A website has been activated to cover the discovery of a baby dinosaur, specifically a Parasaurolophus (Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus skeleton photo ©Lisa Andres) lived about 75.5 million years ago. This specimen that probably was less than a year old was found in 2009 in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah and now has its own virtual museum on the Internet.
The discovery of Joe, as this little Parasaurolophus was nicknamed, took place through a stroke of luck. Kevin Terris, a high school student, found a dinosaur bone but the professionals paleontologists he was accompanying in a dig mistook it for a rib as there are many in the area. But when Andrew Farke, one of them, found the skull of a young dinosaur nearby, decided to take another look at the bone found by Kevin.
A closer examination allowed the paleontologists to see that the rib was actually a set of toe bones. In the end, they found the most complete skeleton of a Parasaurolophus ever found. The length of nearly two meters and the features of the bones have made it clear that it must have be a juvenile.
The Parasaurolophus was a plant-eating dinosaur that belonged to the family of the hadrosaurid and lived in the Late Cretaceous, between 80 and 66 million years ago in North America. An adult specimen could reach a length of 10 meters and a weight of 3 tons. Like many species of the family, one of its typical features was having a tubular crest that could reach 2 meters in length.
The function of the crest has always been the subject of discussion among scientists. Possibly it served to amplify the calls of these animals. In this case, the juveniles emitted calls that had a pitch higher than adults. It’s also possible that it served for sexual attraction and this would explain why adult males had larger crests.
Dinosaurs grew rapidly, in fact Joe was about a quarter of the size of an adult while being less than a year old. Its crest had begun to develop too. The discovery of Joe allowed scientists to better understand the development of these dinosaurs, their similarities and differencies from their closest relatives.
It was really an extraordinary discovery and for this reason the three-dimensional scan of the entire skeleton of Joe has been carried out and put online along with other documents about this specimen.
[ad name=”eBayUSUKFossils”]
