New Haven, Conn.Paleontologists have discovered a new species of dinosaur with a softball-sized lump of solid bone on top of its skull, according to a paper published in the April issue of the journal Cretaceous Research.
The species was a plant-eating dinosaur about as big as a medium-sized dog that lived 70 to 80 million years ago, said Nicholas Longrich of Yale University, lead author of the paper. The team discovered two skull fragments in Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas in 2008. They compared them to dozens of fossils from related species found in Canada and Montana before confirming that the fossils represented a new genus of pachycephalosaur, a group of bipedal, thick-skulled dinosaurs.
The researchers named the new species Texacephale langstoni. ("Texacephale" means "Texas head" and "langstoni" is in honor of Wann Langston, a fellow paleontologist.) The new species is one of about a dozen known to have solid lumps of bone on top of their skulls, which Longrich speculates was probably used to ram one another head-on in a manner similar to modern-day musk oxen and cape buffalo.
The discovery of the new species lends further weight to the idea, which has gained popularity in recent years, that dinosaurs found in Canada and the northern United States were distinct from their southern neighbors.
"Instead of roaming across the North American continent, we see pockets of different dinosaurs that are pretty isolated from one another," Longrich said. "Every time we get good fossils from Texas, they end up looking very different from those to the north."
Because fossils from the Big Bend region are rare and tend to be poorly preserved, scientists do not have a complete picture of the different species that once inhabited the area, Longrich said.
But the team may have uncovered an important piece of the puzzle with their discovery. They found that this particular group of dinosaurs,
'/>"/>
| Contact: Suzanne Taylor Muzzin suzanne.taylormuzzin@yale.edu 203-432-8555 Yale University Source:Eurekalert |
Related biology news :
1. Dinosaur skull changed shape during growth
2. 30 years later, what killed the dinosaurs is revisited
3. New dinosaur rears its head; U-M researchers part of team announcing find
4. Good dentistry may have saved the dinosaurs
5. New dinosaur species from Montana
6. Trackway analysis shows how dinosaurs coped with slippery slopes
7. After dinosaurs, mammals rise but their genomes get smaller
8. Down Under dinosaur burrow discovery provides climate change clues
9. New research shows dinosaurs may have been smaller than we thought
10. Beaked, bird-like dinosaur tells story of finger evolution
11. Sands of Gobi Desert yield new species of nut-cracking dinosaur
 |
| Copyright © 2003-2012 Bio-Medicine. All rights reserved. ABOUT | CONTACT US | DISCLAIMER | PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS AND CONDITIONS |  |