Newly discovered dinosaur built like a Sherman tank [The More You Know]

Recently discovered in Montana by a husband and wife paleontological team, Tatankacephalus cooneyorum was a plant-eating beast built like a tank, able to take almost whatever punishment came at it and keep going.

From LiveScience:

Now called Tatankacephalus cooneyorum, the beast is a type of ankylosaur, or a group of plant-eating dinosaurs that resembled nature's armored tanks as they walked about on four limbs and their bodies were covered with bony armor that may have been covered with a colorful keratinous sheathing (same as the stuff in bird beaks and turtle shells).

"These were big dinosaur versions of a Sherman tank," Bill Parsons said. "They were armored and they withstood whatever came at them, and they just kept going." T. cooneyorum was about 15 to 20 feet (4.5 to 6 meters) in length.

And this dinosaur had its share of protection, with two sets of stubby horns, one on the cheeks and the other around its eyes, two thick domes at the back of the skull and thickened areas around the nasal region.

Bill Parsons suspects T. cooneyorum was covered with hundreds or even thousands of bony plates equipped with spikes and a tail tipped with a club, similar to other ankylosaurs. Such protection, along with a swinging clubbed tail, would have kept at bay any of the small dinosaurs around at the time, Parsons said.

To stay safe from the bigger brutes around, the ankylosaur may have flattened its body on the ground and pulled in its head, where head horns could protect the animal from a nasty neck bite, Parsons said.


Severitas's picture

Dinosaurs

are still the coolest

zero's picture

this is what

this is what i've always wondered i under stand they get a generalized vision of the dinosaurs through the bone structure but how do they know the coloring or if it had a clubbed tail and all that other stuff

Greedo shot first!

mynameisfyl's picture

The only thing...

I've always wondered how they come up with that as well...
I think that it involves lots of acid.

But dinos are the only thing Montana is good for...that and sheep Fuckers

Phantom's picture

Speculation + knowledge

I'm pretty sure that the knowledge of what color the dinosaurs were stems from the understanding of animals today and their shade, which for herbivores, is made to hide them and blend them into the environment. A dinosaur living in North America at the time must have been surrounded by lush vegetation and his colors would be best to blend him into that environment.

T-rex for example has been shown in many various colors, this attributes to the fact no one really knows if he was a hunter or scavenger. As a hunter his colors would be uniform to camouflage him, but if he ate the carcass of a dinosaur, his colors would probably vivid and bright, in order to scare other predators.

The matter of their color is a lively debate, not yet determined. :)

Whether his tail was clubbed or not is a much more general statement based on the species to which he belonged.

mynameisfyl's picture

That was an incredibly

That was an incredibly thorough response...

...thank you.  I actually feel as though I've learned something today.

zero's picture

well

the more you know. thanks for answering that and explaining it in such a manner that it made sense <3

Greedo shot first!

Phantom's picture

Bother not

Do not thank me, thank the months I spent rushing home from school to watch Dinozaurs with a child's enthusiasm and the love for any animal that was 4 floors tall.

ishldgetoutmore's picture

Melanosomes

One interesting thing they're doing with feathered dinos, is looking at their feathers under an scanning electron microscope -- what they used to think were bacteria they now think might be color-producing melanosomes. If they are, and they can make out the shapes of the melanosomes, then they can determine what color each represented: differently-shaped melanosomes produce different kinds (colors) of melanin.

Exciting stuff -- for a paleontologist, granted, but most kids are paleontologist-wannabes for a few years when they're small.

paulywog's picture

Is the formatting of the site

Is the formatting of the site wonky for anyone else?  The main page loads fine, but the article pages show up  with a white background and everything on the left side of the screen.

More asians please.

cranberryzero's picture

The site's been really busy

The site's been really busy all day, so it's been a little slow at times, so what you're seeing is probably the CSS stylesheet not loading for that page or not loading completely.

paulywog's picture

Ohhh, gotcha.  Well, it seems

Ohhh, gotcha.  Well, it seems to be loading it now, everything is back in proper order.  Thanks for the reply.

More asians please.

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