8 June 2019 | New Scientist | 29BEHOLD the last of the dinosaurs.
Well, almost. This image shows
the armoured spikes on the back
of an ankylosaurid, a member of
a family of dinosaurs that went
extinct 66 million years ago. The
person kneeling on the fossil is
Amelia Madill, a fossil preparator
with the exhibits firm Research
Casting International. She leads
a team that has spent months
carefully removing rock from
the skeleton.
The emerging result is the most
complete ankylosaurid found in
North America. Some 76 million
years ago, its carcass got caught
in a logjam in a river in what is
now Montana, before becoming
entombed in sand.
This 6-metre fossil belongs to
a new species, Zuul crurivastator,
which weighed between 1.3 tonnes
and 3.6 tonnes and had a
sledgehammer-like tail that was
capable of flooring a tyrannosaur.
Unlike its namesake, the
hellhound demigod Zuul from the
1984 movie Ghostbusters, Zuul was
a herbivore and used its shovel-
like mouth (see below) to devour
any plant material in its path. ❚Demonic dino
Photographer Mark Thiessen
Agency National Geographic
Image CollectionRowan HooperDead keen on dinosaurs?
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