollow, feather-like fibers over much of its body. These fibers haven’t been preserved in these South African specimens, but a heterodontosaur cousin in China – Tianyulong – had such feather-like fibers. Though Heterodontosaurus lived sixty million years before its Chinese cousin, scientists believe it’s not unreasonable to assume this is a shared characteristic and perhaps even a derived facet of heterodontosaurs in general. 

Heterodontosaurus’ name means ‘different toothed lizard,’ a reference to the fact that it had heterodont (or ‘mismatched’) teeth. Most dinosaurs have a single kind of tooth in their jaws, but Heterodontosaurus and its heterodontosaur kin had three: it had small, incisor-like teeth in the upper jaw; these were followed by long, canine-like teeth and chisel-like cheek-teeth hidden behind its fleshy cheeks. The presence of different types of teeth is rare for dinosaurs and reptiles but common in mammals. Heterodontosaurus’ beaked tip of the snout was toothless. Despite the presence of serrated teeth, it’s believed that Heterodontosaurus was nevertheless herbivorous or at least omnivorous. Some speculate that it used its blade-like canines to sift through topsoil, scrounging for roots or other foodstuffs. Some have even argued that the beak was used to break into termite mounds. Heterodontosaurus’ tooth replacement was sporadic, unlike its relatives. 

Dino of the Week: Abrictosaurus

Type Species: Abrictosaurus consors

Classification: Dinosauria - Ornithischia - Heterodontosauridae

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: South Africa

Diet: Herbivore or Omnivore

Abrictosaurus was a heterodontosaur that lived in South Africa during the Hettangian and Sinemurian stages of the Early Jurassic 200-190 million years ago. It’s known from the fossil remains of two individuals. Its habitat consisted of sand dunes and seasonal floodplains in a semiarid environment with sporadic rainfall. It likely practiced niche partitioning in its herbivorous eating habits, sharing the ecosystem with other heterodontosaurs like Heterodontosaurus and Lycorhinus. Other organisms in the environment included land-dwelling crocodylomorphs, early mammals, the theropod Coelophysis, and the prosauropod Massospondylus. 

Abrictosaurus had large, canine-like tusks – called ‘caniniforms’ – in both its upper and lower jaws. It had no teeth in the front of its jaws; in its place was a hard beak likely used to crop vegetation. A handful of primitive heterodontosaur features indicate that it is the most basal member of Heterodontosauridae. For example, Abrictosaurus had widely separated cheek teeth with low crowns more similar to other ornithischians, whereas Heterodontosaurus and other heterodontosaurs had high-crowned cheek teeth that overlapped each other in the jaw to form a continuous chewing surface similar to the later Cretaceous hadrosaurs. Another example is in Abrictosaurus’ tusks, which were more primitive than those of more derived heterodontosaurs. It’s widely believed that Abrictosaurus was a gregarious creature; this is indicated by the fact that one of the two specimens recovered has much smaller tusks. This may be an example of sexual dimorphism; in many modern mammals, tusks of different sizes are used to differentiate gender with musk deer, walrus, Asian elephants, and many pigs. Thus it’s likely that the fossilized remains belong to both a male and a female Abrictosaurus. 

Dino of the Week: Dracovenator

Dracovenator ambushing a flock of early ornithischians

Type Species: Dracovenator regenti

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Theropoda - Dilophosauridae 

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: South Africa

Diet: Carnivore

Dracovenator was a medium-sized carnivorous Early Jurassic theropod that lived around 201 to 199 million years ago in South Africa. It’s based solely upon partial skull fragments, so there’s much speculation about its length and weight (though scientists estimate that it grew between eighteen and twenty-one feet in length and weighed around 882 pounds). Its remains were discovered in the Upper Elliot Formation in South Africa, and it lived alongside numerous crocodylomorphs, many early ornithischians – such as Abrictosaurus, Heterodontosaurus, and Lesothosaurus – and among the prosauropods such as Massospondylus and Plateosaurus. Paleontologists speculate that Dracovenator preyed upon prosauropods but may also have attempted to ambush the fast-running ornithischians of the day. 

