Some dinosaurs are routinely cool. Scary T. rex. Horned triceratops. And, particularly, the spiky ankylosaurs — squat, armored beasts with depraved club-like tails. Paleontologists have lengthy thought these tails have been for heading off predators like T. rex, however new analysis suggests they might have been for in-fighting as nicely.
A workforce of researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Royal BC Museum and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences printed a examine in Biology Letters this week on a exceptional and uncommon fossil of Zuul crurivastator. The ankylosaur had broken and healed spikes close to its hips. The scientists suspect the accidents got here from one other ankylosaur delivering a mighty whack from its personal “sledgehammer-like tail.”
This exhibits an injured and healed spike on Zuul’s left aspect.
Royal Ontario Museum
Zuul crurivastator might have gotten testy with its personal type, very similar to modern-day deer, kangaroos and zebras. “This suggests ankylosaurs had complicated habits, presumably battling for social and territorial dominance and even partaking in a ‘rutting’ season for mates,” ROM mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday.
The plant-eating ankylosaurs lived 76 million years in the past. It took years of excavation work in Montana to extract the Zuul crurivastator fossil on the coronary heart of the examine. The fossilized pores and skin and armor exhibits accidents the place spikes have been damaged after which healed right into a blunted form, a sample extra in step with battling different ankylosaurs than struggling an assault from a predator like a tyrannosaur.
As an apart, the Zuul crurivastator title is value delving into. Zuul is for the horned gatekeeper from Ghostbusters, whereas the remainder of the moniker interprets to “destroyer of shins,” a reference to how the dinosaurs possible used their tails to take out the legs of tyrannosaurs. Perhaps it wants a brand new nickname: Zuul, destroyer of flanks.