The discovery of a 75-million-year-old baby dinosaur skeleton by U of A paleontologists has been hailed as one of the rarest finds to date.
It's the first complete skeleton found of a baby ceratopsid, the group of dinosaurs that includes triceratops. The fossils of Chasmosaurus were discovered in 2010 at Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks, Alta., by Philip Currie, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Dinosaur Paleobiology, and his colleagues. The findings made international headlines when published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The discovery offers insights into the life, growth rates and physiology of Chasmosaurus and fills gaps in our understanding of the evolution of other horned dinosaurs, says Currie. "We've only had a few isolated bones before to give us an idea of what these animals should look like as youngsters, but we've never had anything to connect all the pieces," he says.
Currie and his co-authors - Michael Ryan, '85 BEd, of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Rob Holmes and Clive Coy of the U of A - worked with renowned paleo-artist Michael Skrepnick to create a life-size reconstruction of what the animal might have looked like.
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