Nearly pristine ankylosaur fossil found in Montana

[Binary_Bark]

​

A team of researchers with the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto, both in Canada, has unearthed what is being described as one of the most complete ankylosaur fossilized skeletal remains ever from the Judith River Formation in Montana. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes the find and why they believe study will reveal more about the diversity of the creatures that roamed the Earth not long before the end of the dinosaurs.
The researchers report that they were actually in the process of digging up another fossil that had been identified when they came across an ankylosaur tail. After excavation, the specimen was found to be approximately 20 feet long, and the team has estimated it would have weighed approximately 5,500 pounds, making it approximately the size of a modern white rhinoceros. It has been dated to approximately 75 million years ago, putting it in the Campanian Stage of the Late Cretaceous Period.
As with others of its kind, the specimen had a long, spiked tail that was clearly designed for striking enemies, but not prey— ankylosaur was a vegetarian. It also had a spiky head, which looks, depending on your view, either like a dragon or Zuul, the supernatural demigod depicted in the movie Ghostbusters. Because of that, the specimen has been officially named Zuul crurivastator—the second part of its name in rough translation means "destroyer of shins," a nod to its 6.7 foot, 13-vertebra-spiked tail, which also featured a knob or hammer-like end.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-pristine-ankylosaur-fossil-montana.html#jCp

 

[Ninja'd]

Always thought this was a badass dinosaur. It has a great design

 

[maumau]

Very interesting.

National Geographic had a programme showing that crocodiles used to attack dinosaurs. Crocodiles survived (the asteroid?), dinosaurs didn't.

 

[Lupus]

Very interesting.

National Geographic had a programme showing that crocodiles used to attack dinosaurs. Crocodiles survived (the asteroid?), dinosaurs didn't.

Not all died out, some possibly survive to this day. We just coat them in crumbs and deep fry them now

 

[TheMightyQuinn]

Not all died out, some possibly survive to this day. We just coat them in crumbs and deep fry them now

Chickens are not dinosaurs.

 

[Lupus]

Chickens are not dinosaurs.

They are the great great great lots of more greats grand kids of

 

[TheMightyQuinn]

They are the great great great lots of more greats grand kids of

So are millions of other species alive today.

We were talking of "SURVIVING" dinosaurs. Crocodiles, Komodo Dragons even Great White Sharks spring to mind. And let's not forget the coelacanth.

 

[Lupus]

So are millions of other species alive today.

We were talking of "SURVIVING" dinosaurs. Crocodiles, Komodo Dragons even Great White Sharks spring to mind. And let's not forget the coelacanth.

Ah but those are not dinosaurs, nor are they evolved from them. The coelacanth is probably really the only thing from that era that hasn't evolved from it's prehistoric form, also none of the things you've listed are dinosaurs or evolved from ;-).
Crocodiles as a group might have come from the dinosaur era but none of the surviving breeds did, the great white shark evolved 40 millions after the dinosaur mass extinction, the komodo dragon as it is now is only 15 million years old so it's also not a dinosaur or surviving from that era.
Though a lot of studies are now showing birds are the successors to Dinosaurs, so it is highly plausible that the chicken you're eating has lineage going back to the T-Rex, or not ;-) nobody knows.

 

[kolaval]

And here I thought Montana in pretoria north...

 

[mfumbesi]

In the past 4 Billion years, Nature has been doing so many body shape designs.
Thank you for sharing.

 

[satanboy]

Before being assembled into something recognisable at a museum, most dinosaur fossils look to the casual observer like nothing more than common rocks. No one, however, would confuse the over 110 million-year-old nodosaur fossil for a stone.

The fossil, being unveiled today in Canada's Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, is so well preserved it looks like a statue.

Even more surprising might be its accidental discovery, as unveiled in the June issue of National Geographic magazine.

On 21 March 2011, Shawn Funk was digging in Alberta's Millennium Mine with a mechanical backhoe, when he hit "something much harder than the surrounding rock."

A closer look revealed something that looked like no rock Funk had ever seen, just "row after row of sandy brown disks, each ringed in gunmetal gray stone".

What he had found was a 2,500-pound (1,130 kg) dinosaur fossil, which was soon shipped to the museum in Alberta, where technicians scraped extraneous rock from the fossilised bone and experts examined the specimen.

"I couldn't believe my eyes - it was a dinosaur," Donald Henderson, the curator of dinosaurs at the museum, told Alberta Oil.

"When we first saw the pictures we were convinced we were going to see another plesiosaur (a more commonly discovered marine reptile)."

