An incredible new species of armoured dinosaur that stood around 3.5 ft (one metre) tall and 13 ft (four metres) long has been discovered by archaeologists in Utah.
The herbivore, which was discovered in the desert, is believed to have walked across a land bridge that connected Asia to North America around 76 million years ago.
The newly-discovered species is the oldest example of an armoured dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period ever to be found in western North America.
It is also the most complete skeleton of an ankylosaurid, a family of armoured dinosaurs, that has been found in the south western US, experts say.
The newly-discovered species does not resemble the other North American ankylosaurids, but instead is much closer to an Asian species, which had protective spiky armour covering its skull and snout.
Although ankylosaurids originated in Asia between 125 to 100 million years ago, the family of armoured dinosaurs did not appear in western North American until around 77 million years ago.
Scientists believe lowered sea levels at that time may have allowed dinosaurs in Asia to walk over a land bridge and immigrate to North America.
The new skeleton includes a complete skull, most of the vertebral column, a large bony club at the end of its tail, several fore and hind limbs elements, and bony body armour, including two neck rings and spiked armour plates.
The four-legged dinosaur would also have had small, leaf-shaped teeth for eating plants.
The genus name is derived from the Greek words akaina, which means 'thorn' or 'spike', and cephalus, meaning 'head'.
Researchers named the new species 'johnsoni' after the Natural History Museum volunteer, who prepared its skull for exhibition at the Natural History Museum of Utah.
In total, it took four years to prepare the entire skeleton after the skeleton was first discovered.
Almost every dinosaur discovered over the last 15 years in the Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument is a new species. Palaeontologists are looking into why there is such a concentration of new dinosaurs in the area.
The Kane County area would have been on the southern part of the 'lost continent' of Laramidia – an island that stretched from Alaska to Mexico before the two parts of North America formed to make a single continent.
Music: "Unwritten Return" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Source: Peerj, Daily Mail, Science News
Source: Peerj, Daily Mail, Science News
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