- Fona herzogae was a small dinosaur concerning the measurement of a canine that lived underground, making it one of many few identified burrowing dinosaurs from 99 million years in the past.
- This dinosaur had robust legs and muscle tissues fitted to digging, serving to it create burrows within the floor for shelter.
- Researchers discovered many fossils of Fona in Utah, exhibiting that these dinosaurs lived in teams and infrequently stayed of their burrows.
Some 99 million years in the past, a dog-sized dinosaur retreated to its burrow in a big floodplain between an inland ocean and volcanoes in what’s now Utah. Many ages later, in 2013, researchers from North Carolina State College and North Carolina Museum of Pure Sciences started uncovering these bones together with extra fossils of the identical species. And on July 9, 2024, the researchers said this newly found species of dinosaur – Fona herzogae – spent a minimum of a part of its life beneath floor, in burrows.
The researchers published their peer-reviewed findings in The Anatomical Document on July 9, 2024.
Some dinosaur species frolicked underground
Most dinosaurs we all know of lived above-ground. However scientists have discovered proof that some could have frolicked underground. This new dinosaur, Fona herzogae, is one such instance. It’s intently associated to Oryctodromeus, a burrowing dinosaur from Idaho and Montana that lived about 105 to 96 million years in the past. As well as, Fona‘s distant relative, Thescelosaurus neglectus, is one other burrowing dinosaur from Wyoming that lived about 35 million years after Fona.
Haviv Avrahami of North Carolina State College is the lead creator of the paper. He said:
Fona offers us perception into the third dimension an animal can occupy by shifting underground. It provides to the richness of the fossil document and expands the identified range of small-bodied herbivores, which stay poorly understood regardless of being extremely integral elements of Cretaceous ecosystems.
Co-author Lindsay Zanno of North Carolina Museum of Pure Sciences additionally commented:
Individuals are inclined to have a myopic view of dinosaurs that hasn’t stored up with the science. We now know that dinosaur range ran the gamut from tiny arboreal gliders and nocturnal hunters, to sloth-like grazers, and sure, even subterranean shelterers.
Why do scientists assume Fona was a burrower?
Fona herzogae was a small herbivorous dinosaur, concerning the measurement of a giant canine. It had a plain look, with out the ornate features of different plant-eating dinosaurs like horned dinosaurs.
With hindlimbs bigger than its forelimbs, Fona was a bipedal dinosaur. And it had a physique constructed for digging. From finding out its bones, the scientists realized that Fona had massive bicep muscle tissues. Its hips and legs confirmed outstanding muscle attachment factors. Furthermore, bones alongside its pelvis had been fused, which most likely helped stabilize its physique whereas digging.
It wasn’t simply the dinosaur’s anatomy that advised it was a burrower. The way in which through which the fossils had been preserved additionally held clues.
Extra clues to a burrowing life-style
Current-day Utah was a really totally different place 99 million years in the past. It was a heat, moist floodplain with rivers coursing by it. To the east was the shore of an inland sea. And to the west had been mountains, together with volcanoes.
Avrahami commented:
The bias within the fossil document is towards larger animals, primarily as a result of in floodplain environments just like the Mussentuchit [part of a geologic formation in eastern Utah], small bones on the floor will typically scatter, rot away or turn into scavenged earlier than burial and fossilization.
However Fona is usually discovered full, with a lot of its bones preserved within the unique dying pose, chest down with splayed forelimbs, and in exceptionally good situation. If it had already been underground in a burrow earlier than dying, it might have made any such preservation extra doubtless.
Zanno added:
Fona skeletons are far more frequent on this space than we might predict for a small animal with fragile bones. The very best clarification for why we discover so a lot of them, and get well them in small bundles of a number of people, is that they had been residing a minimum of a part of the time underground. Primarily, Fona did the onerous work for us, by burying itself throughout this space.
How new dinosaur Fona herzogae bought its identify
The dinosaur’s genus identify, Fona, has its origins within the creation story of the Chamorro, the indigenous folks of Guam and the Pacific Mariana Islands. Based on legend, sibling explorers Fo’na and Pontan had been discoverers of the islands, and so they grew to become the land and sky.
Avrahami said:
I wished to honor the indigenous mythology of Guam, which is the place my Chamorro ancestors are from. Within the fantasy, Fo’na grew to become a part of the land when she died, and from her physique sprung forth new life, which to me, ties into fossilization, magnificence and creation. Fona most certainly sported a downy coat of colourful feathers.
The species identify [herzogae] is for Lisa Herzog, [paleontology operations manager at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences], who has been integral to all this work and found some of the distinctive Fona specimens of a number of people preserved collectively in what was doubtless a burrow.
Backside line: Fona herzogae, a newly found dinosaur species that when lived in Utah, 99 million years in the past, is one of some identified species of burrowing dinosaur.
Via North Carolina State University
