In paleontology we always talk about fossil remains, how fascinating they are and how they provide a great amount of information. However, analyzing a dinosaur skeleton is a special event and an event among specialists in the field.
It turns out that finding a complete one is not easy at all. The prehistoric world was a real chaos, and that can be seen in the fossils and the terrain in which they are found. Below you will learn about some special cases that can provide scientists with a more complete vision of the life of these animals.
Understanding prehistoric fossils
The human skeleton contains 206 bones and once a person dies, these remains remain in a very good state of preservation. The reason for this is that they are buried in a special container, and although the passage of time deteriorates them, most of them remain together and in some way recognizable.
The dinosaur skeleton does not enjoy this fate. When these incredible animals died they simply remained where the death occurred. There they were degraded without any kind of care.
To this we must add the action of the scavengers who spread them and even took them to burrows or hiding places for their food. Furthermore, all of this happened millions of years ago, which caused these fossils to end up buried in tons of sediments, rocks and earth.
In the same way, in those times the planet did not have the shape it has now. There were numerous geological, environmental changes and weathering that also dispersed the bones in ways that cannot be imagined. This makes it take paleontologists years to complete a simple skeleton.
When this occurs it is an important finding, since the opportunities to learn more about natural life from millions of years ago increase.
What a dinosaur skeleton can tell us
Dinosaur bones can tell us a lot, and if they are part of a complete skeleton, even better. They can reveal how they moved, how they behaved or what they were like as a whole.
It is already known that when a skull is available it is possible to know if it had a small or large brain, if it had acute senses or with whom it was related.
© Zhangzhugang
– Creative Commons
This is why finding a complete and well-preserved skeleton is very important. The following are some of the most famous cases to date.
Dueling North Carolina Dinosaurs in the United States
In this case we are talking about two perfectly preserved dinosaur skeletons, which are being unearthed and will be part of the North Carolina Museum in the United States. They were discovered in Montana
It’s about a Tyrannosaurus rex and of a Triceratops horridus, who were buried together, in the middle of what seemed like a confrontation for survival. Hence they were nicknamed Dueling dinosaurs. The T-rex is the most complete and best preserved specimen today.
It is estimated that they are almost 70 million years old. They were discovered in 2006 by professional fossil hunters.
The details indicate that you can see the contours of your bodythe skin impressions and lesions. This includes Tyrannosaurus teeth stuck in Triceratops. That is to say, it has fossilized remains of the animal’s epidermis, something that is not common at all.
The total weight of both specimens is 14 tons. Digging them up and organizing their purchase took years. There was a legal discussion about the ownership of the discovery, which was granted to those who found the remains.
An auction was also held in 2013 but none exceeded the reserve price of $6 million. How an agreement was not reached remained under lock and key for a couple of years.
Finally, the Non-Profit Friends of the Pasadena Museum of Natural Sciences purchased them and donated them to this institution. They are currently being studied and in the future there will be a large exhibition that promises to be unique.
Those in charge indicated that it will reveal unknown aspects about the way dinosaurs lived.
Definitive classification of the first complete dinosaur skeleton found in 1858
It took many years, but the first complete dinosaur skeleton found in the history of paleontology was finally studied. This allowed it to be given its place in the dinosaur family tree.
It is known as Scelidosaurus and its discovery took place in 1858 on the Jurassic Coast of West Dorset in England. It was in fossilized rock that was 193 million years old, so it was part of the early days of the dinosaurs.
© Ballista
– Creative Commons
Was sent to Richard Owen in the British Museum. It was about man who invented the term dinosaur. However, it was not possible for him to go too far in his study. He did not reconstruct the animal as it might have appeared in life or try to understand its relationship with other specimens of this type. In reality he did nothing more than immerse him in the theory of the time. And since then he had remained this way.
At least until Dr. David Norman of the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge finished Owen’s work. He performed a detailed description and biological analysis of the Scelidosaurus skeleton, still stored in the Natural History Museum in London.
A revealing work
The results published in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society They reconstructed what the life of this specimen was like. They also revealed that it was a primitive ancestor of ankylosaurs, those armored tanks of the Late Cretaceous Period.
Dinosaurs are mostly classified as Saurischians what are the so-called lizard hip or Ornithischians which are known as bird hip.
However, the work of Norman and his collaborators, carried out in 2017, laid the foundations to reorganize, redefine and rename the way in which they are catalogued. In fact it suggests that the first ornithischians appeared in the Early Jurassic, with Scelidosaurus being one of those dinosaurs. Therefore, it represents a species that appeared at the evolutionary birth of the Ornistichians.
The work completed by Norman on the Scelidosaurius has already revealed many firsts. For example, it had horns on the back edge. It had bones that had not been known in any other dinosaur. Due to the rough texture of the bones it also had hardened horny shields, similar to those of turtles. Added to this is that its skin anchored a series of spikes and bone plates in the shape of a tack.
© Ballista
– Creative Commons
It was formerly believed to belong to the stegosaurs, but Norman showed that it was actually an ankylosaur. It is a late analysis, but it was better that it was done now, rather than never done. We would have missed really important events.