New dinosaur found with skin impressions

Lisa Marie

NEW YORK (April 1, 1997) -- Scientists announced today the discovery of a new theropod found with the rarest of the rare, actual skin impressions.

The dinosaur was found in late August, 1996, on the banks of the Blue River near Memphis, Tennessee. It was found by two teenagers who stumbled upon the skeleton eroding from the northern bank.

"We was just out bein' wild in the country, when we decided to take shelter under an embankment from the hard Kentucky rain," one of the boys said. "We found what we thought was concrete, but there was a bone stickin' out of it. My momma didn't raise no fool, so I lit out of there and called the sheriff right away."

The local sheriff, Vernon Smith, rushed to the site with the department's trusted hound dog, just in case he had to search for more of what he thought would be a murdered body. As luck would have it, Sheriff Smith is a good friend of renowned paleontologist Dr. Thomas J. Hutz of the University of Montana, who tagged along. Dr. Hutz recognized the bone immediately as a dinosaur bone.

"When I first saw the bone, I was all shook up," Dr. Hutz explained. "It was clearly poking out of an ash deposit, probably from a sudden local volcanic eruption that caught the animal by surprise. It was very fine grained ash, and I thought some skin impressions might have been preserved."

Dr. Hutz secured the fossil for the Montana University Natural History Museum, and prepared it for transport. It was trucked in two massive pieces to Dr. Hutz's lab, a monumental task requiring two diesel trucks, a sky-crane, and a good luck charm to "ensure my wish came true," said Dr. Hutz. Dr. Hutz's wish for good skin impressions indeed came true, to a degree that astonished everybody.

The volcanic ash clearly preserved the entire integument of the dinosaur. Its skin was completely smooth, with bony osteoderms (small bones embedded in the skin) arranged in regular patterns around the body. Impressions around the eyes suggest that they were covered in a dark, horny protective sheath in life. Most incredible of all was a thick tuft of hairlike feathers about the head and neck.

The impressions of feathers is the fourth such fossil find. Dinosaur paleontologists had suspected for years that dinosaurs had feathers due to their close relationship with birds, but no feather impressions had been found in over two centuries of digging. Then, three of the four finds came in August of last year, with the fourth being found a year earlier.

Dr. Alan Fudd, a noted ornithologist that is opposed to the dinosaurian ancestry of birds, was asked what he thought of this incredible new find. Even though the discovery of the feather impressions had not yet been made public, the scientist responded by screaming "Birds are not dinosaurs," rushing into a corner, and sucking his thumb while sobbing hysterically, his thoughts known only to him.

Dr. Hutz describes the dinosaur as a basal tyrannosaurid. "It was slightly smaller than T. rex," he said, "but possessed a huge gut and flaps of skin on its back and around its belly, for reasons I cannot currently fathom. It's forelegs were larger than a typical tyrannosaurid's too, and retained the primitive three fingered hand of other theropods."

Also preserved are the tiny bones of the tongue and larynx, and, using the skin impressions as a guide, scientists are able to estimate their shape and size as well. Using sophisticated software developed at Stanford University, paleontologists have been able to recreate what they think the dinosaur sounded like. "I bet in life this thing's cry would make everything within a mile shake, rattle and roll," said Dr. Hutz.

Strangest of all are the animal's teeth. All known theropods were meat eaters, but the teeth on this dinosaur suggest an omnivorous diet. "The shape of the teeth suggest that it ate both plants and animals," explained Dr. Hutz. "Its favorite food was probably hadrosaurs, the jelly donuts of the Cretaceous, but given its size and probable appetite, it most likely ate anything it could sink its teeth into."

Dr. Hutz dates the specimen to the late Cretaceous, some 77 million years ago. However, the complete skeleton sheds new light on scraps of material found elsewhere in the world from previous ages.

"If other material is indeed referable to this animal, then it appears to have been very widespread and abundant in the early Jurassic. It then faded away toward the end of the Jurassic and nearly became extinct in the early Cretaceous. It appeared to be experiencing somewhat of a comeback when it suddenly became extinct."

Scientists have named the animal Dinosauria rex, or "king of the dinosaurs." When asked why they chose this name when it is smaller than its larger cousin T. rex, Dr. Hutz responded "That's such an easy question to ask me. When I look at it, the name just feels so right. When it came to dinosaurs, this animal was truly the king."