A University of North Florida professor was among a handful of scientists who discovered the newest member of the dinosaur era in the deserts of southern Utah.
Barry Albright, a paleontologist and UNF professor, first discovered the species –– Nothronychus graffami –– in 2000. After years of digging in rugged Utah, Albright and his colleagues were able to recover a nearly complete specimen of the rare sickle-clawed dinosaur.
The unusual characteristics of the new species were published Wednesday in the British-based biological journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, finally making the find official.
“These are bizarre creatures,” Albright said. “We really started scratching our heads when we got further in. And we started to think, what the heck is this?”
The new dinosaur belongs to a group known as theropods, with other hereditary members including the legendary Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor.
But unlike his cousins, Nothronychus graffami was a herbivore, which Albright predicts might have been a survival tactic.
“It’s like the panda bear today,” said Alright, who has also discovered plesiosaurs — large predatory marine reptiles — in the very same desert. “They’re members of bears and mammalian carnivores, yet they eat bamboo.”
Another unusual aspect of the find is that the skeleton was located in ancient marine sediments. This places the dinosaur about 60 miles from the closest shoreline when it lived 92.5 million years ago, Albright said.
He believes the animal’s bloated carcass floated offshore, then sank in a nearly complete state.
And since the scientists were able to recover 80 percent of the dinosaur’s skeleton, they can now better understand its evolution.
“Before this study we knew very little about this species,” said Lindsay Zanno, lead author of the research. “This gives us a more complete picture.”
Standing 13 feet tall, the Nothronychus graffami had a very unusual body. Its small head had a turtle-like beak with tiny, leaf-shaped teeth. They had a large body composition, chubby legs and short tail, making them very slow. Large 9-inch claws were used to grab and break branches. Covered in feathers, it most resembles some sort of nightmarish ostrich.
It was named after Merle Graffam, a southern Utah resident who helped discover the skeleton.
Until the species was unearthed, sickle-clawed dinosaurs were believed to have only lived in Asia.
“It was like finding a penguin in North America,” said David Gillette, dinosaur co-founder and curator of the Museum of Northern Arizona. “Boy, these are bizarre beyond anything we could have imagined.”
The dinosaur’s skeleton will be on display at the Museum of Northern Arizona until September, when it will be moved to the Arizona Museum of Natural History.