South Dakota fossil yields new dinosaur species

[Allan Edels <edels@msn.com>]

Bakker's Latest -

Found on Yahoo from Reuters:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20050502/sc_nm/science_dinosaur_dc

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South Dakota fossil yields new dinosaur species
2 hours, 31 minutes ago


CHICAGO (Reuters) - A fossil found in South Dakota is that of a never before 
seen species of dinosaur, a horse-sized plant eater with spikes on its bony 
flat head, scientists said on Monday.

"When my colleagues saw a CAT scan of the new fossil, they tore up their 
family tree diagrams and said, 'Back to the drawing board!' ... We never 
suspected such a creature existed," said paleontologist Robert Bakker.

Discovery of the flat-headed member of the pachycephalosaur family changes 
the view of dinosaur history during the final days of the Cretaceous Period 
66 million years ago, showing that family trees were still evolving even as 
the entire dinosaur world was about to go extinct, the Children's Museum of 
Indianapolis said in announcing the find.

The nearly complete pachycephalosaur skull was donated to the museum by 
three amateur fossil hunters from Iowa who found it in 2003 while exploring 
the Hell Creek Formation in central South Dakota.

The discovery was announced in Indianapolis in conjunction with the annual 
meeting of the American Association of Museums.

The museum said the pachycephalosaur family is marked by dragon-like heads 
covered with horns, knobs and bumps. The most famous family member, 
Pachycephalosaurus, had a solid, domed bone helmet up to eight inches (20 
cm) thick used to ram other dinosaurs in their sides, it said.

The new species has a flat head with no bone dome. The only other 
flat-headed pachycephalosaurs discovered were found in China and Mongolia 
but all of those had had short muzzles and no long horns anywhere on the 
skull, the announcement said.

The pachycephalosaurs in general all had massive necks and could inflict 
significant "blunt force trauma" on other dinosaurs, Bakker said.

"This new species ... likely pressed their foreheads together and shoved one 
another really hard," he added.

The museum, billed as the largest of its kind in the United States, said the 
fossil would become part of its dinosaur exhibit.

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Allan Edels