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A hunchback-nosed dinosaur discovered in Big Bend National Park, Texas, is a newly discovered genus and species. Aquilarhinus palimentus.
Credit: ICRA Art
A new species of duckbill dinosaur that lived about 80 million years ago had such a weird face that scientists dubbed it "pommel-chin". His jaws looked like a pair of gardening tools, with wavy ridges at the "W" shaped edges. An arched ridge in the middle of his face was curved like the majestic beak of an eagle, giving the dinosaur profile the appearance of a prominent and domed nose.
Scientists discovered the unusual fossil skull and a partial skeleton of the animal in the 1980s in the Big Bend National Park, a site located in southwestern Texas, although the specimen did not occur. been analyzed in detail only recently.
The duck-billed weirdo shared some common features with other duck-billed and crested dinosaurs, the Saurolophidae group, but it was more primitive, offering intriguing new clues about the evolution of branded crests group, scientists reported in a new study. [Image Gallery: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts]
The scientific names of some dinosaurs invoke a dramatic sense: Think of Tyrannosaurus rex ("king tyrant lizard") or Velociraptor ("fast thief"). In this case, the researchers could not stop calling the bizarre face of the dinosaur. The name of the genreAquilarhinus " combines the Latin word "aquila" for "eagle" and the Greek word "rhinos" which means "nose". The name of the species "palimentus" comes Latin words for "shovel" and "chin", according to the study.
All known dinosaurs in this group (also called hadrosaurids) have a beak-shaped jaw that develops in the end into a scaly form, "hence the nickname" duckbill dinosaurs ", said Lead author of the study, Albert Prieto-Márquez, the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont in Barcelona, Spain.
"However, they differ from Aquilarhinus in that this "scoop" is all concave. On the other hand, in Aquilarhinusthere was an elevation, a convex relief in the center of the scoop, "Prieto-Márquez told Live Science in an email.
<Img class = "lazy pure-img" src = great "https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwNi80Njcvb3JpZ2luYWwvc2hvdmVsLWNoaW5uZWQtZGlub3NhdXItMDIuanBnPzE1NjMyMDU3NDk=" data-src = "https://img.purch.com/w/640 bill c Aquilarhinus had a bone ridge on his skull. However, this dino had a single jaw, like a shovel.”/>
Like other hadrosaurs, or duckbilled dinosaurs, Aquilarhinus had a bone ridge on his skull. However, this dino had a single jaw, like a shovel.
Credit: ICRA Art
This chipped and chipped chin was probably useful millions of years ago; What is now a dry and rocky landscape in Texas was at the time a marsh or coastal swamp. Aquilarhinus the researchers probably used his particular jaws to pick up vegetation at the bottom of a muddy creek bed.
However, it is less clear to know what was serving the prominent nasal emblem of the dinosaur, even though it may have been used as a screen to help dinosaurs recognize members of their gender and to to dispute friends, said Prieto-Márquez.
"The peak of Aquilarhinus is simpler in structure than that of most other hadrosaurids, with the exception of members of kritosaurini (a subgroup of hadrosaurids), "he explained. Aquilarhinus and the kritosaurines for which the ridge is known, it is only a fold of the nasal bone, which gives them a Roman nose appearance. "
<Img class = "lazy pure-img" src = great "https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwNi80Njgvb3JpZ2luYWwvc2hvdmVsLWNoaW5uZWQtZGlub3NhdXItMDMuanBnPzE1NjMyMDU3ODQ=" data-src = "https://img.purch.com/w/640 / aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwNi80NjgvaTAyL3Nob3ZlbC1jaGlubmVkLWRpbm9zYXVyLTAzLmpwZz8xNTYzMjA1Nzg0 "alt =" The lower jaw and teeth of Aquilarhinus, showing the unusual end of the mandible.”/>
The lower jaw and the teeth of Aquilarhinus, showing the unusual end of the mandible.
Credit: Photo of Albert Prieto- Marquez; material housed in the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at the University of Texas at Austin.
Decades earlier, other scientists who examined the dinosaur skull thought that the nasal crest resembled that of another hadrosaurid. gryposaurus. But despite the superficial similarities, Aquilarhinus it turned out to be a more primitive hadrosaurid than gryposaurus, taking position at the very base of the family tree of the group. This hinted that the various forms of hadrosaur ridges all came from a structure that began with a simple arched nose, said Prieto-Márquez.
Aquilarhinus, aka eagle-nose shovel-chin, also provides a missing piece regarding the origin of hadrosaurids. These dinosaurs were widespread in Europe, Asia, North and South America and Antarctica at the end of the Cretaceous (145.5 to 65 million years ago), and the appearance of this Primitive specimen confirms the increasingly popular hypothesis that hadrosaurids appeared in southern North America, said the study's authors.
The results were published online July 12 in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
Originally published on Science live.
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