Scientists discover remains of a dinosaur resembling a 76 million year old spiky tank in the United States

With his head and muzzle covered with a cone and pyramid-shaped bone armor, a chariot-like dinosaur discovered in southern Utah was not just a pretty face.

Scientists announce the discovery of fossils of a dinosaur. 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.

This was a member of a group of dinosaurs called Ankylosaurs, among the most heavily armored animals on Earth. And for a good reason, considering the predators around at the time.
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The unique shape and arrangement of his head and muzzle armor may be his most intriguing feature, the researchers said, giving clues to the Asian lineage of some of the Ankylosaurs that roamed the river. west of North America towards the end of the dinosaur era.
"Someone once told me that Akainacephalus, and the Ankylosaurs in general, were very ugly and had a face that only a mother could love." I must say that I am fully at home. These are extraordinary and beautiful animals, "said paleontologist Jelle Wiersma of James Cook University in Australia.

Akainacephalus was a medium sized ankylosaurus, about 16 feet (five meters) long, with a short head and covered with bone armor. Paleontologist Randall Irmis of the Natural History Museum of Utah and the University of Utah

had a short beak and a broad torso, walked on four short, squat legs and could have predators slaughtered. 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 nine-meter-long nine-meter-long reed tyrannosaurus rex Teratophoneus and the 13-meter-long (13-meter long) Deinosuchus crocodilian.

Skeletal remains, including a complete skull, were excavated in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Akainacephalus, as well as a cousin called Nodocephalosaurus who lived in New Mexico a few million years ago later, possessed a spiny head armor similar to the Asian limbs of this group of dinosaurs. Other North American related dinosaurs like Ankylosaurus had relatively flat armor covering the head.

This indicates that Akainacephalus and Nodocephalosaurus were close to Asian ankylosaurs and that several emigration events involving this group occurred from Asia to North America at the end of the Cretaceous. . said the researchers. This resulted in two distinct North American lines of Barred-tailed Ankylosaurs

The research was published in the peer-reviewed PeerJ

.