Dracovenator is considered a dilophosaurid theropod because of skull similarities with the much later Dilophosaurus. The back end of its lower jaw features a series of lumps and bumps similar to those seen with Dilophosaurus. The presence of a crest on Dracovenator’s skull is largely conjectural, based mostly upon the fact that Dilophosaurus had such a crest. 

Dino of the Week: Vulcanodon

Type Species: Vulcanodon karibaensis

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Sauropoda - Gravisauria - Vulcanodontidae

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: South Africa

Diet: Herbivore

Vulcanodon was a sauropod that lived in South Africa during the Sinemurian to Toarcian stages of the Early Jurassic. At this point in time, southern Africa was a hotspot of volcanic activity that threaded much of southern Africa and Antarctica’s landscape with extensive flood basalts (‘lava flows’). Vulcanodon was discovered in one of these ‘volcano beds’, a fossil-bearing sediment unit within the Batoka Formation, which is composed primarily of flood basalts. Hence its name: ‘volcano tooth.’ The habitat in which it was found was desert-like in the late Early Jurassic, as is shown by the wind-blown sands of the Forest Sandstone Formation that underlies the volcano beds. Scientists speculate that the sediments in which Vulcanodon died may represent distal alluvial fan deposits that leveled off into a desert landscape. This region may have contained lakes during the wet season, and Vulcanodon may have roamed the shores of wadis that cut into the alluvial fans. It’s possible that this sauropod fed upon the plants that sprouted around watering holes; or maybe it gorged itself sick during the wet seasons and survived on its fat reserves during the dry seasons. Several teeth from an unknown theropod were found among its remains, indicating that it had been scavenged after death. 

Vulcanodon’s discovery in an arid environment prompted quite a stir. For decades it was assumed that sauropods were mainly aquatic, thriving in lush peat swamps and requiring the buoyancy of water to support their bodyweight. In 1984 it was pointed out that Vulcanodon – at that point the most primitive known sauropod – lived in a desert-like environment and would’ve thus been wholly terrestrial. This implied that sauropod gigantism wasn’t an adaptation to an aquatic lifestyle. Vulcanodon helped nail the lid on the coffin of ‘aquatic’ sauropods. For a long time it was considered the earliest true sauropod, at least until the discovery of the Late Triassic Isanosaurus in 2000. Though Vulcanodon was thought to have lived in the Hettangian stage of the Early Jurassic (the Jurassic’s earliest stage), further study has shown that it actually lived much later, in the last stage (the Toarcian) of the Early Jurassic. 

Though a true sauropod, Vulcanodon has features highlighting its close relations with prosauropods. It was a relatively small sauropod, measuring thirty-six feet in length. Though it was already fully quadrupedal with column-like legs, its limb proportions were intermediate between its prosauropod ancestors and those of more derived sauropods; yet its forelimbs were much more similar to later sauropods than prosauropods, because they were straight and slender.

Crossroads and the Secularization of the American Church

Crossroads Church Oakley (not pictured) came under fire two weeks ago when a guest speaker spoke against transgenderism. Many of the members of the church and outside members of the community responded in apoplectic fashion, flooding social media with vitriol against the church's bigotry and planning weekend protests outside the main campus. The head pastor, Brian Tome, sought to quell the controversy by giving a special 'disclaimer' at next week's service. His take on the current Alphabet Mafia, which he entitled the 'Radical Middle,' is really just pure liberalism from five years ago. While admitting that Scripture says some uncomfortable things about sexual ethics, he insisted that one's sexuality won't send them to hell - despite the fact that the Bible says otherwise - and wanted everyone to know that Crossroads remains welcoming to members of the LGBTQ crowd. This placated few people, as Christians who know God's Word were able to see how he twisted things around, and the LGBTQ crowd recognized that he wasn't outright affirming their lifestyle and practice.

