Trending News

'King Nose' Dinosaur Rediscovered in BYU Museum Storage as a New Species Called Rhinoex

By

Scientists have discovered the remains of a dinosaur with a gigantic nose, so large that its Latin name translates to mean "King Nose."

According to Live Science, found the Rhinorex condrupus fossil, a dinosaur that would have lived about 75 million years ago, in central Utah. Terry Gates, a postdoctoral researcher with N.C. State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, led a study published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

"We had almost the entire skull, which was wonderful," Gates said in a press release. "But the preparation was very difficult. It took two years to dig the fossil out of the sandstone it was embedded in - it was like digging a dinosaur skull out of a concrete driveway."

Rhinorex was a type of hadrosaur, which is also classified as a duck-billed dinosaur and their decorated beaks were used for communication purposes.

"Unlike other related duck-billed dinos, a small spur is present on the bottom of the nose bone that makes this region look like a fishing hook with a barb," Gates told Live Science. "I don't know why it would be there."

Along with his lone study co-author Rodney Sheetz, of the Brigham Young Museum of Paleontology, Gates noticed the partial skull in the museum's storage. The fossil was initially unearthed in the 1990s at a site called the Nelson formation in Utah's Book Cliffs. After recreating the skeleton, the researcher learned they were dealing with a new dinosaur species.

Rhinorex was about 30 feet long and could have weighed nearly five tons. The dinosaur likely lived in a swamp environment some 50 miles from the coast and, though the researchers could not determine how it died, they believe it did so in a river.

"We've found other hadrosaurs from the same time period but located about 200 miles farther south that are adapted to a different environment," Gates said in the release. "This discovery gives us a geographic snapshot of the Cretaceous, and helps us place contemporary species in their correct time and place. Rhinorex also helps us further fill in the hadrosaur family tree.

"The purpose of such a big nose is still a mystery. If this dinosaur is anything like its relatives then it likely did not have a super sense of smell; but maybe the nose was used as a means of attracting mates, recognizing members of its species, or even as a large attachment for a plant-smashing beak. We are already sniffing out answers to these questions."

© 2024 University Herald, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Join the Discussion
Real Time Analytics