Scientists have recently identified a dinosaur skeleton, specifically, a duck-billed dinosaur called Parrosaurus missouriensis which they claim belongs to the Hadrosauridae family.
As indicated in a Yahoo! News report, the researchers have been able to identify not just the bones of the new dinosaur, although they may have discovered a dinosaur hotbed, as well.
The newly discovered dinosaur species grew to roughly 35 feet long as an adult. Various bones of dinosaurs have been found at the excavation area over the past 80 years, although now, enough has been retrieved to make sure a new genus and species have been found.
Just more than one month ago, scientists took out the body of the dinosaur. According to curator Guy Darrough, from the Sainte Genevieve Museum Learning Center in Ste. Genevieve Museum Learning Center in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, was gigantic, nearly the size of a Volkswagen.
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Hadrosaur Skeleton
Discovery of the 1st Dinosaur Bones in Southern Missouri
The curator also explained, the discovery is like hitting the tomb of King Tut, who originally started to work at the site about 40 years back. He added he couldn't think of another discovery that would be bigger than dinosaurs in Missouri.
Such a discovery, as described in the USA Today, where this report originally came out, also adds to scientists' knowledge of the ecology of the Western Interior Seaway, a body of water that split North America over 70 million years back.
While most dinosaur discoveries have been in western states, this area is southern Missouri; it would have been on the eastern shore of the seaway, has been producing finds for tens of years.
About eight decades ago in the area, researchers discovered the first dinosaur bones there. They were suspected to be the remnant of a gigantic sauropod, a plant-eating dinosaur, explained Darrough.
A Hadrosaur
At the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Paleontologist Charles Gilmore examined the bones and, along with the Geological Survey's Dan Stewart, wrote a paper on the dinosaur, which tuned out to be known as Parrorsaurus missouriensis.
One more cache of ones, a skeleton of what they found was a juvenile dinosaur, and a dinosaur jaw with teeth was discovered during the 1980s, after Bruce Stinchcomb, a geologist brought the property.
Such bones suggested the dinosaur was not a sauropod but, in fact, a hadrosaur or a duck-billed dinosaur.
Essentially, hadrosaurs have long been regarded as "herbivores," as detailed in the National Park Service site, although some findings in recent years have suggested might have eaten crustaceans, neither accidentally nor opportunistically.
Other Dinosaur Finds
Scientists had believed the dinosaur looked like the brontosaurus used in the Sinclair Oil promotion, although it appears it is an entirely different dinosaur type, said Darrough.
He, a fossil collector, asked if he could set up a greenhouse to excavate at the site and found successfully discovered bones of a dinosaur. Also discovered was a dinosaur tooth that is associated with Tyrannosaurus rex.
Darrough got in touch with paleontologist Peter Makovicky who was then curator of dinosaurs at The Field Museum in Chicago. In 2016, he traveled and soon had a dig team sent to the area.
Most people, he explained, though they were finding mastodons and mammoths explained. He added such gigantic animals are 10,000 years old. However, dinosaurs are 70 million years of age.
Report about the new fossil discovery is shown on Fox 2 St. Louis's YouTube video below:
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