Behold the ANKYLOSAUR!

 

Though the excitement of field work is hard to beat, in paleontology many of the great 'aha' moments occur in the comfort of the laboratory. This is one such 'aha' moment. In May of 2021 during our first trip to the Almond Formation, Joshua Cowgill discovered a pile of bone fragments within feet of a road. We bagged these fragments up with the hopes of potentially piecing them together. Later that Summer I took another look at the pieces and began to find one fit after another. By the end of the day I had assembled parts of 2 large osteoderms or 'skin bones' of an armored ankylosaur dinosaur! Ankylosaurians are related to the older stegosaurs, but instead of having tall, thin plates over their backs they were covered in dizzying arrays of armor spikes and shields to protect them against marauding tyrannosaurids. This is the first definite record of an armored dinosaur from the Almond Formation. This summer, when we return to the Almond, we hope to begin excavating at the site from which these were found and, if luck is on our side, retrieve more of the skeleton.

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