N E W S R E L E A S E
Jan. 28,
2016
New Dinosaur Named (Future “Jurassic World” Film Star?)
PRICE, Utah – Paleontologists from Utah and Connecticut have
discovered a new dinosaur that’s been right under scientists’ noses for the
past 102 years. Meet Alcovasaurus longispinus, the dinosaur formerly known as Stegosaurus
longispinus.
Over the past century, no one questioned the original species
label given to the great beast when it was first uncovered in 1914 near Alcova,
Wyoming. For one thing, scientists didn’t have much to go on since most of the
specimen was destroyed in the late 1920s when ceiling pipes in the museum
holding the specimen burst and flooded the facility. All that was left was one
femur, plaster casts of the two most complete elongated tail spines, and a few
photographs of the quarry and of the skeleton as it was displayed in the museum
gallery.
While peer reviews were lacking at the turn of the last
century, by the advent of the new century scholars showed a renewed interest in
the bones. Ongoing work on stegosaurs by Peter M. Galton, professor emeritus at
the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut and Kenneth Carpenter, director and
curator of paleontology at Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum,
found them at odds with some of their peers. One scholar from England concluded
that the original species designation was invalid, that it was not, in fact, a
new species of Stegosaurus at all.
Galton and Carpenter recognized anomalies as well, namely
longer spikes and a shorter tail and a creature that stood a full foot taller than
its Stegosaurus relative. Their research led them to conclude that what they
were seeing was much more than a species of Stegosaurus, it was actually a new
genus altogether based on specimen studies, both real and cast, and analysis of
archival photographs.
Their paper has now been published (Jan. 27) in the “Neuse Jahrbuch
fur Geologie und Palaeontologie,” an international journal of geology and
paleontology, based in Stuttgart, Germany.
“We’re presenting it and we’ll see how it holds up
under the test of time,” Carpenter says. “Who knows, somebody may conclusively
prove that it’s not valid, although it would be hard to do because of the long
spikes.
Spikes that were up to three-feet in length, or
about twice as long as the Stegosaurus. Its rather short tail, about 25 percent
shorter than Stegosaurus, made it possible for the dinosaur to accommodate the
extra-long tail spikes, he says.
“Besides the short tail, this bob-tailed stegosaur
probably could not swing its tail as much as Stegosaurus based on what we know
of the tail vertebrae,” he says. “So, having longer spikes makes sense as a way
to compensate.”
This dinosaur is important, even though its genus
line appears to be a dead-end, because it shows that the dinosaurs of the
Jurassic period were far more diverse than scholars previously realized.
Numbers of species and genera help fill in gaps and paint a more complete
picture of what life was like 150 million years ago, he says.
This particular dinosaur has yet to be found in
Utah. So far only Wyoming can lay claim to it, “but there is a chance that it could
be found here someday,” Carpenter says. “It is possible that some of the
partial skeletons referred to Stegosaurus might be re-identified as Alcovasaurus
if we had the right parts.”
Parts like puzzle pieces waiting to be assembled
and waiting to be named, because once named, they spring to life again through
imagination, whether in a scholarly paper, on the pages of a child’s book, or
on the silver screen.
Carpenter says the fact that a new species of
Stegosaurus named in 1914, and only now being recognized as a novel dinosaur,
is another example of finding new dinosaurs in old collections. He has been in
on the naming of maybe 12 of these creatures in his 30-plus year career. He has
not kept track.
“Once one research project is done, I move on to
the next one,” he says. “I don’t think about it.” But he has welcomed the
opportunity whenever it comes his way. He is currently trying to name a new
species of armored dinosaur from material found north of Arches National Park.
He has at least three new dinosaurs yet to be named that are currently in
museum storage.
The realization that only one new genus of
dinosaur is discovered every few years, places Carpenter and Galton in an elite
group of scholars. Furthermore, these new finds are particularly significant
when one considers that the number of dinosaur species from the Upper Jurassic
sedimentary rock sequence, known as the Morrison Formation, only totals around
52.
What is most interesting to Carpenter is just how
rare this particular find is. His museum houses a Stegosaurus stenops, probably
the most common Stegosaur that is found with maybe 100 total individuals uncovered
in the United States.
“I realize that sounds like a low number, but in
paleontology circles, that is actually a very high number, because we’re only
looking at a small portion of all the ones that ever existed,” he says. “So we
now have another animal, the Alcovasaurus, which is increasing the diversity.
So far it’s the only one of its kind that’s been found.”
And he got to help name it.
