Dragon-like' dinosaur found in US

WASHINGTON: A new "dragon-like" dinosaur that used its flat head to slam into rivals has been discovered in the United States, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis announced.
The nearly complete skull of a pachycephalosaur was found by three men from Iowa during a fossil-collecting trip in South Dakota last year, the Indiana museum said Monday.

They donated the 66-million-year-old skull to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, where scientists led by paleontologist Robert Bakker realized they had found a new dinosaur species.

The fossil has a long muzzle, long horns at the back of the skull and a flat forehead, the museum said. "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!'," Bakker said in a statement.

"The discovery of this fossil was a Cretaceous surprise we never suspected such a creature existed." The fossil "proves that family trees were still branching off and evolving in Montana and South Dakota, even though the entire dinosaur world was about to go extinct," the museum said.

The pachycephalosaur family is known for its "dragon-like" head covered with horns, knobs and bumps.

The plant-eating dinosaur was about the size of a horse. Its most famous relative, Pachycephalosaurus, or "Thick Headed Lizard," used its up to 20 centimeters thick domed head to ram into the sides of other dinosaurs.

The skull was found in the same rock layers as the Pachycephalosaurus and Stygimoloch, whose sharp, straight horns pointing backward compensated for its smaller domed head.

The Stygimoloch is a close kin to the flat-headed dinosaur. "They used their bony, spiked heads to nudge, butt and slam into members of their own species all part of the kinetic courtship battles of the sort we see today between bull moose or giraffes," Bakker said.

"Pachycephalosaurs specialized in blunt-force trauma. Stygimoloch rammed and gored with its horns. This new species, being announced today, likely pressed their foreheads together and shoved one another really hard." The trio lived together at the same time and place.

"No other dinosaur ecosystem could boast of three distinctly different head-butting species," the museum said.

Other flat-headed pachycephalosaurs have been discovered in China and Mongolia, but those had short muzzles and did not have long horns, the museum said.

Link To This Article

good article but needs pictures. Or even drawings of what it may look like. Also if it had wings now that would kick ass

It would be pretty cool if we saw some pics of the creature they found.

So from what I'm reading, the only thing that makes this new species dragon-like is that it has horns.

There is a news story with pictures in it, I think we here at ATS, decided it was vry "croc" like.

Here ya go :



LINK

If I recall correctly, there's not very much, in some paleos opinions, to mark the beast as a pacyhycephalosaur, outside of having a thickened and ornate skull. It might not be a pachy, or it might be a very primitive one. But this is an intersting find nonetheless!

Yay more dinosaur news!

It seems as though someone is jumping to the conclusion of a dragon. The only proof that is here is a skull that shares main characteristics as at least 5-10 other dinosaurs (most likely much more, just staying on the low side).

When I was very young, I was a complete dino freak. So, as stupid as it sounds, I know exactly what a pachyceph is. I'm sorry to say its not very dragon-like.



This is an Archaeopteryx. This is obviously just an artists' rendition, but it nevertheless is somewhat draconian.