In a study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontologythe discovery of a species of pachycephalosaurus called Platytholus clemensi who lived about 68 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous, and who may have had some fabulous keratin headdresses, at least according to the partial skull analysis discussed in the study.
Called MOR 2915the pachycephalosaurus skull was found in 2011 by study author John R. “Jack” Horner, of Chapman University in Orange, California, in a “locally massed siltstone lens in the lower third of the Hell Creek Formation […] over the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Garfield County, northeastern Montana,” write the study authors.
Pachycephalosaurus skulls are like “a bowling ball in the fossil record,” study author Mark Goodwin, of the University of California, Berkeley, explained in a statement. “Their skulls roll, they get buried, and when exposed at the surface, they’re very sturdy, so they can withstand a lot of weathering and erosion sitting out there. More than once, people have walked over an area all summer and found that what they thought was just a rock, because it looks like a glacial pebble, turned out to be a really beautiful dome.
All the details known so far on the new species of pachycephalosaurus
The arrangement of blood vessels in the ancient gourd suggests how accessorized this dinosaur was. “What we’re seeing are these vertical channels emerging at the surface, which suggests there may be some keratin on top, but it’s oriented vertically,” Horner said. “I think these pachycephalosaurs had something on their heads that we don’t know about. I don’t think they were just domes. I think there was an elaborate display above their head.
“We don’t know the exact shape of what covered the dome, but it had this vertical component that we interpret as covered in keratin”
Goodwin explained. Keratin is a protein that also makes up hair and nails, which he went on to state:
“The combination of cranial histology after thin section of the skull and CT scan gave us a much richer body of data and forms a basis for our hypothesis that there was a keratin covering over the dome. We know the dome was capped with something, and we speculate, at least in this taxon, that it had a vertical structural component, unlike Triceratops, T. rex, and other dinosaurs, which had tough skin or keratin that tightly covered the dome. ‘bone.”
The new species was named Platytholus clemensi after paleontologist William Clemens, who died at the age of 88 in 2020.
Compared to other pachycephalosaurids from the same period found at Hell Creek, the authors note that Platytholus clemensi was “intermediate in size between the species of the small-bodied Sphaerotholus and the larger pachycephalosaurid, Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis, which are well represented by numerous specimens from Hell Formation of the creek.
MOR 2915 had a skull injury, which is “probably the first unequivocal evidence of trauma to the head of any pachycephalosaurus, where the bone was actually blown out of the dome in some way and partially healed in life,” Goodwin explained. “Something hit the top of this guy’s head and damaged it, and it was really bad,” Horner added.
However, the two are skeptical that it could have been the result of the dinosaurs headbutting each other. “This is the first place everyone wants to go – let’s crash them together. And, you know, we just don’t see any evidence of that, histologically,” Horner said. “I see no reason to turn dinosaurs into mammals, rather than just trying to figure out what they might do as bird-like reptiles.”
This finding shows that pachycephalosaurs were more diverse before the Chicxulub impact than we thought, the researchers write in the paper, and “that they may have had multi-level niches in part by size, both of which have implications for the ecological dynamics of these dinosaur community at a key period in their history.
If you are attracted to science or technology, keep following us, so you don’t miss the latest news and news from around the world!
#Pachycephalosaurus #species #lived #million #years