New dinosaur named after Ghostbusters monster
Zuul crurivastator skeleton finds a home at ROM, may be viewed as early as June 2
If there’s something strange, in your badlands dig, who you gonna call?
In 2014, just 25 kilometres from the Canadian border, a commercial fossil company in Montana was attempting to uncover a tyrannosaur when its bulldozer hit a separate object on the same hill. It turned out to be the tail club of a different dinosaur that had never been discovered.
“When I saw this specimen, I couldn’t believe it,” said David Evans, the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum. “We’ve been working the same rocks and we haven’t found anything like that for 10 years, so it’s a very special specimen.”
Purchased by the ROM last year, scientists studied the fossil and have identified it as a new, rare species of armoured dinosaur. Evans and his colleague Victoria Arbour, a postdoctoral fellow at the ROM, decided to name it Zuul crurivastator, after the fictional monster from the original Ghostbusters film.
“When Victoria and I were looking at the specimen — we’re both big Ghostbusters fans — she mentioned Zuul because the skull of the animal looks a lot like Zuul,” Evans said.
“It has this very short, broad snout, and then it has these two sets of horns that project backwards from the eye; one above the eye and one a little bit further down. And that’s exactly what we see in the skull of this dinosaur.”
Research on the new species, led by Arbour, was published in the May issue of the Royal Society Open Science journal. Zuul, the dinosaur, is about 75 million years old. Its body was found in a river deposit in Montana’s Judith River Formation and spanned about six metres long. The dinosaur’s skeleton was found almost entirely intact, according to Evans, noting it was “remarkably preserved” under 10 metres of rock.
“This is a dinosaur that would not have been exposed for paleontolo- gists to find for probably hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years,” he said. “The fossil was never exposed to modern erosion or plant roots . . . so that means we have a level of preservation that is jaw-dropping.”
The skeleton had to be broken up into several pieces in order to be removed. Zuul likely weighed about 5,500 pounds, equivalent to the size of a white rhinoceros.
“This is very rare, to find a complete articulated skeleton, especially for this group of dinosaurs,” Arbour said. “They’re just not as common.”
Its species name, crurivastator, means “destroyer of shins,” a reference to a large knob of bone at the tip of its tail, which may have been used to strike the legs of predatory dinosaurs in defence, or for battle during contests for mates.
Researchers have preserved the large, sharp bony spikes that formed in Zuul’s skin over its tail and likely the entirety of its body, forming its armour.
They also managed to maintain very rare keratin sheaths — the same material that forms finger nails, bird beaks and the top of turtle shells — Zuul and soft tissues such as its scales.
While the dinosaur’s colour is unknown, Evans said they believe it may have been brightly coloured due to its outer keratin layer.
The museum plans to display the entire dinosaur skeleton at an upcoming exhibit, but likely not for a few years, as paleontologists are still studying it. For now, Zuul’s skull and a few of its fossils will likely be available for viewing June 2 during the ROM’s Friday Night Live program, and during holiday programming throughout the year.
Evans said this discovery helps fill in a critical gap in knowledge about dinosaur evolution during the last 15 to 20 million years before their extinction.
“It’s a new page in the dinosaur dictionary,” Evans said. “We’re adding to our knowledge of dinosaur diversity and evolution in a key period of time in earth’s history. This is an important piece of the puzzle to understanding how diversity of dinosaurs and other animals in their ecosystem changed with changing climate leading up to that extinction event.”