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| It is now known that at least one species of Edmontosaurus had a fleshy crest on its head. |
Edmontosaurus has long been described as a large, crestless
duck-billed dinosaur, or hadrosaur. This family of dinosaurs is known
for the beautiful and probably vibrantly colored variates of crest
shapes they have; each species has its own its own crest. Some
hadrosaurs such as Parasaurolophus has a long tube-shaped
crest extending out of the back of its head and Lambeosaurus
has a fan-shaped crest. But hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus were
crestless . . . or so paleontologists thought! This was until one
well-preserved specimen was discovered in December of last year by
paleontologist Dr. Samuel Adamson.
As many of you know, paleontologist Dr. Samuel Adamson and his team
dig dinosaur fossils out of the ground each year and they are shipped
back to Animal Adventures Institute (AAI) where they
are cleaned so that they can either be thoroughly studied, or to be
used in the miracle of cloning these extinct creatures back from
extinction. The geneticist Dr. Steve Stevenson is in charge of the
lab operations. For many years, Dr. Samuel and the rest of his team
have been finding fossil bones of the extinct hadrosaur dinosaur
Edmontosaurus in the hopes of bringing clones back to life,
but so far, every single one of these specimens have been not yielded
even a fraction of DNA. But what Dr. Samuel did find would
totally rock the world of paleontology! “It was really quite
depressing,” Dr. Samuel says, “most of the dinosaurs we've ever
uncovered are Edmontosaurus and yet not one of them has DNA
useful for cloning them! I had no idea why on earth this could be . .
. I mean, we haven't found all that many T. rex specimens and yet
we've found a large bit of DNA in them! Go figure! But that's when I
made a remarkable discovery.” Dr. Samuel and his team uncovered the
almost complete and fully articulated skeleton remains of an
Edmontosaurus at their dig site in Alberta, Canada. Though
they were excited about evidence suggesting that skin impressions of
the dinosaur had also been preserved with the skeleton, they weren't
prepared for what they'd discover next. I thought this would be the
perfect story for this week, so my trusty, junior photographer,
Daniel P. Smithwater and I, went to the lab for an exclusive
interview.
When dinosaur bones are brought out of the field, they are sometimes
left encased in the rock they were found in to avoid damaging them
and are covered in plaster. This plaster is removed bit by bit once
the specimen reaches the laboratory. When one of Dr. Steve's lab
assistants was cleaning off the skull of Dr. Samuel's Edmontosaurus
specimen, he noticed that dinosaur skin and flesh had been preserved
and fossilized on top of the dinosaur's head. “I wasn't quite sure
why this fleshy stuff was on top of the dinosaur's head,” says the
lab assistant. “At first, I thought that maybe it only
looked like it was attached to the dinosaur's head, but no, this
flesh was actually there when the dinosaur was alive!” He
called to Dr. Samuel to come take a look and sure enough, the
dinosaur had fleshy growths on its head.
The fleshy growth was a crest, sort of like the ones Edmontosaurus'
relatives had, but instead of being made of bone, it was made of
flesh! “This was remarkable!” Dr. Samuel exclaimed with glee. “I
mean, this is the kind of thing you expect in paleontology! Normally
we only find the mere fossil bones of these creatures, but sometimes
we also find fossilized skin. However, I never expected to find
anything quite like this. Edmontosaurus has been known to
scientists since 1917, and we've only just start scratching the
surface at what these animals looked like in life.” Another
scientist said that the discovery was like the “equivalent to
discovering for the first time that elephants had trunks”;
elephants have no bones in their trunks, just over 100,000 muscles
(no wonder they're so strong!). So naturally, if only elephant
skeletons had been discovered and we had no living ones to go by,
we'd probably think elephants lacked trunks. It's almost the same
thing with Edmontosaurus!
Another thing Dr. Samuel's team knows is that the dinosaur must have
been covered very quickly in order for its crest to fossilize. Many
secular paleontologists believe that after most dinosaurs that we
find as fossils today died, they were slowly covered with sediment
and after millions of years of being underground, they were
fossilized. But this (and countless other) specimens don't fit this
idea. Why? Dr. Samuel explains, “Animals can't just lie around in
order to be fossilized! They'll decay, get picked over by scavengers
or bacteria will ruin them. No, in order for something to fossilize,
it has to be buried very quickly. I believe that most – if not all
– dinosaur fossils were actually catastrophically buried by the
rough turbulence during the Genesis Flood, which happened about 4,350
years ago.”
Now that we know at least one of the two known species of
Edmontosaurus had a crest, what was it used for? Dr. Samuel is
quoted for saying, “Other hadrosaurs had bony crests that were
filled with channels which were connected to the animal's nasal
passages. Now, until recently, dozens of theories had been presented
over the years about the use of their crests. Some examples include:
helping to improve its sense of smell, combat, or perhaps that they
used their crests as snorkels. We know believe that their crests were
used to make tuba or horn-like sounds to communicate.”
Edmontosaurus' crest, however, is fleshy and not filled with
hollow channels, so it couldn't have used it to make sounds.
“Perhaps,” Dr. Samuel suggests, “Edmontosaurus was using
its crest for display purposes; a modern lizard known as the
Basilisk, has a very similar shaped crest (just look at the crest of
our Smiley's News reporter Lizzy the Lizard in our “About our
Writers” section for comparison!) and they use their crests to
attract a mate. Maybe Edmontosaurus did the same thing.”
This hadrosaur probably lived in herds and the crest would have also
been useful in signally other herd-mates.
True, the awesome Edmontosaurus specimen Dr. Samuel's team
discovered didn't bear DNA for cloning, but it did give them some
insight into what this dinosaur looked like and how it might have
behaved. Dr. Samuel also begins to wonder if other dinosaur species
also had similar fleshy crests or growths on their heads and/or
bodies. “After all,” he concludes, “most of the remains of
dinosaurs we find are fossil bones, so we have no way of knowing
whether other dinosaurs also had similar features to the
Edmontosaurus. We we still have a lot to learn about these
incredible creatures that went extinct so many years ago.”
Written by: Mr. Smiley
Photographer: Daniel P.
Smithwater
Edited by: Christian
Ryan, Joy Hammond
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