 |
|
Toothy dinosaur newest to come out of southern Utah
October 04, 2007SALT LAKE CITY -- The newest dinosaur species to emerge from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument had some serious bite, according to researchers from the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.
"It was one of the most robust duck-billed dinosaurs ever," said museum paleontologist Terry Gates, who is also with the U.'s Department of Geology and Geophysics. "It was a monster."
Researchers from the Utah museum, the national monument and California's Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology unearthed fossils of this ancient plant-eater from the rocks of the Kaiparowits Formation. Researchers announced the name of the creature - Gryposaurus monumentensis. (Gryposaurus means "hook-beaked lizard" and monumentensis honors the monument where the fossils were found.)
The first description of the duck-billed dinosaur - which dates to the Late Cretaceous Period 75 million years ago - appears in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
"Gryposaurus monumentensis is probably the largest dinosaur in the 75-million-year-old Kaiparowits fossil ecosystem," said Alan Titus, paleontologist for the national monument.
Gates, lead author on the study, explained that this creature could have eaten just about any vegetation it stumbled across. "With its robust jaws, no plant stood a chance against G. monumentensis," he said.
Scott Sampson, another paleontologist with the Utah museum who was involved with the project, emphasized the massively-built skull and skeleton, referring to the animal as the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of duck-billed dinosaurs."
Finding the skull
In 2002, a team from the Alf Museum, in Claremont, Calif., located at the Webb School, discovered the site that contained the skull used to describe the new creature. Every summer, the California institution, the only nationally-accredited paleontology museum on a high school campus, gives Webb students and volunteers the chance to participate in scientific field work.
The California team was working a stretch of Grand Staircase that Utah researchers had not examined. Duncan Everhart, a Pennsylvania furniture maker, is credited with finding the skull.
Don Lofgren, curator of the Alf Museum, said the team received permission from the monument to dig deeper in 2003.
"We determined it was a skull sitting upside down with the jaw on top," he said.
Once Gates went out to take a look in 2004, he quickly realized the California team had a potentially-important find. The Alf Museum gave the Utah researchers permission to prepare and study the skull.
Titus noted the discovery of this new species was a team effort involving the Alf Museum, the Utah Museum of Natural History and the national monument.
"The cooperative effort put into its collection and research has truly been a model for scientific investigation on public lands," he said.
It wasn't until Utah researchers began working on the skull in 2005 that the full significance of the find began to emerge, Gates said.
The well-preserved skull was initially missing key pieces from the nose region. Fortunately, the California museum had collected a box full of eroded bones, including bits of the nose bone, which was critical for identifying the creature.
"I knew immediately that we had some species of Gryposaurus," Gates said.
A toothy beast
The creature's large number of teeth embedded in the thick skull is among the features that made G. monumentensis, as well as other closely related duck-billed dinosaurs, such a successful herbivore.
At any given time, the dinosaur had over 300 teeth available to slice up plant material. Inside the jaw bone, there were numerous replacement teeth waiting, meaning that at any moment, this Gryposaur may have carried more than 800 teeth.
"IIt was capable of eating most any plant it wanted to," Gates said. "Although much more evidence is needed before we can hypothesize on its dietary preferences."
While the diet is unknown, given the considerable size of the creature, the massive teeth and jaws are thought to have been used to slice up large amounts of tough, fibrous plant material.
The teeth may hold important clues the dinosaur's eating habits. The Utah museum plans to study the composition of the dinosaur teeth, which when compared to other plant-eating dinosaurs from the Kaiparowits Formation, will help researchers decipher differences in diet.
G. monumentensis is one of several new dinosaur species found in Grand Staircase, including: a Velociraptor-like carnivore named Hagryphus, a tyrannosaur, and several kinds of horned dinosaurs. In all, more than a dozen kinds of dinosaurs have been recovered from these badlands, and most represent species that are new to science.
"This is a brand new and extremely important window into the world of dinosaurs," said Sampson.
Under ideal circumstances, paleontologists will find the skull and other key bones at the same site. In this case, the head was the only thing they managed to find from where the Alf team searched.
Researchers believe the head of this particular Gryposaur likely rolled into a bend of a river, where it was partly buried. The right half of the head remained exposed to the river current, dislodging several bones before this side was buried as well.
In other parts of the monument, Utah researchers have excavated bones believed to be from the same species. Gates estimates G. monumentensis may have grown up to 30 feet long as an adult.
