Mummified dinosaur's skin was gnashed by ancient crocs - CNN

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The tegument of a 67-million-year-old dinosaur has revealed bites and gashes from an past crocodile, and however its soma was ripped isolated whitethorn explicate wherefore it became mummified.

Skin decays overmuch much easy than bony truthful it’s highly uncommon to find fossilized dinosaur skin.

New probe connected a 7-meter (23-foot) agelong Edmontosaurus, a benignant of plant-eating hadrosaur, recovered adjacent the municipality of Marmarth, North Dakota, successful 1999 has shed airy connected what factors allowed the tegument to past done the eons.

“The wound marks were truly unexpected. It had been thought that brushed insubstantial wouldn’t sphere if it was damaged anterior to burial, truthful the carnivore harm is what truly started america reasoning astir however these fossils signifier successful the archetypal place,” said Stephanie Drumheller-Horton, a paleontologist astatine the The University of Tennessee’s section of Earth and planetary sciences, a coauthor of the caller study.

Paleontologists utilized to deliberation that a dinosaur, oregon immoderate prehistoric creature, needed to beryllium buried highly rapidly for brushed insubstantial to beryllium preserved – but this was not the lawsuit for this mediocre hadrosaur.

The researchers deliberation wound marks connected the hadrosaur’s limb came from an past comparative of a crocodile, but they’re not definite what benignant of carnal clawed oregon gnashed its process – though it was apt bigger. It’s not wide whether the injuries to its limb and process killed it oregon whether they were inflicted by scavengers aft its death.

However, it was the dinosaur’s misfortune that allowed its tegument to preserve, Drumheller-Horton explained.

“To effort to enactment it successful the slightest disgusting mode imaginable – puncturing the tegument allowed the gases and liquids associated with aboriginal decomposition to escape. That near the hollowed retired tegument down to adust out. Naturally mummified tegument similar this tin past for weeks to months successful adjacent reasonably bedewed environments, and the longer it lasts, the much apt it is to beryllium buried and acquisition fossilization,” she said.

The bluish colour of the fossilized tegument isn’t thought to bespeak what it would person been erstwhile the dinosaur was alive. However, a precocious robust contented successful the rocks during the fossilization process whitethorn person affected it.

While often depicted arsenic greenish gray, what colour astir dinosaurs were is mostly unknown. Studies connected fossilized dinosaur feathers person revealed that immoderate were amazingly colorful.

The hadrosaur’s skin, however, has provided a batch of accusation astir the size and patterns of scales crossed the dinosaur’s assemblage arsenic good arsenic the magnitude of musculus wide – based connected however expansive the tegument is successful that area.

“Skin decomposes overmuch much easy than bones, truthful it takes antithetic and little commonly observed processes to sphere the tegument agelong capable to beryllium buried and fossilized,” said probe coauthor Clint Boyd, a elder paleontologist astatine the North Dakota Geological Survey.

He said that determination were possibly less than 20 existent dinosaur “mummies,” with implicit to astir implicit sets of remains with brushed tissue.

“To enactment it successful discourse I person recovered thousands of fossils successful my career, but lone 1 of those preserved tegument impressions (an imprint of the skin, not the existent preserved tegument itself) and I’ve ne'er recovered 1 myself that had the tegument preserved,” Boyd said via email.

The probe was published successful the diary PLOS One connected Wednesday.