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Reuters
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Friday, July 20, 2018 at 18:07 – With his head and muzzle covered with a bone armor shaped like cones and pyramids, a dinosaur shaped like Prickly tank dug up in southern Utah was not just another pretty face.
Scientists on Thursday announced the discovery of fossils of a dinosaur named Akainacephalus johnsoni who lived 76 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. He was a four-legged plant-eater, armed with crampons, with a menacing club at the end of his tail.
C & # 39; was a member of a group of dinosaurs called ankylosaurs, among the most heavily armored animals on Earth – and for the unique shape and arrangement of his head armor and muzzle are perhaps his most intriguing trait, according to the researchers, giving clues to the Asian ancestry of some of the ankylosaurs that roamed the west. North America towards the end of the dinosaur era
"Someone said that Akainacephalus, and the ankylosaurs in general, were ugly enough and had a face that only a mother could love, extraordinary and beautiful animals, "said paleontologist Jelle Wiersma of James Cook University in Australia.
A reconstruction of the recently discovered life of the recently discovered Cretaceous dinosaur Akainacephalus johnsoni. There are 76 million years in Utah, surrounded by the crocodilian Denazinosuchus is seen in this image provided on July 19, 2018. Andrey Atuchin / Denver Museum of Nature and Science / Document by REUTERS [19459013
Akainacephalus was a medium sized ankylosaurus, about 16 feet (5 meters) long, with a short square head covered with bone armor and a bill and small teeth for vegetation, says paleontologist Randall Irmis of the Natural History Museum of Utah and the University of Utah
He had a short neck and a broad chest, walked on four short, sturdy paws, and could have predators struck with his club of bony tail. He inhabited a warm, humid, bayous-like environment in southern Louisiana, with slow-moving creeks and rivers, and badociated swamps. The largest predators were the 9-meter long reed tyrannosaurus rex Teratophoneus and the 13-meter-long Deinosuchus crocodilian (1965).
Extended skeletal remains, including a complete skull, Akainacephalus, as well as a cousin called Nodocephalosaurus who lived in New Mexico a few million years later, possessed a member-like spiky head armor Asian from this group of dinosaurs. Other North American related dinosaurs such as Ankylosaurus had relatively flat armor covering the head.
This points to Akainacephalus and Nodocephalosaurus wereclose kin at Asian Ankylosaurs and that multiple emigration events involving this group occurred from Asia to the north to Cretaceous Americalate. . This resulted in two distinct lineages in North America of barred-tail ankylosaurs
The research was published in the PeerJ scientific journal
WATCH: L & # 39; "DINOSAUR" TYPE ALLIGATOR CROSSING TRAILS WITH VISITORS TO THE NATURAL RESERVE
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