Posted on 09/23/2014 11:59:55 AM PDT by Red Badger
Palaeontologists have discovered what they are calling the "Jimmy Durante" of dinosaurs, a type of hadrosaur with a distinctive nasal profile.
Named Rhinorex condrupus, the fossil was found by researchers from North Carolina State University and Brigham Young University, and lived in what is now Utah approximately 75 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period.
According to National Geographic, the date places the creature in the middle of a major dinosaur radiation, the process by which species adapt to new ecological niches.
Rhinorex, which translates roughly into "King Nose", was a plant-eater and a close relative of other Cretaceous hadrosaurs like Parasaurolophus and Edmontosaurus.
Hadrosaurs were common herbivores, found across what is now Asia, Europe and North America.
Although the dinosaurs are usually identified by bony crests that extend from the skull, Rhinorex has a different defining feature – a huge nose.
Terry Gates, a joint postdoctoral researcher with North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and Rodney Sheetz, of the Brigham Young Museum, came across the fossil in storage at BYU.
First excavated in the 1990s from Utah's Neslen formation, when Gates and Sheez reconstructed the skull, they realised they had a new species.
"We had almost the entire skull, which was wonderful," Gates said. "But the preparation was very difficult. It took two years to dig the fossil out of the sandstone it was embedded in -- it was like digging a dinosaur skull out of a concrete driveway."
Based on the recovered bones, Gates estimates that Rhinorex was about 30 feet long and weighed over 8,500 lbs.
Rhinorex, which thrived in a swampy estuarial environment around 50 miles from the coast, is the only complete hadrosaur fossil from the Neslen site.
"We've found other hadrosaurs from the same time period but located about 200 miles farther south that are adapted to a different environment," Gates told the Tech Times.
"This discovery gives us a geographic snapshot of the Cretaceous, and helps us place contemporary species in their correct time and place. Rhinorex also helps us further fill in the hadrosaur family tree."
Gates said the reason for the dinosaur's large nose was not yet understood.
"The purpose of such a big nose is still a mystery," he said.
"If this dinosaur is anything like its relatives then it likely did not have a super sense of smell; but maybe the nose was used as a means of attracting mates, recognizing members of its species, or even as a large attachment for a plant-smashing beak. We are already sniffing out answers to these questions."
The research was published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
75 million light years away would be in another galaxy..................
and they don’t know yet ... looking back, in time, the dinosaurs are still alive to them. Probably a good thing. As long as they think the dinosaurs are alive they won’t think about invading.
But as they travel towards us time speeds up!.....................
yep ... maybe they were here and gone again? Would explain so much.
Everybody’s doin it, doin it, doin it. Pickin their nose and ..............y’all know the rest.
Maybe men are from Mars and Women (capital ‘W’) are from Venus?!? Nope, it was God and God played a joke. God has to have a sense of humor otherwise God would be crazy as moslems.
75 million light years away would be in another galaxy..................
A long ways away...
Everybody wants to get into the act.
I’ m mortified!
Thanks Red Badger.
Jerry Reed is one of my very favorite guitarists. Here he is playing “The Claw.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtmb-m4eG6w
Something interesting on cable show recently was a claim that some of the dinosaurs had large noses and sinus cavities that were used as sound chambers for their calls and possibly those sounds were for defense as they could scare other predators away.
I suspect this Rhino Rex specimen nicknamed the Jimmy Durante dinosaur would have had an amazing sound, something like “Inka Dinka Doo”
Inky-Dinky-Do
Lived by hisself in the swamp? THAT Amos Moses?
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