Whisper
November 23rd, 2007, 04:22 PM
EDMONTON -- Scientists at Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum have unearthed a unique ancestor of the Triceratops, a dinosaur with a skull the size of a Smart Car.
This newly discovered genus of horned dinosaur, named Eotriceratops xerinsularis, was recently put on display at the museum in Drumheller, Alta., after being painstakingly assembled over the past five years.
Dave Eberth, senior research scientist at the Tyrrell, said the specimen was originally found in 2001 by the camp cook on a dig in the Horseshoe Canyon formation at Dry Island Buffalo Jump, about 70 kilometres northwest of Drumheller.
Drumheller is about 100 kilometres northeast of Calgary.
The parts of the three-metre-long skull and skeleton were found in a 20-metre-thick layer from an era that doesn't yield a lot of dinosaur bones in Alberta, Eberth said.
The Triceratops is believed to be 66 million years old, but this specimen goes back 68 million years, which makes it an early version of the three-horned plant-eater.
It was an unlikely find, Eberth said, and the skull was in about 45 pieces embedded in shale.
"When you go out and look for dinosaur material, you find a lot that's not up to snuff. . . . Usually you walk on by and look for something better," he said.
"Basically, it's a road kill. It looks like somebody ran over it in a Cretaceous Hummer."
While they didn't get the entire animal, they got the "business end," the most important part around the skull.
It looked a lot like Triceratops, but turned out to be a more primitive version.
It's also bigger than any Triceratops found in Alberta, and the skull is a "monster" at three metres long, he said.
Edmonton Journal (Canadian Press)
This newly discovered genus of horned dinosaur, named Eotriceratops xerinsularis, was recently put on display at the museum in Drumheller, Alta., after being painstakingly assembled over the past five years.
Dave Eberth, senior research scientist at the Tyrrell, said the specimen was originally found in 2001 by the camp cook on a dig in the Horseshoe Canyon formation at Dry Island Buffalo Jump, about 70 kilometres northwest of Drumheller.
Drumheller is about 100 kilometres northeast of Calgary.
The parts of the three-metre-long skull and skeleton were found in a 20-metre-thick layer from an era that doesn't yield a lot of dinosaur bones in Alberta, Eberth said.
The Triceratops is believed to be 66 million years old, but this specimen goes back 68 million years, which makes it an early version of the three-horned plant-eater.
It was an unlikely find, Eberth said, and the skull was in about 45 pieces embedded in shale.
"When you go out and look for dinosaur material, you find a lot that's not up to snuff. . . . Usually you walk on by and look for something better," he said.
"Basically, it's a road kill. It looks like somebody ran over it in a Cretaceous Hummer."
While they didn't get the entire animal, they got the "business end," the most important part around the skull.
It looked a lot like Triceratops, but turned out to be a more primitive version.
It's also bigger than any Triceratops found in Alberta, and the skull is a "monster" at three metres long, he said.
Edmonton Journal (Canadian Press)