Underground Dinosaurs?
Newfound dino apparently spent part of life in burrows
Picture Utah 99 million years ago: warm and wet, rivers everywhere, giant floodplains, a huge inland ocean and towering volcanoes. A dog-sized plant-eating dinosaur resembling a miniature T. rex had big biceps, strong muscles at the hips, and fused pelvic bones. The better to dig with, scientists figure.
The newfound species, Fona herzogae, is thought to lived in burrows — not the first known dinosaur to spend time underground. The case is not rock-solid, but the evidence is compelling.
Scientists found complete fossils of Fona, “with many of its bones preserved in the original death pose, chest down with splayed forelimbs, and in exceptionally good condition,” said Haviv Avrahami, a PhD student at North Carolina State university. “If it had already been underground in a burrow before death, it would have made this type of preservation more likely.”
“Fona skeletons are way more common in this area than we would predict for a small animal with fragile bones,” Lindsay Zanno, an associate research professor at the university, said in a statement. “The best explanation for why we find so many of them, and recover them in small bundles of multiple individuals, is that they were living at least part of the time underground. Essentially, Fona did the hard work for us, by burying itself all over this area.”
The scientists described their discovery this week in the Anatomical Record.
“People tend to have a myopic view of dinosaurs that hasn’t kept up with the science,” Zanno said. “We now know that dinosaur diversity ran the gamut from tiny arboreal gliders and nocturnal hunters, to sloth-like grazers, and yes, even subterranean shelterers.”