"As each new find such as this new Gryposaur is made," Titus said, "it is placed into the greater context of an entire ecosystem that has remained lost for eons, and is only now coming under scientific scrutiny."
Life in 'West America'
Around 75 million years ago, southern Utah differed dramatically from today's arid desert and redrock country. During much of the Late Cretaceous, a shallow sea split North America down the middle, dividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses.
In what Sampson terms "West America," G. monumentensis and its fellow dinosaurs lived in a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the seaway to the east and rising mountains to the west. Due in large part to the presence of the seaway, the climate was moist and humid.
Thanks to more than 100 years of fossil collection, scientists know more about the Cretaceous dinosaurs from North American than they do from any other time or continent on Earth, Sampson noted.
While G. monumentensis gulped down its greens and tried to avoid predatory tyrannosaurs down in Utah, closely related but different species of duck-billed dinosaurs were doing the same thing farther north, in places like Montana and Alberta, Canada.
The new Utah species is proving crucial for determining patterns of duck-billed dinosaur evolution and ecology during the Late Cretaceous of North America, Gates said. He added that "this calls for a re-evaluation of previous ideas about the evolution of duck-billed dinosaurs across the world".
Earlier explanations of dinosaurs undertaking long distance migrations have gone out the window. "Now we have to figure out how so many different kinds of giants managed to coexist in such small areas," said Sampson. "We're just beginning to unravel this story.
Bones from G. monumentensis are on display at Big Water Visitor Center in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and for a short time at the Utah Museum of Natural History before returning to the Alf Museum.
University of Utah
The first description of the duck-billed dinosaur - which dates to the Late Cretaceous Period 75 million years ago - appears in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
"Gryposaurus monumentensis is probably the largest dinosaur in the 75-million-year-old Kaiparowits fossil ecosystem," said Alan Titus, paleontologist for the national monument.
Gates, lead author on the study, explained that this creature could have eaten just about any vegetation it stumbled across. "With its robust jaws, no plant stood a chance against G. monumentensis," he said.
Scott Sampson, another paleontologist with the Utah museum who was involved with the project, emphasized the massively-built skull and skeleton, referring to the animal as the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of duck-billed dinosaurs."
Finding the skull
In 2002, a team from the Alf Museum, in Claremont, Calif., located at the Webb School, discovered the site that contained the skull used to describe the new creature. Every summer, the California institution, the only nationally-accredited paleontology museum on a high school campus, gives Webb students and volunteers the chance to participate in scientific field work.
The California team was working a stretch of Grand Staircase that Utah researchers had not examined. Duncan Everhart, a Pennsylvania furniture maker, is credited with finding the skull.
Don Lofgren, curator of the Alf Museum, said the team received permission from the monument to dig deeper in 2003.
"We determined it was a skull sitting upside down with the jaw on top," he said.
Once Gates went out to take a look in 2004, he quickly realized the California team had a potentially-important find. The Alf Museum gave the Utah researchers permission to prepare and study the skull.
Titus noted the discovery of this new species was a team effort involving the Alf Museum, the Utah Museum of Natural History and the national monument.
"The cooperative effort put into its collection and research has truly been a model for scientific investigation on public lands," he said.
It wasn't until Utah researchers began working on the skull in 2005 that the full significance of the find began to emerge, Gates said.
The well-preserved skull was initially missing key pieces from the nose region. Fortunately, the California museum had collected a box full of eroded bones, including bits of the nose bone, which was critical for identifying the creature.
"I knew immediately that we had some species of Gryposaurus," Gates said.
A toothy beast
The creature's large number of teeth embedded in the thick skull is among the features that made G. monumentensis, as well as other closely related duck-billed dinosaurs, such a successful herbivore.
At any given time, the dinosaur had over 300 teeth available to slice up plant material. Inside the jaw bone, there were numerous replacement teeth waiting, meaning that at any moment, this Gryposaur may have carried more than 800 teeth.
"IIt was capable of eating most any plant it wanted to," Gates said. "Although much more evidence is needed before we can hypothesize on its dietary preferences."
While the diet is unknown, given the considerable size of the creature, the massive teeth and jaws are thought to have been used to slice up large amounts of tough, fibrous plant material.
The teeth may hold important clues the dinosaur's eating habits. The Utah museum plans to study the composition of the dinosaur teeth, which when compared to other plant-eating dinosaurs from the Kaiparowits Formation, will help researchers decipher differences in diet.
