Posted on 03/24/2010 7:19:40 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A plant-eating dinosaur might have been swallowed up by a collapsing sand dune some 185 million years ago in what are now Utah's red rocks. The desert disaster likely plopped the dinosaur onto its head, where it remained until being discovered by a local historian and artist in 2004... in the Comb Ridge area near Bluff, Utah, when he spotted the bony fossil protruding from the multicolored cliffs of the Navajo Sandstone, which represents the remains of a huge sand dune desert as large as the modern-day Sahara Desert. As such, the dinosaur has been named Seitaad ruessi, derived from the Navajo word "Seit'aad," a sand-desert monster from the Navajo creation legend. In 2005, museum paleontologists and crews excavated and collected the specimen, which included most bones of the skeleton, except for the head, and parts of the neck and tail. The missing parts were lost to erosion over the past thousand years, but were almost certainly visible when Native Americans lived on the cliff just above the skeleton, the researchers say... helps to fill a gap in knowledge about the animal's family of dinosaurs, whose North American fossils are sparse... Seitaad belonged to a group of plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropodomorphs... had a long tail and neck topped with a small head and was equipped with leaf-shaped teeth likely specialized for an herbivorous diet. A large curved claw on its "thumb" is a bit of a mystery, as paleontologists aren't sure what function it would have for an herbivorous beast that's not snagging meaty prey.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
“So thats what happened to Hagrid.”
That made me chuckle.
‘THIS DIDN’T JUST HAPPEN’?!!!
They HAD to say that, heheh.
Prayers for the family.
Is this site near Vernal or Jenson?... couldn’t find Bluff on the map.
Your addition to the title made me LOL, something I haven't done much of lately. Thanks.
How did all those dinosaurs die before Adam sinned?
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I would think rather like animals die today. Old age, accidents, disease, etc.
An interesting tidbit.
Google will find it for you...its down by Moab...SE corner.
That was interesting, but based on their earlier discovery of the same fossil. In Roman times Augustus (I think it was) traveled out to see an accidental discovery (someone was digging a foundation or something) of what was apparently a large fossil of some sort (whale, dino, whatever) somewhere in Greece, or maybe near modern Greece in the Balkans, and acknowledged the spot as the final resting place of some legendary giant, or Hercules, or somethin’. Okay, yeah, that story kinda meandered...
alas, “Authorization Required”
That’s because when the dinosaur bought the farm, there *were* no maps. ;’)
...and it tastes like chicken.
[’Civ bows]
This thread has unleashed a lot of pent-up humor, and I’m about to give them all a collective rimshot. Wait, you won’t want to miss this!
Hey! I took a Care of Magical Creatures course from that guy my Sophomore year!
ROFL!
>>Hey! I took a Care of Magical Creatures course from that guy my Sophomore year!<<
So did I. Sadly, I was given a witch and ended up marrying her (thank God I wised up quickly).
Didn’t the first dinosaur discovered (in Europe) have a spike sticking out of its hand. An Iguanodon I think it was called.
And the first fossil man was found at the site, he’d apparently been trying to pluck the spike out of the critter’s paw. ;’)
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