Juvenile Chasmosaurus Dinosaur Skeleton: CT-Scan and Display in Japan

Summary: The first complete juvenile Chasmosaurus dinosaur skeleton is leaving Canada, for CT-scan and display at Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science.

life reconstruction of baby Chasmosaurus; credit Michael Skrepnick: Usage restrictions -- Please ensure credit appears with image, via EurekAlert!

Dinosaur lovers in Honshu, Japan, anticipate viewing the first complete juvenile Chasmosaurus dinosaur skeleton through an arrangement between Canada’s University of Alberta in Edmonton and Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science.

The availability of advanced CT scan technology brings the first complete assemblage of a sub-adult chasm lizard to the Japanese archipelago from Canada’s Dinosaur Provincial Park. Philip Currie, paleontologist at the University of Alberta, considers the skeleton’s undergoing the cutting-edge technology conducive to filling in gaps in ceratopsian (horned face) dinosaur evolution. He describes the juvenile specimen, discovered two years previously in Alberta, in a co-authored study published online by the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology Jan. 11, 2016.

The backs of Chasmosaurus dinosaur frills emerge arched, with ridged middles, as juveniles and broadly squared as adults.

Paleontologists find fossils of the Chasmosaurus dinosaur in both Canada and the United States, as far south as New Mexico and as far north as Alberta.

North America’s Judith River Formation gives paleontologists many of the Chasmosaurus dinosaur fossilized specimens discovered, put together and studied by professors in Alberta and in Montana. The formations that preserve ceratopsian dinosaur specimens have in common a tendency, indicative of herding behavior, to yield large groups of Chasmosaurus dinosaur fossils gathered together.

The Chasmosaurus dinosaur is a ceratopsian group member whose face includes one shorter backward-curved horn projecting from the snout and two longer horns above the eyes.

Four sturdy legs, each showcasing four clawed toes, join a parrot-like beak and three horns to protect the Chasmosaurus dinosaur.

Specimens rarely keep fossilized remains of the Chasmosaurus dinosaur face’s three backward-curved, pointed horns, whose lengths can be guesstimated from each one’s fossilized core (bony center). Fossilization of arched, bony projections from the skull, behind the brow horns, leads to descriptions of Chasmosaurus dinosaur neck frills as the showiest of long-frilled ceratopsians. Fossilized impressions make it possible to reconstruct Chasmosaurus dinosaur skin as small-scaled between 5.12-inch- (13-centimeter-) spaced rows of button-like, neck-to-tail tubercles 1.97 inches (5 centimeters) in diameter. Specimens need yet to provide fossilized impressions for neck frills, whose non-bony material may have been connective tissue and muscle covered over and filled with skin.

Comparisons of the first complete juvenile Chasmosaurus dinosaur skeleton with mature specimens offer paleontologists opportunities to understand the frill’s purposes.

The Chasmosaurus dinosaur neck frill proves to be particularly mysterious in function since two fenestrae (wide-open gaps) weaken the structure’s provision of physical protection against predators. Paleontologists question whether self-defense takes a back seat to service as an anchor to powerful jaw muscles and a visual display for herding and mating purposes.

Adult skeletons reveal the Chasmosaurus dinosaur to be a fast-running, ground-eating, square-lipped, white rhinoceros-sized plant-eater, with flat teeth for chopping and slicing and with pillar-like legs. Same-located, 75- to 70-million-year-old fossils suggest avoidance of the meat-eating Albertosaurus, Daspleiosaurus and Dromaeosaurus, and co-existence with the plant-eating Alamosaurus, Corythosaurus, Euoplocephalus, Lambeosaurus, Parasaurolophus and Styracosaurus.

The first complete juvenile skeleton takes paleontologists closer to understanding the age-specific looks and uses of Chasmosaurus dinosaur body parts.

University of Alberta palaeontologist Phil Currie with 72-million-year-old skeleton of baby chasmosaurus (thought to have died at age 3) he uncovered in 2010. (University of Alberta): NNSERC / CRSNG @NSERC_CRSNG, via Twitter Jan. 18, 2016

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

life reconstruction of baby Chasmosaurus; credit Michael Skrepnick: Usage restrictions -- Please ensure credit appears with image, via EurekAlert! @ https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/599090; (EurekAlert! news release @ https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/590571); (former URL @ http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/106736.php)

University of Alberta palaeontologist Phil Currie with 72-million-year-old skeleton of baby chasmosaurus (thought to have died at age 3) he uncovered in 2010. (University of Alberta): NNSERC / CRSNG @NSERC_CRSNG, via Twitter Jan. 18, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/NSERC_CRSNG/status/689209507382194176

For further information:

Currie, Philip J.; Holmes, Robert B.; Ryan, Michael J.; Coy, Clive. 11 January 2016. “A Juvenile Chasmosaurine Ceratopside (Dinosauria, Ornithischia) from the Dinosaur Park Formation, Alberta, Canada.” Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. e1048348-1 to e1048348-22. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2015.1048348
Available @ http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2015.1048348

Dispatch Staff. 14 January 2016. “Scientists Detail Growth of Chasmosaurus Using Skeleton of Baby Dinosaur.” Dispatch Tribunal > Science.
Available @ http://www.dispatchtribunal.com/scientists-chart-growth-of-late-cretaceous-chasmosaurus/10986/

NSERC / CRSNG @NSERC_CRSNG. 18 January 2016. "Baby Chasmosaurus skeleton helps @UAlberta scientists understand dinosaur evolution." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/NSERC_CRSNG/status/689209507382194176

Singh, Rosanna. 14 January 2016. “Dinosaur Evolution: Baby Dinosaur ‘Chasmosaurus’ from Late Cretaceous Provides New Data.” Science World Report > Nature & Environment.
Available @ http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/35876/20160114/dinosaur-evolution-baby-chasmosaurus-late-cretaceous-provides-new-data.htm

University of Alberta. 14 January 2016. “Charting the Growth of One of the World’s Oldest Babies: Late Cretaceous Chasmosaurus Fills in Missing Pieces of Dinosaur Evolution.” EurekAlert! > Public Releases.
Available @ http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-01/uoa-ctg011316.php

UniversityofAlberta. 16 January 2014. "Baby the Dinosaur and Philip Currie." YouTube.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AxOnEg6hXs