G. monumentensis is one of several new dinosaur species found in Grand Staircase, including: a Velociraptor-like carnivore named Hagryphus, a tyrannosaur, and several kinds of horned dinosaurs. In all, more than a dozen kinds of dinosaurs have been recovered from these badlands, and most represent species that are new to science.
"This is a brand new and extremely important window into the world of dinosaurs," said Sampson.
Under ideal circumstances, paleontologists will find the skull and other key bones at the same site. In this case, the head was the only thing they managed to find from where the Alf team searched.
Researchers believe the head of this particular Gryposaur likely rolled into a bend of a river, where it was partly buried. The right half of the head remained exposed to the river current, dislodging several bones before this side was buried as well.
In other parts of the monument, Utah researchers have excavated bones believed to be from the same species. Gates estimates G. monumentensis may have grown up to 30 feet long as an adult.
"As each new find such as this new Gryposaur is made," Titus said, "it is placed into the greater context of an entire ecosystem that has remained lost for eons, and is only now coming under scientific scrutiny."
Life in 'West America'
Around 75 million years ago, southern Utah differed dramatically from today's arid desert and redrock country. During much of the Late Cretaceous, a shallow sea split North America down the middle, dividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses.
In what Sampson terms "West America," G. monumentensis and its fellow dinosaurs lived in a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the seaway to the east and rising mountains to the west. Due in large part to the presence of the seaway, the climate was moist and humid.
Thanks to more than 100 years of fossil collection, scientists know more about the Cretaceous dinosaurs from North American than they do from any other time or continent on Earth, Sampson noted.
While G. monumentensis gulped down its greens and tried to avoid predatory tyrannosaurs down in Utah, closely related but different species of duck-billed dinosaurs were doing the same thing farther north, in places like Montana and Alberta, Canada.
The new Utah species is proving crucial for determining patterns of duck-billed dinosaur evolution and ecology during the Late Cretaceous of North America, Gates said. He added that "this calls for a re-evaluation of previous ideas about the evolution of duck-billed dinosaurs across the world".
Earlier explanations of dinosaurs undertaking long distance migrations have gone out the window. "Now we have to figure out how so many different kinds of giants managed to coexist in such small areas," said Sampson. "We're just beginning to unravel this story.
Bones from G. monumentensis are on display at Big Water Visitor Center in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and for a short time at the Utah Museum of Natural History before returning to the Alf Museum.
University of Utah
Dinosaur Current Events and Dinosaur News RSSPaleontologists doubt 'dinosaur dance floor'
A group of paleontologists visited the northern Arizona wilderness site nicknamed a "dinosaur dance floor" and concluded there were no dinosaur tracks there, only a dense collection of unusual potholes eroded in the sandstone.
Study of polar dinosaur migration questions whether dinosaurs were truly the first great migrators
Contrary to popular belief, polar dinosaurs may not have traveled nearly as far as originally thought when making their bi-annual migration.
Brain structure provides key to unraveling function of bizarre dinosaur crests
Paleontologists have long debated the function of the strange, bony crests on the heads of the duck-billed dinosaurs known as lambeosaurs. The structures contain incredibly long, convoluted nasal passages that loop up over the tops of their skulls.
Gene expression in alligators suggests birds have 'thumbs'
The latest breakthrough in a 120 year-old debate on the evolution of the bird wing was published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.
Canada's shores saved animals from devastating climate change
The shorelines of ancient Alberta, British Columbia and the Canadian Arctic were an important refuge for some of the world's earliest animals, most of which were wiped out by a mysterious global extinction event some 252 million years ago.
Meat-eating dinosaur from Argentina had bird-like breathing system
The remains of a 30-foot-long predatory dinosaur discovered along the banks of Argentina's Rio Colorado is helping to unravel how birds evolved their unusual breathing system.
America's smallest dinosaur uncovered
An unusual breed of dinosaur that was the size of a chicken, ran on two legs and scoured the ancient forest floor for termites is the smallest dinosaur species found in North America, according to a University of Calgary researcher who analyzed bones found during the excavation of an ancient bone bed near Red Deer, Alberta.
My, what big teeth you had! Extinct species had large teeth on roof of mouth
When the world's land was congealed in one supercontinent 240 million years ago, Antarctica wasn't the forbiddingly icy place it is now. But paleontologists have found a previously unknown amphibious predator species that probably still made it less than hospitable.