While much of the hoopla surrounding Crossroads these last few weeks has settled down, the whole episode has lain on me heavy. Crossroads epitomizes the direction of many churches when it comes to swallowing culture's ideology. Sure, a lot of churches have gone fully liberal (protesters were more than happy to distribute a print-out of apostasized churches), but far more are losing their resiliency in the face of our culture's relentless warfare - and make no mistake about it, culture is at war with God and His design. The only ones who seem to disavow this fact are biblical conservatives; secularists know it to be the case, and they act accordingly. Conservative Christians deny this is the case and pretend everything is okay, and so it's no surprise that they keep ceding ground. Crossroads is an example of this very thing: by attempting to be welcoming and loving, they have brushed biblical truth under the table because it might hurt their bottom line of pulling people into the church. This can't be denied; even Tome admitted that Crossroads has never addressed the sensitive issue of transgenderism, despite transgenderism - a blatant distortion and destruction of God's design - having become the spearhead of culture's campaign against biblical orthodoxy. Is it really surprising that so many of those in Crossroads were taken aback when Tome admitted, perhaps a bit too sheepishly, that Scripture does have a word to say about sexual ethics? In the past decade - even in the past five years - American culture has undergone a significant shift (a better word might be 'plunge') into increasingly godless living, and those who don't affirm and praise it are viewed as bigoted and even anti-human. Secular culture's relentless victory, through its own preaching and propaganda, is evident in the fact that its nonsensical ideology is becoming a matter of 'common sense.' Any who dare point out the logical inconsistencies or the fact that what culture's promoting is flagrantly anti-God are condemned as fools.

Perhaps the most disheartening part of the whole affair has been seeing how many old friends and acquaintances from college - a Christian college, mind you - have swallowed the lie. Out of everyone I used to hang around with, no one stood up for what the Bible actually teaches, and they praised and supported those protesting Crossroads. I told my wife that out of all the people involved in a house church I was a part of back in 2010, no one has remained in the faith. Some may label themselves Christians, but that label is called into question when they support and praise those very things God detests. Of course, they would label me as old-fashioned at best or downright bigoted at worst; don't I know, they would say, that those verses so often thought to condemn homosexual activity and its ilk really meant something different when context is considered? I've pondered this subject at length, and studied those passages in great depth, and the new liberal interpretations of those passages is hogwash. It should tell you something when the simplest readings of the text are the very readings that the church, since its inception, have embraced; it should tell you even more when you realize that the 'new' interpretations arose in sync with culture's headlong plunge into depravity. The simple fact is that Scripture condemns any and all sexual deviations from God's good design; attempts to hide, blur, or flat-out deny this rightful condemnation aren't rooted in devotion to Scripture but in devotion to appeasing culture; and when we scoff at God's law and judgments, we are failing to delight in the Law of the Lord. Christians shouldn't be put-off by God's condemnation of wickedness; we should rejoice in it and praise it as just. We shouldn't be comfortable and cozy with the practice of wickedness; it should make us want to throw up. When we disparage the Bible's teaching and pretend it means something different, we are, in effect, showing our hand. 

Bible-believing Christians - by which I mean those who read the Bible and embrace it for what it says, not for what godless culture wants it to say - are more and more in the minority. Liberalism has captured many denominations that not only affirm those openly celebrating sexual deviance but also proudly elevate them to places of leadership in the church. Far more churches have yet to go that far, but they're well on the way. Crossroads will be fully liberal in 5-10 years, and that's being generous. Their 'Radical Middle' is the liberalism of five years ago that most churches detested, but they've gone along with culture, albeit it at snail speed and lagging a bit behind. Crossroads, unless by an act of God, won't weather the storms thrust against it. My own home church, while retaining its conservative roots - the pastor and I had a nice long talk about this just last week - has failed to address these issues. Perhaps the church is scared to ruffle feathers or send ripples through the water, but whatever the reason, the fact is that our culture isn't afraid to indoctrinate our children and win them to their side; so long as the church is fearful of being called-out by the woke mob, our children will continually be won over. The question, then, is what do we do about it? My wife and I are embracing a four-fold approach for our family:

