Solving The Mystery of Gryposaurus

Terry Gates - better known as Bucky - is a paleontologist here at the Utah Museum of Natural History. Today, there's hot news about a dinosaur he named. Here's what he had to say about the whole experience:


"I study the duck-billed dinosaurs that lived in southern Utah around 75 million years ago (during the Late Cretaceous period). For decades, paleontologists knew that there were duck-billed dinosaurs hidden in the sediments of what is now Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, but their identity remained buried. That is, until a volunteer from the Raymond M. Alf Museum in California found a skull within the Kaiparowits Formation of the Monument.

The Alf Museum needed help collecting the large skull from the steep and rugged landscape, so in August 2004 UMNH preparation lab manager Eric Lund and I helped the Alf Museum bring it to UMNH. Everyday I visited Eric as he cleaned the fossil in our preparation lab, trying to decipher any information possible from the bones that he had exposed. (Check out Eric’s blog entry for a description of that process).

It wasn’t until we got our hands on a piece of bone that had eroded from the skull that I was able to tell what kind of duck-billed dinosaur this was. Every known species on Earth has a genus and species name; for instance, the genus name for humans is Homo and the species name is sapien. In the same way, all dinosaurs have a genus and species name, and members of the same genus have characteristics in common. The portion of the skull that I found inside a box of eroded bone was exactly the piece of evidence I needed to quickly identify this specimen’s genus. The species of the genus Gryposaurus share several characteristics that are only present on those animals, most noticeably a prominent hump on the nose bone – and that’s what I found.

Now that I knew the genus, I had to figure out the species name. That was more difficult and I had to wait until preparation of the skull was nearly complete before I could proceed with detailed study. Once Eric completely exposed the skull (after two years) I was finally able to meticulously compare the shape of bones on this skull to that of other known species of duck-bills. I traveled to museums all over the U.S. and Canada (including Bozeman, MT, New York, NY, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), in order to see a broad spectrum of dinosaurs that might help me identify our mystery species.

In the end, I found that there are several differences in the skull found in southern Utah compared to other species of the genus Gryposaurus. Because of these key differences, I named a new species, Gryposaurus monumentensis, meaning “Hooked nose lizard from the monument”.

The process of naming a new species is not easy. First I had to do weeks of research, then spend weeks writing a description of the new species for other scientists. Finally, I submitted the research paper to a scientific journal for publication. More time passed for editing, revisions from other paleontologists, and final editing from the journal. When you count all those phases, it took literally months to name a new species, which explains why it has taken three years since the excavation of the skull for the name to become official. Yet, in the end, all of the work is worth the effort because each new species opens the door a little wider on the ecology and lives of prehistoric animals, and allows us to ask deeper and deeper questions about an ancient world."

Have a question for Bucky about his work? Click "Comments" below and ask him yourself!

Meeting the “Duck” of the Grand Staircase

Eric Lund is the Paleontology Lab Manager here at the Utah Museum of Natural History. Today, there's hot news about a dinosaur he helped uncover. Here's what he remembers about the process:

"The hadrosaur skull was discovered in 2004, in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, by a group from the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in California. When I saw the skull in the field there wasn’t much to see, my first impressions were dulled by the lackluster plaster jacket that covered much of the exposed bones. However, we were dealing with a dinosaur skull, so no matter how much of it was there, it was pretty freakin’ awesome!

The day of the helicopter lift there was an air of excitement beaming from every person who was present. For me, there was some apprehension behind my excitement; a myriad of ‘What If’ questions ran through my head: What if the Helicopter can’t lift the block? What if the jacket isn’t strong enough? What if the helicopter pilot drops the specimen too early? All my uncertainties soon faded to jubilation as the helicopter crested the horizon with the skull safely nestled in the dangling cargo net below. I watched with amazement as the helicopter pilot expertly placed the specimen back on the ground. I think everyone exhaled a collective sigh of relief to see the job done. The skull then made the five hour journey up to the Utah Museum of Natural History, where I would get to spend the next two years preparing it for display.

Cutting open the plaster jacket back in the lab, I soon realized just how much work I had ahead of me; there was a lot of rock surrounding the bone. I cautiously began by removing the loose debris from the surface, and to my amazement much of the surrounding matrix practically fell off the bone. I quickly progressed removing much of the bulk that surrounded the bone. That was until I discovered the deeper matrix pockets were harder than cement, forcing me to use the mini-jack to break through the matrix. As the name of the tool implies it is a hand held jackhammer, and with a little elbow grease chunks through the matrix quite easily. I took things in stride and tediously removed the matrix chip by chip until the skull reached its present state. After spending two years preparing the skull, it makes me very proud to see it on display in the Museum for all to see."

To read more about naming this new species of dinosaur, check out what paleontologist Bucky Gates has to say about it!

Got questions for Eric about preparing the skull or working in a dinosaur lab? Click "Comments" and ask him yourself!

Velociraptor: A Feathered Friend?

If you've seen the movie Jurassic Park, then you probably have a pretty clear picture of what Velociraptor looked like: a smoothed-skinned, long-armed, vicious meat-eater. Unfortunately, that image turns out to be another reminder that you shouldn't believe everything you see on screen. According to evidence published in this week's journal "Science", Velociraptor had feathers!

How could they tell? Scientists from the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum in Chicago looked closely at the arm bone of one of the creatures and found a series of bumps where feathers attached, just like we see today in modern birds like the turkey vulture.

"The question is why an animal that's clearly not flying would have this structure," says Lindsay Zanno, a graduate student who studies related dinosaurs here at the Utah Museum of Natural History. One theory is that Velociraptor descended from ancestors that once flew. Other thoughts include that the feathers were used for display like a peacock's tail, to help keep warm-blooded dinosaurs warm, or to control the temperature of nests. Whatever the reason this species had feathers, "It's good to finally have proof" says Zanno.

Could any of Utah's dinosaurs have had feathers too? Possibly, but no one knows for sure. While Utah was home to many cousins of Velociraptor including the world famous dinosaurs Utahraptor, Falcarius, and Hagryphus, the ancient environment at their burial ground wasn't right to preserve feathers.. However, similar marks on a bone could in theory show up. "It makes you want to go back and look closer, to see if you were missing something," says Zanno. "Each step forward makes you look back; there's a constant reevaluation."

Why do you think a creature who couldn't fly might have had feathers? Click "Comments" below and let us know!

Old Flowers: New Evidence

Imagine what the earth was like 80 million years ago: the sights, the smells, the sounds.... I bet your mind didn't leap straight to orchids, did it? But scientists at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology are buzzing about new evidence that the first orchids are old enough to have lived that far in the past, right alongside dinosaurs.

To what do we owe this newfound vision of T-rexes tromping along next to showy flowers? Why, to a bee! Lucky for us (though not for the bee), sometime around 15 or 20 million years ago a bee was covered in tree resin as it went about its daily business. Over millions of years, as the tree was buried, the sap hardened into amber with the bee trapped inside. Eventually, someone found the preserved fossil in the Dominican Republic and brought it to the Harvard Museum to study.

So how did a 15 million year old bee tell us about 80 million year old orchids? As it turns out, the amber preserved not only the ancient bee, but also the pollen grains it was carrying on its back. By carefully studying the pollen grains, the scientists were able to determine not only what kind of plant they were from but also how they relate to modern species.

This find was particularly exciting to scientists, because it's the first window into orchid evolution they've discovered. "It's absolutely fantastic," an orchid specialist told Nature magazine. "It's what the orchid community has been waiting for, for a long time."