Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, which describes the help of amateur fossil Hunter College Park, Maryland, armored dinosaur hatchling. And 'the youngest nodosaur ever found, and the founder of a new species, which lived about 110 million years ago the first years of the Cretaceous. Nodosaurs has been found in many different places around the world, but rarely found in the United States. Results published in the Sept. 9 issue of the journal Paleontology.
"Now we can learn about the development of the members and the development of the skulls in the early life of a dinosaur," said David Weishampel, a professor of anatomy at Johns Hopkins Medicine. "The small size also reveals that there was a nesting area in the vicinity, or colony, as it could not have gone far from where he was born. We have the opportunity to learn about raising and breeding biology of the dinosaurs, and more on the lives of dinosaurs in Maryland in general. "
Fossil was discovered in 1997, Ray Stanford, Tracker dinosaur, which is often spent his time searching for fossils near their home. This time, he was looking for a Bed Creek after extensive flooding. Stanford has recognized and called nodosaur Weishampel, an expert on dinosaur paleontologist and systematic.
Weishampel and colleagues have established the identity fossil nodosaur recognizing a distinctive pattern of bumps and grooves on the skull. Then did a computer analysis of skull shape, comparing proportions with those of 10 skulls of different species of Ankylosaurs, the group that contains nodosaurs. They found that this dinosaur was closely related to some of the species nodosaur, even if it had an overall shorter muzzle than the others. Comparative measurements allowed them to appoint a new species, Propanoplosaurus marylandicus. In addition to being the youngest ever found nodosaur is the offspring of the first species of dinosaurs that have ever been recovered in the eastern United States, Weishampel said.
The area where the fossil was originally found a flood plain, where Weishampel said that dinosaurs were drowned. Cleaning nodosaur fossils shows a baby on her back, a large part of his body printed with the top of his head. Weishampel determined the age of dinosaurs in death by analyzing the level of skills development and articulating ends of bones, and suggests that the very porous bones, the bones of young people would not be completely solid.
Size also has an index. The body of the little fossil was only 13 cm long, slightly less than the length of a dollar bill. Nodosaurs adults are estimated to have been 20 to 30 feet long. Weishampel also used the position and the quality of the fossils to deduce the method of the death of the dinosaurs and conservation, and buried by drowning in the river sediments. The deposits have been found preserved in the area, as well as the arrangement of bones and the size of some very small traces nodosaur close Weishampel been led to believe that the dinosaur was a newborn, rather than as an embryo, and it was to walk independently.
"We do not know much at all nodosaurs newborns before this discovery," Weishampel said, which is affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution. "And it is certainly enough to motivate the investigation of the dinosaurs in Maryland, with a new analysis of the dinosaurs of Maryland."
Stanford chicks donated to Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History nodosaur, where he is now on public display and available for research.
This study was funded by the Johns Hopkins Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution. Valerie DeLeon, also of the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution, was an additional writer.
For more information related to dinosaurs, visit rareresource.com.
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