Ancient mother spawns new insight on reptile reproduction
A 75-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant turtle and a nest of fossilized eggs that were discovered in the badlands of southeastern Alberta by scientists and staff from the University of Calgary and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology are yielding new ideas on the evolution of egg-laying and reproduction in turtles and tortoises.
Duck-billed dinosaurs outgrew predators to survive
With long limbs and a soft body, the duck-billed hadrosaur had few defenses against predators such as tyrannosaurs. But new research on the bones of this plant-eating dinosaur suggests that it had at least one advantage: It grew to adulthood much faster than its predators, giving it superiority in size.
More Dinosaur Current Events and Dinosaur News Articles
 | How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen What if a dinosaur catches the flu?Does he whimper and whine between each "At-choo"?Does he drop dirty tissues all over the floor?Does he fling his medicine out of the door? Just like kids, little dinosaurs hate being sick. And going to the doctor can be pretty scary. How DO dinosaurs get well soon? They drink lots of juice, and they get lots of rest; they're good at the doctor's, 'cause... |
 | My Big Dinosaur Book (My Big Board Books) by Roger Priddy Series sold over 3 million. Big board book ideal for babies and toddlers. Stunning large format brings images to life. Helps build a child's vocabulary.... |
 | How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends (How Do Dinosaurs) by Jane Yolen What if a dinosaur's friends come to play? Does he mope, does he pout if he can't get his way? Does he hide all his dump trucks, refusing to share? Does he throw his friends' coloring books up in the air? Time and time again, children are told to "play nice." This brilliantly illustrated board book is packed with rhymes that will teach children how. Mark Teague's laugh-aloud illustrations,... |
 | Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs: The Definitive Pop-Up From renowned pop-up masters Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart comes an awe-inspiring tribute to the world's most beloved extinct animals and their 180-million-year reign on our planet.Open this book and a massive T. REX springs out, flashing a startling jawful of jagged teeth. Turn the next spread and a ravishing raptor unfurls and appears to fly off the edge of the page. Inside the amazing... |
 | How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms? by Jane Yolen Come along for some BIG fun as your favorite dinosaurs learn to pick up and put away their toys. How do dinosaurs clean their rooms? With trash cans and dusters and brooms!Now Jane Yolen's playful, read-aloud text and Mark Teague's hilarious illustrations show your own little dinosaurs just how fun and easy it can be. Brimming with the same infectious humor as the other HOW DO DINOSAURS tales,... |
 | The Big Book of Dinosaurs (Big Books) by Angela Wilkes A first book of dinosaurs for young children. The Big Book of Dinosaurs is an enticing collection of dinosaurs that is sure to excite any child. It is packed with full-color photographs of life-like models plus detailed illustrations. The simple text describes interesting features, while questions encourage children to compare various... |
 | How Do Dinosaurs Go To School? by Jane Yolen Everyone's favorite dinosaurs are back--and this time they are going to school. More fun dinosaur antics await. These prehistoric pupils are in a class of their own! As in their previous books, Yolen and Teague capture children's rambunctious natures with playful read-aloud verse and wonderfully amusing... |
 | Dinosaurs Divorce by Marc Brown, Laurie Krasny Brown The traumatic childhood experience--when a child's parents divorce--is depicted in the form of dinosaur characters. Chapters address the full range of feelings that a divorce produces. ". . . this will become a real 'security blanket' for young readers in need."--School Library Journal, starred review. New York Times Best Children's Book. Full... |
 | Flight Of The Quetzalcoatlus (Dinosaur Cove) by Rex Stone Tom and Jamie can't believe their luck when they find a secret entrance to a prehistoric world filled with dinosaurs! They vow to go back and have a new adventure every day. This time, it's a rescue mission: A quetzalcoatlus has dino-napped their friend the wannanosaurus. With a wingspan of 40 feet, the quetzalcoatlus is a high flier--and a fast one. Tracking Wanna won't be easy, but Tom and... |
 | National Geographic Dinosaurs by Paul Barrett Here is everything young readers want to know about dinosaurs and their world—in one magnificently illustrated, up-to-date family reference. Through dramatic graphics and age-appropriate text, this authoritative volume charts the discovery of all the main types of dinosaurs and reveals the latest details on how these creatures most likely looked, behaved, defended themselves, found food, cared... |
| © 2008 BrightSurf.com |