Scientists have identified fossil dinosaurs traces of a new species in BC and Alberta. It is believed that they are the first clues that are in the world that are identified as belonging to the club’s tail ankylouries, which offer new ideas about the holes in the fossil record.
The new species, which has been named RUOPODOSAURUS CLAVA, It would have been a armored dinosaur about five to six meters long, reports a new study Posted this week in the Vertebrate Paleontology Magazine.
Victoria Arbor, curator of paleontology at the Royal BC Museum and principal author of the new study, said that Ruopodosaurus would have taken through the coastal forests of Secoya between the rocky mountains and an inner sea that covered Saskatchewan and Alberta during the middle cretaceous, around 100 million to 94 million years. The previously identified footprints suggest that the other creatures lived together with the giant crocodiles, the dinosaurs with duck peak and the birds similar to birds, and a related group of four fingers.
But there have been no bones of anquilosaurs of three fingers of three fingers in North America from the middle Cretaceous, which, until now, suggested that they could have extinguished during this time, before reappearing about 84 million years ago, perhaps due to the migration of populations of Asia. The clues of this new species suggest otherwise.
This species, said Arbor, is “new to North America. It is new to the world … and really helps us fill this void in the fossil record.”
A history of two anquilosaurs
Like the lazy two fingers and three fingers, there are two closely related branches of anquilaurios with different fingers:
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AnilloursThey have three fingers, and are famous for their tail clubs, which were thin and rigid like a baseball bat, or around the famous Well -preserved anquilosour ZUUL CURIVASTATORwho lived about 75 million years ago.
Victoria Arbor, an evolutionary paleontologist of the Royal BC Museum, describes how some armored dinosaurs probably used their horns, thorns and armor to fight each other, not only for protection.
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NodosauridsThey have four fingers, a flexible tail and a longer snout. Many had large shoulder peaks, including Anillolapelta AnquilosourA well preserved specimen found a mine of oil sands in 2011.
Borealopelta fossilized so perfectly that we can see every centimeter of its armor and skin in 3D, 110 million years after his death.
Nodosaurid impressions were found for the first time in Tumbler Ridge by two children, Mark Turner, 11, and Daniel Helm, eight years old, in 2001. That led to the discovery of other dinosaurs and fossil pathways in the region, and the foundation of the Tumbler Ridge Museum.
What scientists learned about the new species
Arbor saw for the first time photos of unusual clues in the new study about five years ago. Some were found near Tumbler Ridge and others in a gas well on the other side of the BC-Alberta border.
“I thought they were really strange and interesting and I was very curious about them,” he recalled.
Then, in 2023, he visited the Tumbler Ridge Museum, and Charles Helm, Daniel’s father and the museum’s scientific advisor, suggested that they study the slopes together, along with some new ones that he and Daniel had found. Many included not only three fingerprints, but the fingerprints of five fingers in the form of a crescent that are known to have anquilosaurs.
“And I was very excited,” said Arbor. “I thought, ‘You know, I think the only thing they can really be … is an anquilosurio.”
The investigation confirmed that and appointed the new species RUOPODOSAURUS CLAVAwhich means “lizard fallen with a club/maza” that refers to the location that were found and the distinctive characteristic of this family of Anquilosau.
Arbor said that the fossils found in China suggest that at this time, tail clubs were barely beginning to evolve in anquilosourids, so this species may not have had a complete round club as Zuul.
Almost all the footprints were similar in size, approximately 30 centimeters long, suggesting that the average size of this species was approximately five or six meters long, or smaller than many ankylouries without tail clubs. Sometimes, multiple routes were found together, all in the same direction and never crossing, which suggests that several animals may have traveled together.
Anthony Shillito is a researcher at the University of Saskatchewan who previously studied dinosaur footprints from the Cretaceous that included four fingers’ fingerprints. He said that there have been fingerprints of three fingertips before, but there are so many three -to -fingertips that would have been difficult to identify without the fingerprints of distinctive hands that met the footprints in Canada.
“[The study] It really made me think about some of the traces I’ve seen, maybe I misunderstood it because I didn’t have this information, “he said.” Now people have a better idea of what they are looking for. “And that can lead to being more found, and a better idea where these ankylosours placed in clubs may have lived during the average criticacería, he suggested.
The value of the footprints vs. The bones
Paleontologist Scott Persons studied both fossil dinosaurs tracks and Anillours During his doctorate at the University of Alberta, and is currently working on the study of a new kind of nodosaur.
He said that by demonstrating that the ankyosuros lived in North America before what was thought, the new study demonstrates the value of looking at fossil footprints and bones. They are often preserved in different conditions and contain different information.
“If you only look at the fossil bones, you may miss half of the puzzle pieces,” said people, curators of the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History and Assistant Professor at the Charleston College in South Carolina.
He pointed out that tracks often show multiple species that live together at the same time and can reveal other information. This new track also shows that wide and squatting ankylouries, sometimes described as the coffee table, had a surprisingly similar march to a bird, aligning the left and right feet as “supermodels on a track.”
He added: “This history shows us the analogy of the coffee table is a bit defective.”
On the other hand, he acknowledged, there is an inconvenience of the footprints compared to the bones.
“The obvious question is: how are these animals? All we have is the feet.”
