This is an almost complete Ankylosaurus, complete with jagged spikes, most of its limbs, shell, and some of its intestinal and stomach contents. But the most surprising detail is his incredibly preserved “face” and skin.

what is known

Mark Mitchell, Royal Tyrrell Museum Technician, it took almost six years to extract the fossilcarefully sculpting the surrounding stone. For these enormous efforts, a recently discovered ankylosaur species was named Borealopelta markmitchelli in his honor.

During the preparation, I put the blocks together like a jigsaw puzzle and the animal began to take real shapes. The day before Christmas I combined the two sides of the neck and head and was able to fully appreciate the impressive specimen and how well preserved the creature was.
– said Mitchell.

Museum curator Donald Henderson says the find is literally “one in a billion.”

What research has shown

Paleontologists were able to capture this remarkable specimen in 2017, when Mitchell finished preparing it. Since then, they have published a number of findings.

• A study led by Caleb Brown, a curator at Royal Tyrell, looked at a bony structure known as osteoderm found in ankylosaurs and not usually studied in less well-preserved specimens. with this example It was possible to measure 172 osteoderms.

Many skeletons of armored dinosaurs were preserved in fragments, that is, their bones were mixed. The presence of preserved osteoderm in the perinatal position in these and other specimens may provide clues as to how to reconstruct these specimens where the position of the crust is less clear.
– says Brown.

• Another analysis shows that spikes are not really designed to deter predatorsbut to show off and attract partners.
• Third, these dinosaurs used a form of camouflage known as countershading, which has not been observed before in creatures of this size, namely large animals. So the fact that such a tough armored dinosaur had to use camouflage to survive could mean that the Cretaceous period was more brutal than previously thought.