Dakota is the hadrosaur[1] that everyone is calling the mummified dinosaur. It's giving us some spectacular insights already about dinosaurs, or at least the hadrosaurs. Three of the biggies so far are...
1) The sucker appears to be striped. It has scale patterns - note: no feathers on Dakota! - that are VERY similar to those on modern reptiles that match where colors change.
2) The sucker was BEEFY. CHICKENY? It had a lot more muscle mass than anticipated.
3) If the updated models are correct, then Dakota could at least sprint at 28 mph. Given the larger muscle mass, it might well be possible to do that at a sustained run. 28 mph for a multiton biped (when running) uses a lot of energy, even for a sprint.
There are supposed to be a LOT more discoveries that Dakota is slowly sharing with us. We can only hope that we'll get more from her and - with luck - another few mummified dinos that are yet to be found.
1. No species or even genus id as yet as far as I can tell. Bummer.
PS No Zach, no published papers yet. Soon they say, soon.
3 comments:
Oh, you know me too well, sir! :-) Now, I'm assuming that Dakota is different than Leonardo, a similarly preserved duckbill.
Hey Zach, Could I try to talk you into doing a couple renderings for me? I have a post I want to do about the Permian terrestrial ecology but I have been unable to find some renderings of some of the 'actors.' Would you be interested? I know, I know...they're not dinos, but...
I was fortunate enough to see some of these images (including some CT stuff) when Manning and Peter Falkingham dropped by The Mammoth Site (definite article) here in SoDak back in July. I'm only assistant curator, so I didn't get to hear the whole spiel, I'm afraid. Still, I was under the impression that they had a good grip on the genus at least, but maybe they are waiting for the scientific publication before they come to any public conclusions on that. Cool stuff.
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