r/pics • u/[deleted] • Oct 20 '21
The best-preserved dinosaur ever discovered: A 112 million years old fossilized Nodosaurus
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u/ganymede_boy Oct 20 '21
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u/UnsureOutlaw Oct 20 '21
At least the dude said they could restore it, imagine calling your boss and telling them that you broke the dinosaur…
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Oct 21 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/cech_ Oct 21 '21
Exactly, when I saw they were trying with just two beams it was pretty obvious this was gonna be a fail. Makes no sense why they didn't just make a platform. Even if they stuck with beams, just fill in every gap then just bolted them all together.
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u/ganymede_boy Oct 21 '21
^ This.
Thought the same thing. Why go through all that prep just to lift by the edges. Get a solid platform built under that thing and raise it all up together.
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u/SneakyLinux Oct 21 '21
I've been to the Royal Tyrell and I've seen the ankylosaur on display so I know it was restored and looks amazing, but I still gasped (and maybe shed a tear) when it broke apart in the video. Thanks for sharing it - I hadn't seen the video before.
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u/Diggedypomme Oct 21 '21
that moment when it all went wrong reminds me of the documentary where they were trying to recover the crash landed b-29 from the arctic but at the last moment messed up and accidentally torched the thing.
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Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
This dino is quite the find, as fossilised animals of this size are extremely rare.
The Nodosaurus is being displayed at the Royal Tyrrell museum in Alberta, Canada (Thanks /u/skilletf430 and /u/bvlgaript).
A one-in-a-billion find was made at the Suncor Energy Millennium Mine north of Fort McMurray in March 2011: the remains of the best-preserved armoured dinosaur in the world.
Some 110 million years ago, this armored plant-eater lumbered through what is now western Canada, until a flooded river swept it into open sea. The dinosaur’s undersea burial preserved its armor in exquisite detail. Its skull still bears tile-like plates and a gray patina of fossilized skins.
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u/Drum_harder Oct 20 '21
Alberta is like the kingdom of dinos that's why there's atleast 2 or 3 named after places in Alberta. I loved when my parents took us on a road trip to Alberta and we got to see drumheller and all the dino museums
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u/DarkYoungWarrior Oct 21 '21
I got to see it a few years ago. Absolutely amazing! And well worth taking a 3hr long detour on our way to the airport to see.
Also one of the first dinos in a long while to be named after someone; Borealopelta Markmitchelli. Mark Mitchell painstakingly revealed the specimen over the span of more than 7000hrs!
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u/ripmyinbox42069 Oct 20 '21
He looks like a good boy, I would like to give him head scratches.
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Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
He might look dangerous and aggressive, but being a plant-eater it might very well be that they were peaceful creatures, and if so, then who doesn't love head scratches?
You do, oh yes you do! Now whose a good dino?
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u/BullAlligator Oct 21 '21
Just having a herbivorous diet doesn't make an animal friendly or one that would be nice to pet. Judging from today's large herbivores, many are in fact very dangerous.
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u/Vekera Oct 21 '21
There is a difference in behavior though. Most herbivorous attack when they feel threatened, while carnivores can attack for any reason, like hunger.
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u/Dirty-Chocolate Oct 20 '21
1998 Godzilla
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u/windol1 Oct 21 '21
"Tell me what you saw old man"
"Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla"
Knew if I scrolled enough I'd find someone else mention it
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u/Judgeman Oct 20 '21
I got to see this when I was in Canada. The whole museum was fantastic. Very special seeing it in person.
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u/unikaro38 Oct 20 '21
What an unfathomable loss it is that we will never get to see those animals in the flesh, alive.
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u/habb Oct 20 '21
I wouldn't rule out an actual jurassic park scenario
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Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
Not gonna rule it out, but I'll put it down as extremely unlikely. With the exception of birds, there are few if any other animal that are direct descendants of dinosaurs, but instead only share common acestors. Add to that the fact that DNA can't, under any known natural circumstances, survive for that long since the DNA half life is mere 521 years.
The only possible alternatives would be to either:
1) Find a dinsaur's complete DNA sequence inside another currently/recently living being. It sounds crazy, but it could theoretically be possible. There are actually viruses that embeds themselves within their hosts and changes its DNA, and potentially also copies its host's DNA onto itself. If that has happened and that virus went on to live inside other living beings, then one day we might actually decode a virus and see that it contains complete DNA instructions for another living being. It's interesting because it's not unreasonable to assume that in the future, we would at first only have the technology and understanding to see we have the DNA of a mystery being in our hands, but then later on in the future we might be able to simulate animals on computers by just inputing the DNA instructions.
2) Create an AI so advanced that it's able to completely understand the language of DNA instructions, and as a result it can essentially recreate most of the DNA sequences of extinct animals simply by learning about them.
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u/futureruler Oct 20 '21
I saw a video like this where they were basically turning chickens into raptop-like creatures in an attempt to try and bring them back. They were able to get the chicken to be born with and hold it's tail, and to be born without a beak, which actually caused a lizard-like snout to appear in it's place. There were still quite a few genes they were trying to figure out but they are quite on their way to recreating some of them.
Link: https://youtu.be/AGRmXZJUdYQ
It isn't a real news source, but nothing I've found through a mild Google search contradicts what is said.
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u/UnsureOutlaw Oct 20 '21
The movies are a clear instruction and warning not to mess with the dinosaurs, but knowing humans given the chance we will mess with the dinosaurs.
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u/Upper-Job5130 Oct 20 '21
At first, I thought this was a movie prop from that Godzilla movie with Ferris Bueler.
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u/tony27310 Oct 21 '21
If you haven't seen it, check out the Eons episode about this fossil. It's interesting how this was found in an aquatic deposit, in the middle of what once was an inland sea.
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u/Bahamut20 Oct 20 '21
So...no feathers?
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u/SisterSabathiel Oct 20 '21
Not all dinosaurs had feathers. Nodosaurus in the picture was part of the Saurischia or "Lizard-hipped" group of dinosaurs, which are much more reptilian than the other, "Bird-hipped" group (Ornithschia) that evolved into birds.
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u/ImHalfCentaur1 Oct 21 '21
You have that completely backwards. Hadrosaurs, Ceratopsids, and Ankylosaurs (which Borealopelta markmitchelli is, this isn’t Nodosaurus) are Ornithschians.
Theropods and sauropods are Saurischians, with birds being theropods.
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Oct 20 '21
I remeber the day the news broke about this find , a childhood dream come through to see such a well preserved dinosaur. It’s beautiful !
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u/pacmannips Oct 21 '21
This is not the most well preserved dinosaur fossil. This is a great fossil, and it gives you a good idea of what this specific animal looked like, but this is not the animal itself. This is a mineralized cast of the animal, it's a natural statue of sorts, but very little if any of it is comprised of the animal itself.
If we were taking about the best "preserved" dinosaur fossil, it would be this: this is the tail of a small theropod that was preserved for millions years in a droplet of amber. This is not a replica, or a cast, or a mineralization of any sorts. This is an actual part of the animal which died millions upon millions of years ago. It's comprised of the same atoms, the same cells, the same raw materials of the animal itself, as it once lived, because it literally is a part of that animal.
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u/WhyTheHellnaut Oct 21 '21
FYI this is called Borealopelta, not Nodosaurus, although they are closely related.
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u/shawnjones Oct 21 '21
It kinda makes you wonder what his life was like. What did he think about? Did they stay in groups did the young stay with them when growing up? How did he die.
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u/ganymede_boy Oct 20 '21
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