Zavacephale rinpoche: New Pachycephalosaur Discovery

Palaeontologists discovered Zavacephale rinpoche, a new pachycephalosaur species, in Mongolia's Gobi Desert. This early Cretaceous dinosaur lived ~108 million years ago and is the most complete specimen found.

Palaeontologists working in the Gobi desert of Mongolia saw the fossil skull sticking out from the rock like a “cabochon jewel”, states Lindsay Zanno at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “Hence, we selected the types name ‘rinpoche’, which suggests ‘priceless one’ [in Tibetan],” she claims.

Discovery of Zavacephale rinpoche

The brand-new varieties, named Zavacephale rinpoche, lived concerning 108 million years back in the very early Cretaceous and is a member of a team known as pachycephalosaurs. These dinosaurs had solid-bone, dome-shaped outcroppings on their heads that were used either for defence or in social or breeding display screens.

Z. rinpoche precedes any kind of various other pachycephalosaur species by about 15 million years and is additionally the most complete specimen ever discovered, with a near-complete head and arm or leg bones and significant components of its vertebrae and hips. The group likewise recovered hand bones, as well as belly stones, which would certainly have been utilized to grind its food.

Fossil Analysis and Age

To establish the age of the dinosaur at its death, the group cut a slim slice of its reduced leg bone. They explain it as a “teenager” that would have been about a metre long and evaluated simply under 6 kgs. Although it is impossible to approximate just how big it would have been had it maturated, various other pachycephalosaurs got to lengths of more than 4 metres and 400 kilos in weight.