First, we are looking for a new church home. It isn't that our church has gone liberal; it's that our church has been quiet. The church cannot be passive. It cannot pretend that there's nothing going on, that this is just business as usual. It isn't that we disagree with our current church's doctrine; they remain biblical and opposed to American culture's heresies. It's simply that they're refusing to take a stand, and we see this fleshed-out not only in the 'adult services' but also in the youth group. It's rare for the youth minister to actually address those issues at the forefront of culture, even though our children are being indoctrinated via social media, music, and TV shows to swallow culture's lies. Our churches are afraid of being 'pushy' or 'controversial' whereas our culture takes pride in being exactly that way, and so it's no surprise that they're winning the hearts of our children. After much prayer and discussion, Ash and I have been 'trying out' a new church in Batavia, Ohio. It's Presbyterian, so it's different than what we're used to, and we don't align with every aspect of its doctrine, but they unashamedly preach the gospel - not just parts of the gospel, but the entire thing. We want to be a part of a church that is Bible-based, loving, and unashamed. So far this church looks like it might fit the bill, and we've felt far more peace here than we have at our current church. We want our children to be raised in a church that will oppose culture's indoctrination.

Second, we are now homeschooling our children. Public schools are one of the main sources of indoctrinating children. I used to laugh at this idea, despite my wife insisting that it was the case, until I started doing more research into the history of public schooling in which it becomes apparent that state indoctrination is the name of the game. Public schools are an avenue for the state to teach children what they want them to believe. This hit home last year in two major ways. First, I was able to overview our eighth-grader's curriculum, in which it was apparent that they were promoting identity politics and critical race theory. Second, Lakota Schools - in which our girls were enrolled - became locally renown for going the 'extra mile' in supporting identity politics: it wasn't uncommon for children to identify as animals and get into cat-fights in the hallways. No one put a stop to it because to do so would be to infringe on their identities. After much deliberation, I decided to pull our kids out of public school. We will be doing a classical Christian education in the hopes that they can not only be somewhat isolated from state-run propaganda but also so that they can learn logic and see how culture's ideology falls apart on close inspection. The church we have been visiting is heavy on homeschooling and having large families - two things we have become passionate about - so we're hopeful that the girls can develop strong friendships with others who share their worldview.

Third, we are planning on moving out of the suburbs. We currently live in West Chester; we chose to move here in 2018 because we wanted the girls in a school system that had both good advanced classes and solid IEP programs. We thought our current third-grader would need IEPs, but it turns out that she's doing just fine, thank God. Now that we are homeschooling, this incentive for suburban living is done away with. Suburban living is at odds with the simple lifestyle we want to live. We want to move somewhere in the country with land where we can have a significant garden, build a few beehives, and raise chickens and meat rabbits. We want to become more sustainable as a family and teach our children that the materialism of the suburbs is a bait-and-switch. We're looking at making the move within the next five years maximum, and in the meantime we're winnowing down on our belongings, saving and investing money, and doing all that we can to prepare for a different kind of lifestyle. While this step doesn't necessarily do anything in and of itself to oppose culture's onslaught against biblical orthodoxy, we believe it's the direction God is calling us in.

Fourth, we are planning on having lots of kids and striving to raise them in the Lord. God has already blessed us with four beautiful children, and we want to have more. Ideally we would like seven to eight children, but of course that is dependent upon God's will. One of the best ways biblical Christians can oppose culture's war against us is to have kids and raise them in the faith. Our culture hates children, and if it continues to decline in having children whilst Christians who believe that children are a blessing and a heritage from the Lord continue having more children, it's inevitable that culture will be overwhelmed. The key part of this, of course, is that covenant children be raised right. This means that they're raised to honor and love their Creator, to submit to Jesus. This involves not only going to church regularly and building community with likeminded brethren but also learning the faith at home. At our home we do 'family worship' multiple times a week in which we read Scripture, talk about it, and worship God. Our hope is that our children will grow up to love and fear the Lord and delight in obeying Him. 

These are the four steps we're currently taking - or planning on taking - in building a strong, biblical-based family in the midst of the secularization of the American church. We're not perfect at it by any means - hell, sometimes we're not even good at it! - but this is the mark for which we're aiming, and we're praying that God will bless us in our endeavors. 

the month in snapshots