SCIENCE

Known as a nodosaur, this 110 million-year-old, armored plant-eater is the best-preserved fossil of its kind ever found. (Nat Geo Magazine)

Zoom in on dinosaurs and the early Cretaceous in North America.

Discussion Ideas

• The nodosaur was not unearthed at a paleontological dig. How was this fossil discovered?
  • Excavations at Suncor’s Millennium Mine, an oil mining operation in northern Alberta, Canada, unearthed the fossil. “Alberta law designates all fossils the property of the province, not of the owners of the land where they are found. Most are discovered after being exposed by erosion, but mining has also proved a boon to paleontologists.”
    • After the discovery, operations in the area temporarily halted and “Suncor excavators and museum staff chipped away at the rock in 12-hour shifts, shrouded in dust and diesel fumes.”
    • The entire fossil didn’t survive the excavation: As it was lifted out of the earth, it collapsed under its own weight. The interior was largely (though not entirely) destroyed and the exterior preserved in chunks. Watch a video of the excavation here.

 

• The Alberta fossil is a new species of nodosaur, a type of ankylosaur. What are nodosaurs and ankylosaurs?
  • Ankylosaurs were stumpy, four-legged herbivores found on every continent except Africa during the Jurassic and Cretaceous.
  • Perhaps the most defining feature of the ankylosaurs was their bony body armor. (Learn more about armored dinosaurs from the good folks at UC Berkeley here.) Some ankylosaurs, including nodosaurs, had spikes protruding from their armor. Like their cousin in the illustration above, the new nodosaurs’ spikes were at its shoulders.
  • One feature that distinguishes nodosaurs from other ankylosaurs is the lack of spiked clubs on their tails. (One club-tailed ankylosaur was recently named Zuul crurivastator, “destroyer of shins.”)

 

• What makes the Alberta nodosaur fossil so notable?
  • “It’s basically a dinosaur mummy—it really is exceptional,” says one paleontologist. (Just to clarify: The fossil is not a mummy, which is actual preserved tissue. Instead, the fossil rock mimics a mummy in its startling detail and clues to ancient life.)
  • “Usually just the bones and teeth are preserved, and only rarely do minerals replace soft tissues before they rot away. There’s also no guarantee that a fossil will keep its true-to-life shape. Feathered dinosaurs found in China, for example, were squished flat, and North America’s ‘mummified’ duck-billed dinosaurs, among the most complete ever found, look withered and sun dried.”
    • Many paleontologists are taking an especially close look at the nodosaur’s armor. Usually, “the bony plates, called osteoderms, scatter early in the decaying process. Not only did the osteoderms on this nodosaur preserve in place, but so did traces of the scales in between.”
    • For other scientists, “the nodosaur fossil’s most revolutionary features may lie at its smallest scale: microscopic remnants of its original coloration.” Was it camouflaged?

 

• How was the nodosaur so spectacularly fossilized?
  • Many natural phenomena contributed to the fossilization process.
    • The animal died in a river, and was carried to the Western Interior Seaway, the ancient sea that used to split western North America.
    • The body sank to the seafloor, where it “kicked up soupy mud that engulfed it.” The minerals in this soupy mud fossilized the remains, infiltrating the back and armor, turning them to stone imitations of life.
    • Millions of years of sediment piled on top of the fossil. These high-pressure processes which helped preserve the nodosaur fossil also helped create the fossil fuels (oil sands) of the McMurray Formation. Hence the reason Suncor was there in the first place.

 

TEACHERS TOOLKIT

Nat Geo: The Amazing Dinosaur Found (Accidentally) by Miners in Canada

New York Times: ‘Dinosaur Mummy’ Emerges From the Oil Sands of Alberta

Nat Geo: North America in the Age of the Dinosaurs