A Mummified Dinosaur Leg Has Been Discovered | 7 Days of Science

Uh, thanks Doug. Well, it's been another incredibly exciting week for Palaeontology News, with a lot of interesting things happening in the last few days. First up is the amazing announcement that a mummified leg from a dinosaur has been uncovered from the Tarnis site in North Dakota. This is the somewhat controversial locality that seemingly preserves a record of animals killed by the impact event that ended the Cretaceous period, resulting in the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Recent studies on this locality managed to use the fish fossils here to date the season the impact happened in, as we recently reported on, but this new announcement reveals an absolutely astonishing, well-preserved leg from the Neolithician dinosaur, Thescalosaurus. It's so well-preserved that it clearly shows the morphology of the scales and how they're distributed across the limb, which will be absolutely amazing to see future studies about. Then there's also the announcement of a preserved pterosaur embryo, probably a Nezhdarkid, inside its egg, the first of this kind of fossil to ever be found in North America. Plus, there's also been a significant patch of skin from Triceratops that's been reported, too. All of this is obviously amazing. The problem some researchers have, though, just seems to be how discoveries from Tarnis keep seeming to be taken to the media first before they're actually peer-reviewed and published in journals, leading claims such as the one that this Thescalosaurus was definitely killed on the day of impact itself being spread to the public before it can actually be checked and discussed with other specialists in order to confirm if the timing is actually accurate. Nevertheless, some incredible findings, and I'm looking forward to the Atomverse special about the Tarnis site coming out later this week. Moving on, some more exciting dinosaur news, as a paper describing combat injuries under Triceratops has just been published. This study examines the recently auctioned specimen known as Big John, an absolutely massive Triceratops horridus individual from the Hell Creek Formation. This fossil preserves a notable hole on the right side of its skull, completely perforating a bone called the squamosal, and by taking thin sections of the bone from this region, the paleontologists have found evidence to show that it was actually an injury that had partially healed during the life of this animal. They then take this to indicate the possibility that it could indeed have been the result of another Triceratops puncturing its frill with a supraorbital horn, an incredible example of intraspecific combat in the fossil record, if that really is the case. Next in the news, we also have a new genus and species of Ashdarkid pterosaur named this week. Welcome Thanatos dracon amaru, a giant Ashdarkid from the upper Cretaceous of Argentina. Not only is this now the largest pterosaur to ever be found in South America, but it's also up there among some of the biggest pterosaurs, and therefore flying vertebrates in general. Two specimens have been recovered, with the smaller holotype having an estimated wingspan of 7m, while the paratype potentially had a 9m wingspan. The larger paratype is only based on a humerus, but the holotype actually includes a decent amount of material for a giant Ashdarkid, with much of the body and limbs known. Plus, it actually preserves a few bones that have never been found before in large Ashdarkids, helping to improve the understanding of these incredible animals. And finally, there's been a new genus and species of ichthyosaur named this week too. Bicisaurus robustus from the lower Triassic of South China is a very basal ichthyosauromorph, and is only known from a partial skeleton. It's actually quite a large creature compared to other known early ichthyosauromorphs, at an estimated full length of over 3m, and its discovery adds to our continually developing knowledge of the early radiation of ichthyopterygians. Anyway, back to Doug, if he's still alive.