It is not every day that you find a dinosaur that has a unique weapon.
A new species of ankylosaur, a family of dinosaurs known for their heavy armor, has been discovered. The animal, which they named Stegouros elengassen, offers new clues about where these tank-like dinosaurs came from, and features a strange, bony tail.
The study shows that the animal has a completely different tail weapon than an ankylosaur and lacks most of the characteristics we would expect from an ankylosaur.
The northern supercontinent that once contained North America and Asia was once home to a diverse collection of ankylosaurs. The ankylosaur family is famous for its inventive approach to defense. The ankylosaurs developed hides covered in bone deposits, which formed lattices of tooth-breaking armor. The most famous species of ankylosaur had long, shin-breaking tail clubs.
The southern part of Gondwana is less studied than the northern part. The origins and early evolution of the family have been a mystery since these are believed to include the earliest members.
A team of paleontologists from the University of Texas stumbled across a set of bones in the valley of Ro Las Chinas, on the southernmost tip of Chile. The site is a beacon for paleontologists because of its forbidding nature.
There were only five days left in the field season when the Texas paleontologists discovered the find. They hauled the block of fossils downhill to the campsite under very cold conditions. One person broke a rib and the other had an ankle injury. Many people came close to being cold.
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The fossil was delivered from the field in Rio Las Chinas.
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Fossils were entered into a medical scanner.
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One of the two leading authors of the team is Sergio Soto-Acua.
The block was worth it. A complete ankylosaur, including a largely articulated back half, was revealed by preparation.
A six foot long man with a large head, slender limbs, and a short tail tipped with seven pairs of flattened bone, would have been called Stegouros.
The tail weapon seems to have evolved independently of other ankylosaurs. The handle of the blunt tail club was formed through the evolution of stiffened vertebrae, and was developed by early ankylosaurs from the north.
The wedged shape of the tail club is due to the stiffening of the bones over the spine. James Kirkland, a state paleontologist with the Utah Geological Survey who was not involved in the study, said that the horns and claws may have been covered in sharp sheaths of keratin. He said that a blow from the tail would have been like being hit in the shins by a battle ax.
Victoria Arbour, paleontology curator at Canada's Royal British Columbia Museum, said that the tail looked like giant extinct armadillos. She said that it was an interesting example of the evolution of bony tail weapons, which have only evolved a couple of times but seem to have evolved multiple times in ankylosaurs.
Dr. Vargas and his colleagues found that the southern ankylosaurs found in Australia were 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609-.
There is a video
The tail weapon of the new species of armored dinosaur is a digital reconstruction. The tail was encased in two pairs of bones, and a portion of them has been sliced away to reveal the tail. Different colors show physically separate bones, many of which have fused into a single unit.
The separation of Laurasia and Gondwana in the late Jurassic may have led to the discovery of an entire lineage of strange ankylosaurs.
Dr. Kirkland thinks that the same animal as the one in the picture may be Stegouros. It is possible that Gondwana hosted more than one lineage of ankylosaur. It is not often that a new family of dinosaurs is discovered. The record of armored dinosaurs in the Southern Hemisphere has been poor, and this beast hints at what we have been missing.
The breakthrough for paleontology in the country is also represented by Stegouros. Paleontologists are debating how to make their field less dependent on North American and European institutions. The paper was funded by grants from the government of Chile and was published in Nature.
This is very rare for science in the country. It is just the beginning. The fossil record of Chile is important in terms of academic achievement.
