Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Chinese ‘mud dragon’ dinosaur discovered — by TNT
Fossil of quilled creature almost destroyed by construction workers
It was likely a messy accident when the dinosaur nicknamed “Mud Dragon” died in a region of China that once was a watery jungle.
Given the dinosaur’s posture and the mudstone that surrounded its skeleton, experts hypothesize that the animal succumbed to a pool of muck in a last violent moment. After the death throes and last breaths, the animal was left lying on its belly, arms askew and neck thrown skyward. There its body sat and its bones hardened to fossils.
The posture was so odd that dinosaur experts could not help but romanticize it, at least a bit. “We don’t know how long the struggle lasted, but we believe the creature never gave up,” Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences paleontologist Lu Junchang said to the South China Morning Post.
And some 66 million to 72 million years later, the fossilized remains of the dinosaur very nearly suffered one final insult: A TNT blast into complete oblivion. But this time, it prevailed by a hair — or, more appropriately for the quilled dinosaur in question, a feather.
Workers in South China, excavating a hill for a new school, exposed the bones in a dynamite blast. In the explosion, the dinosaur lost parts of its arms, hind leg and tail. One of the drill holes passed close to the animal’s pelvic girdle, taking a chunk of fossil with it.
But the dynamite missed the vital sections of the dinosaur. “We got lucky: The workmen placed the dynamite in a position that was close enough to the animal to expose it, but far enough away that it didn’t destroy it. A razor’s edge!” University of Edinburgh paleontologist Stephen Brusatte said in an email. “The missing portions would be good to have, but they’re not the critical parts.” The crested skull, in particular, was intact.
Although the majority of the dinosaur was recovered, it was not a typical, studious removal. After it was blown out of the hillside, a farmer and construction workers collected the remains. Lu, Brusatte and a team of colleagues at the Dongyang Museum were therefore unable to conclude in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday what exactly caused its odd posture.
“We don’t know this for sure,” Brusatte said, “but it’s an interpretation based on the fossil and geological evidence. It’s kind of like interpreting a crime scene.” In addition to the unusual posture, the skeleton was pristine, with no signs of damage from scavengers or flowing currents. It must have been buried quickly, he noted, in rock that hardened from ancient muck.
“It really looks like this animal was trying to free itself from something. Looking at the fossil, you get a feel for this living, breathing, dying animal,” Brusatte said. “It’s kind of sad.”
The scientists named the animal Tongtianlong limosus, meaning “muddy dragon on the road to heaven,” a reference to the way the body twisted as though in supplication.
Tongtianlong limosus has been described as roughly the size of a large sheep, or perhaps a donkey. To our eyes, it might have looked something like a bird: Its arms and body were covered in feathers. But it would have been an odd sheep-size duck indeed. It measured 6.5 feet long, with a blunt head, skull crest and a curved, toothless beak.
The species belonged to a family of dinosaurs called oviraptorosaurs.
The oviraptors were so named because scientists believed the animals stole and ate eggs. The first oviraptor was found menacing over a clutch of eggs. Later, it was apparent the animal was simply tending to its own nest.
What the animals ate is a matter of debate, though the large jaws and beaks might have been able to crush hard foods like mollusks. The unusual curve of the creature’s beak suggest it was a specialized eater, although scientists do not know exactly what was on the dinosaur’s menu.
Despite its feathers, Tongtianlong limosus could not take to the sky. The evolutionary pressure that created feathers, contrary to what it might seem, preceded both birds and flight. As paleontologist Dave Hone wrote at the Guardian, feathers offer benefits even to creatures that spent their lives firmly on the ground: as insulation, a means of shade or coloration.
Perhaps the feathers helped make the dinosaur a more dexterous one. “Long feathers on the arms might have helped with balance when running or climbing,” Hone noted, “and those who have seen ostriches run will know they can flight their wings right out to help them balance during right turns.”
Thanks to a construction boom around Ganzhou, South China has become a hotbed of dinosaur discovery. The dinosaur was the sixth new species found in the area, as workers slice through ancient bedrock to create new roads and buildings.
Many of the animals found there hail from the late Cretaceous period, the last time dinosaurs walked the Earth. They evolved into strange and specialized dinosaurs like Tongtianlong limosus up to the very end.
“They were part of the final wave of diversification before the dinosaurs suddenly disappeared in the chaos of the asteroid impact,” Brusatte said. “So dinosaurs apparently were doing quite well at the end, particularly these oviraptorosaurs that were blossoming into so many new species, and then, bam! Everything changed in an instant.”