Yes, there really was a coronasaurus — and it was discovered in Canada
The plant-eating dinosaur was so named for its two-cluster crown of curved hooks
It didn’t take long for people talking about the coronavirus to make up a word that sounds like it, just for comic relief: coronasaurus.
And soon the cartoons and costumes of dinosaurs in face masks began.
One coronasaurus was a woman in a T-Rex costume who sold root beer in Vermont. She also danced.
Several others in costumes were children’s entertainers.
A third was the title character of a British children’s book for people who wanted to read to their children about the pandemic. (Oh, please.) And inevitably, there are Twitter images.
But little did some know they weren’t really making up this creature. Once upon a time, there was a real coronasaurus, a plant-eating dinosaur from 72 million years ago. It lived in Canada, and was identified and named by a Carleton University paleontologist. And it looked nothing like the cartoon versions.
Luckily, Michael Ryan has a sense of humour.
Ryan named the real Coronasaurus brinkmani back in 2012, though he had worked on its identification much earlier, as a student.
The “corona” part is the Latin word for crown, and the dinosaur’s skull has two clusters of curved hooks on the top of its bony head plate, some pointing forward and others back. They made Ryan think of the corona of the sun, the outer layer with flares of hot gas swirling out.
Others thought these bizarre curlicues looked silly.
“My fellow graduate students used to tease me by calling it ‘broccoli-ceratops,’ he said. “I have to say, there was about 30 seconds when I actually considered calling it a broccoli-ceraptops.”
Its full name of Coronasaurus brinkmani honours a veteran Canadian paleontologist, Don Brinkman.
It’s a two-tonne plant-eater, known only from two sites in Alberta. And it actually has special status that Ryan calls a “wild card” among horned dinosaurs.
Most horned dinosaurs (think of triceratops) have individual bony horns or spikes along the top edge of their head plates, each attached to a separate spot. Coronasaurus is the only one that grew dozens together in one cluster, a puzzle for scientists today.
These distinctive hooks are thought to have had a role in attracting a mate, like a bird’s display of coloured feathers.
He is not bothered that people are having a little fun with the name today. “It gets the name out there. As long as people are interacting with science, it’s great.”
At the Canadian Museum of Nature, paleontologist Jordan Mallon thinks the cluster of hooks is more like a cauliflower than a broccoli. Others have suggested the leaves on a pineapple, or a Carmen Miranda hat.
“It’s a really weird-looking frill,” he said.
Ryan was also in the news recently for naming another horned dinosaur, stellasaurus, dubbed for its star-shaped fringe (“stella” in Latin).
“It’s funny,” Mallon said, “because Michael is not a beer drinker and yet he has named two dinosaurs after beers.”