When scientists discovered thatsomedinosaurs had feathers , it completely alter our percept of what theancient animals looked like — and pissed a lot of hoi polloi off . Now , in another twist , researchers have foundthat the duck - billed dinosaur Edmontosaurusregalis had a heavy crest exchangeable to a rooster ’s cockscomb .
https://gizmodo.com/dinosaur-feathers-discovered-in-canadian-amber-5840854
The Duck-Billed Dinosaurs
The duck-billed dinosaur were herbivorous , “ duck - billed”dinosaurs common in the Upper Cretaceous of Europe , Asia and North America . They come in various sizes and fell under one of two subfamily : Lambeosaurinae , which had a large , empty cranial peak made of bone ; and Saurolophinae , which were mostly crestless ( thoughsome mintage had small solid crests ) . In recent age , scientists havemodeled the hollow crestsof the lambeosaurines to see out what they were used for .
“ mass havebeen able to restore the airflow through the nasal cavities and crests , andfound that it ’s quite likely they were associate with sound - qualification , ” saidPhil Bell , a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia . duck-billed dinosaur were social animals that lived in herds of oodles of individuals , sothe tip were mainly used for communication . “ The top sounds believably keptthe ruck tight and were used for sexual displays . ”
In the past , someresearchers suspected that the crestless hadrosaurs may have had crests afterall , but the structure were made out of soft tissue , which do n’t preservewell . After an animal dies , hide and muscle are the first things to go becauseof decomposition and scavenging — if the body is n’t eat up very quickly , those feature will not be preserved . And though the scientistsnoted that fleshy crest were pure speculation , there was always a possibilitythat such feature existed .

“ Take alook at the fauna reality today , at structures like the elephants ’ trunk , whichmight never fossilize , ” Bell told io9 . “ There would be no grounds from the existent skull or pearl that sucha structure would ever live . ”
rarify matters further is the fact that paleontologistsin the past tense place little system of weights on fossilized skin notion , Bell said . They recollect that skin was something impertinent compared with the importance ofthe pearl , so skin impression were often take away from dinosaur discovery and tossedaside . Luckily , scientists ’ perceptiveness for those structures has flippedcompletely . And now , Bell and his workfellow have reaped the benefit of thatsignificant change in persuasion .
Revealing the “Cock’sComb”
The researchers found their striking dinosaur specimen preservedin a sandstone bowlder , in a deposit - robust area west of the city of GrandePrairie in west - cardinal Alberta , Canada . The Saurolophinae dinosaur , Edmontosaurusregalis , was course “ mummified ” in the sands of a river , though the scientists do n’t know how it died or what exact biological orchemical feature article of the sands preserved the animal . Argon - Ar dating ofaltered volcanic ash tree near the skeleton suggests the dinosaur died about 73million year ago .
When Bell and his workfellow Federico Fanti came across thespecimen , they did n’t immediately realize what they had found . They saw that scalyskin impressions had been preserved on parts of the body , including the neck , which was dead set towards its back in the characteristic “ end pose . ”But oddly , there were also skin impressions between the animal ’s skull and back — an area where there should n’t have been anything .
Bell put his chisel to the odd feature and it went rightthrough the impression , evoke that there was no solid bodily structure there . “As I exposed it more , I realized there that it was a bit of agglomerate offlesh on the top of the mind , ” Bell say . “ It took a while to dawn onme that it was actually attached to the skull . ” Further investigating showed thatthe 20 - centimeter in high spirits , 33 - centimeter long crown cross the width of theskull , and CT scans showed decidedly that there were no bone in it . It was acomb made of indulgent - tissue paper .

So what would the crest have looked like in life ? For one , it was dome - determine and cover in scales . But the cutis was also credibly softand supple , based on the wrinkles in the skin belief , Bell said , addingthat it was plausibly most like a cock ’s comb . Based on comparison with theavian comb of today , the dinosaur ’s “ cock ’s comb ” was probablybrightly color and was used to appeal females or assert potency overother males .
Importantly , hadrosaurs are not closely bear on to thebirds of today , so roosters do n’t owe their famous combing to E. regalis .
“ But the fact that we have hadrosaurs with combs — abird - comparable feature — certainly mean that comb could have beenwidespread throughout the dinosaur land , ” Bell said . That is , otherhadrosaurs specie , as well as other type of dinosaurs , could also have hadornamental diffused - tissue combs . “ Even the bony crest of some of the animalsmay have been enhanced by fleshy components . ”

Bell enjoin that the discovery is really just the “ tipof the iceberg , ” and suggests there may be a pot more about dinosaurappearances that we do n’t know . “ The discovery of feathered dinosaur was ahuge leaping forward in our understanding of how dinosaur looked , ” he enunciate . “This discovery suggests that we ’re definitely in for moresurprises about their coming into court . ”
https://gizmodo.com/this-dinosaurs-huge-body-didnt-work-the-way-we-though-1145710156
check out out the studyover in the journalCurrent Biology .

Top image via Julius Csostonyi . Inset image via Federico Fanti .
BiologydinosaursEvolutionPaleontologyScience
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