Alberta Dinosaur’s Head Adorned With Fleshy Comb
An unusually well-preserved fossil of a duck-billed dinosaur has revealed a body part never seen before on any dinosaur.
The Edmontosaurus regalis specimen found west of Grand Prairie , Alta., last year had a soft, fleshy comb on its head, similar to those found on roosters.
“It’s a structure that was completely unexpected,” said Victoria Arbour, a University of Alberta paleontologist who co-authored the scientific paper published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, describing the new fossil.
“It kind of makes us wonder what other dinosaurs might have had.”
Edmontosaurus was a plant-eating dinosaur with a duck-like bill that grew to be 12 metres long — about the length of a bus. It was thought to have roamed North America in herds during the late Cretaceous, about 75 and 65 million years ago, and belonged to a group of dinosaurs known as hadrosaurs, which were the most common dinosaurs on the continent at the time.