A team of researchers has made a groundbreaking discovery in the Canadian Rockies, uncovering footprints of armoured dinosaurs with tail clubs for the first time. The 100-million-year-old fossilized footprints were found at sites in both Tumbler Ridge, BC, and northwestern Alberta. This finding confirms the presence of ankylosaurid dinosaurs in North America during the mid Cretaceous period.
Unlike other well-known ankylosaur footprints that have four toes, these new tracks have only three toes – a significant discovery that sheds light on the diversity of this group of dinosaurs. The expert team named the new species Ruopodosaurus clava, meaning ‘the tumbled-down lizard with a club/mace,’ referencing both the mountainous location and the distinctive tail clubs.
According to Dr. Victoria Arbour, an evolutionary biologist and vertebrate palaeontologist who specializes in ankylosaurs, “Ankylosaurs are my favourite group of dinosaurs to work on… being able to identify new examples of these dinosaurs in British Columbia is really exciting for me.” The discovery provides a new piece of the puzzle about ancient Canadian creatures, highlighting the importance of the Peace Region of northeastern BC in understanding dinosaur evolution.
This find highlights that tail-clubbed ankylosaurs were alive and well in North America during a previously unknown gap in the skeletal fossil record. The discovery also shows that both nodosaurid and ankylosaurid ankylosaurs coexisted in the same region, contradicting previous speculation about their disappearance from North America.
Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1080217