a new species of dinosaur with a headdress

by time news

2023-05-24 16:28:24

A team of researchers from several universities in the United States has discovered a new species of a dinosaur, Platythoulus clemensi, which had a kind of headdress made of keratin, the material from nails and hair, which they probably used as visual signals or traffic lights for other specimens of their type.

It is a herbivorous pachycephalosaur from about 68 million years ago, a species that lived during the cretaceous period, between 130 and 66 million years ago. They were small to medium in size, ranging from 1 to 4.5 meters in length, walked on two legs and had a long, stiff tail for balance, the discoverers detailed in an article in the Journal of Vertebrate. Paleontology’.

Pachycephalosaurs had a partial skull, including its head ornament, which was unearthed in 2011 at the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. This is an area with Late Cretaceous rock layers where paleontologists have collected fossils for decades.

“We don’t know the exact shape of what covered the dome, but it had a vertical component that we interpreted as covered with keratin,” he explained of the keratin headdress. Mark Goodwin, paleontologist at the University of California. In addition, he noted that a flat, bristly covering “biologically makes sense,” as animals change or use certain features, particularly in the skull, for “multiple functions.”

Based on CT scans and microscopic analysis of slices through the fossilized dome, Goodwin concluded with John Horner, paleontologist at Chapman University in Orange, that the head probably had keratin bristles, as it resembles a brush cut. “I guess there was something pretty fancy going on in that part,” this second professor said.

The skull had a cut at the apex that had healed, indicating that a serious accident happened to the creature once, but it survived long enough for it to grow. new bone tissue in the wound, according to paleontologists.

The team named the new species Platytholus clemensi, after the late UC Berkeley paleontologist. William Clemenswho collected many fossils, especially of mammals, in the Hell Creek Formation itself.

#species #dinosaur #headdress

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