More specifically, it was the snout-to-hips portion of a nodosaur, a "member of the heavily-armored ankylosaur subgroup," that roamed during the Cretaceous Period, according to Smithsonian.

This group of heavy herbivores, which walked on four legs, likely resembled a cross between a lizard and a lion - but covered in scales.

Unlike its cousins in the ankylosaur subgroup, the nodosaur lacked a bony club at the end of its tail, instead using armor plates, thick knobs and two 20-inch (50 centimetre) spikes along its armored side for protection, according to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

"These guys were like four-footed tanks," dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford told The Washington Post in 2012.

This particular one, according to a news release, was 18 feet (5.4 metre) long and weighed around 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms).

As Michael Greshko wrote for National Geographic, such level of preservation "is a rare as winning the lottery." He continued:

"The more I look at it, the more mind-boggling it becomes. Fossilised remnants of skin still cover the bumpy armor plates dotting the animal's skull. Its right forefoot lies by its side, its five digits splayed upward. I can count the scales on its sole.

Caleb Brown, a postdoctoral researcher at the museum, grins at my astonishment. "We don't just have a skeleton," he tells me later. "We have a dinosaur as it would have been."

The reason this particular dinosaur was so well preserved is likely due to a stroke of good luck. (Well, perhaps a stroke of bad luck for the poor nodosaur.)

Eventually, the land creature floated out to the sea - which the mine where it was found once was - and sank to the bottom. Researchers believe it was on a river's edge, perhaps having a drink of water, when a flood swept it downriver.

There, minerals quickly "infiltrated the skin and armor and cradled its back, ensuring that the dead nodosaur would keep its true-to-life form as eons' worth of rock piled atop it."

That is a boon to researchers, particularly given that teeth and bone fragments are much more common finds.

"Even partially complete skeletons remain elusive," Smithsonian reported.

sciencealert

 

[Binary_Bark]

Introducing Zuul, Destroyer of Shins, Generator of Science

[video=youtube;wadNi6mpeKc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wadNi6mpeKc[/video]

Today, the ROM unveiled a new species of armored dinosaur, Zuul crurivastator, based on an almost complete and remarkably well-preserved skeleton from the Judith River Formation of Montana. The skeleton of Zuul was acquired by the ROM with the generous support of the Louise Hawley Stone Trust, and it represents a landmark addition to our collection of dinosaurs from western North America. It also marks the beginning of a big scientific project here at the museum. The name Zuul is based on similarities between the beautifully preserved skull of our fossil and the terror-dog monster from the 1984 blockbuster film Ghostbusters - both have a broad, rounded snout, gnarly forehead, and two sets of horns behind the eyes. The species name, crurivastator, translates to “Destroyer of Shins”, in reference to its menacing tail, which ends in a massive club-which may have been used to defend itself from predatory dinosaurs or compete with other members of its species.

Zuul is characterized by features of its heavily armored skull, and the armour forming its spiked tail. The research describing the new skeleton, identifying Zuul as a new species, and placing it in the family tree of armored dinosaurs was described in the journal Royal Society Open Science, and is open access- meaning it is free for everyone to download and read. The paper was led by Dr. Victoria Arbour, a globally recognized expert on ankylosaurs, who recently joined the ROM Palaeo team on an NSERC postdoctal fellowship. It was a fantastic experience working with Victoria on the paper - who also deserves big credit for coming up with the awesome name for our new dino. We have both really enjoyed working with our amazing palaeo-artist Danielle Dufault, who created the vivid life reconstructions of Zuul for the website, well as the whole behinds-the-scenes Zuul team.

Full article: http://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/introducing-zuul-destroyer-of-shins-generator-of-science

 

[Binary_Bark]

New dinosaur resurrects a demon from Ghostbusters

Zuul is back. But don’t bother calling the Ghostbusters. Zuul crurivastator is a dino, not a demon. A 75-million-year-old skeleton unearthed in Montana in 2014 reveals a tanklike dinosaur with a spiked club tail and a face that probably looked a lot like its cinematic namesake.

The find is the most complete fossil of an ankylosaur, a type of armored dinosaur, found in North America, researchers report May 10 in Royal Society Open Science. It includes a complete skull and tail club, plus some preserved soft tissue, says study co-author Victoria Arbour, a paleobiologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. “It really gives us a good idea of what these animals looked like.”

The bones reveal that Z. crurivastator had spikes running all the way down its tail, not just on the club itself. That arrangement means the weaponry was more than just a “massive sledgehammer,” Arbour says. The club was a formidable weapon. The term crurivastator comes from the Latin for “shin destroyer.”

Read Full Article: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-dinosaur-resurrects-demon-ghostbusters