Jaw Dropping New Dinosaur Skull Discovery Reveals Evolution of Bizarre Crest - SciTechDaily

By Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Life reconstruction of Parasaurolophus group being confronted by a tyrannosaurid in the subtropical forests of New Mexico 75 million years ago.

Credit: Copyright Andrey Atuchin, Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

The first new skull discovered in nearly a century from a rare species of the iconic, tube-crested dinosaur Parasaurolophus was announced today in the journal PeerJ.

Joe Sertich, curator of dinosaurs at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and the leader of the team who discovered the specimen said, “This specimen is a wonderful example of amazing creatures evolving from a single ancestor.”.

New skull of Parasaurolophus as originally exposed in the badlands of New Mexico.

Credit: Copyright Doug Shore, Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Credit: Copyright Doug Shore, Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Three species of Parasaurolophus are currently recognized, ranging from Alberta to New Mexico in rocks dating between 77 and 73.5 million years old.

The new skull belongs to Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus, previously known from a single specimen collected in the same region of New Mexico in 1923 by legendary fossil hunter Charles H.

The partial skull was discovered in 2017 by Smithsonian Ecology Fellow Erin Spear, Ph.D., while exploring the badlands of northwestern New Mexico as part of a Denver Museum of Nature & Science team.

For decades, the family tree of Parasaurolophus placed the two long, straight-crested species of Parasaurolophus (P. walkeri from Alberta and P. tubicen from younger rocks in New Mexico) as most closely related despite being separated by more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) and 2.5 million years.

Analysis of additional features of the skull excluding the crest, together with information from other Parasaurolophus discoveries from southern Utah, suggest for the first time that all of the southern species from New Mexico and Utah may be more closely related than they are to their northern cousin.

The research was funded by the Denver Museum of Nature & Science through generous donations to the Laramidia Project

The paper describing the new skull of Parasaurolophus appears in the January 25, 2021, release of the journal PeerJ

January 24, 2021

January 23, 2021