With a body 30-feet-long and a mouth full of more than 800 teeth, a new dinosaur discovered in Southern Utah might sound like a formidable killer.
Not so. This duck-billed dinosaur is not a carnivore, and might have shied away from red meat in favor of a plant-filled diet.
U researchers announced the discovery of a skull belonging to a new species of duck-billed dinosaurs called Gryposaurus Monumentensis on Wednesday. The almost-complete fossil of the dinosaur’s skull has given scientists a better look into dinosaur life 75 million years ago.
“It’s like the dinosaur is on steroids,” said Scott Sampson, a U researcher in charge of excavating dinosaur bones from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument where the skull was found. “The bones are so thick compared to other duck-billed dinosaurs.”
Terry Gates began noticing unique characteristics about the skull two years ago when he was asked to study it. “The front of the snout and lower jaw are too big and round, and the beak is much stronger and larger than the average duck-billed dinosaur,” said Gates, who recently received a doctorate degree in paleontology. “We realized that this was something new.”
The discovery leaves paleontologists questioning why this giant plant eater is found in Southern Utah.
In the late-Cretaceous period, when this dinosaur thrived, Utah was blocked from the eastern half of North America by oceans and from the western coast by mountains. This left dinosaurs with one-fifth of the current land area to roam.
Although land connected the area to places farther north such as Montana and parts of Canada, the species seems not to have migrated.
Sampson and his team have found nine other new species of dinosaurs in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
“We get different species in Montana than in Southern Utah — the other species we’ve found so far are also only in this area,” Gates said.
One theory says that a climate barrier made the environments too different and kept these dinosaurs from moving.
“Different plants and different plant-eating dinosaurs could easily have an effect back then — we just don’t know though,” Sampson said.
Gates believes that there may have been a physical barrier, like a mountain range or river, blocking the way, he said.
“Gryposaurus Monumentensis shows us different aspects of social behavior and gene flow, especially by comparing and relating it to the nine other species we’ve found,” Sampson said. Gates has been researching the duck-billed dinosaur for two years.
“We’re going to work with paleobotanists and those who work on chemical composition to figure out where it’s eating and try to piece together these clues for a more general idea,” he said.
U researchers became aware of the dinosaur after a group of volunteers from Alf Museum in California found trails of the bones in the national park. It wasn’t until later, after two years of excavation, that researchers realized the fossil is unique.
“There are less than 12 relatively complete skulls in the world — finding a skull of this quality is a rare event,” said Alan Titus, curator at the Alf Museum.
The fossil is on display at the Utah Museum of Natural History.