As a result, Edmontosaurus The image has been updated once more. And some of the updates were pretty impressive.
delicate elephant
Sereno’s team analyzed the new discovery Edmontosaurus Mummies with a plethora of modern imaging technologies like CT scan, X-ray, photogrammetry and more. “We created a detailed model of the skin and wrapped it around the skeleton – some of these technologies were not available even 10 years ago,” says Sereno. result was updated Edmontosaurus Image including crest, spikes and changes in the appearance of its skin. Perhaps most surprising is that it adds hooves to its feet.
It turns out that both Knight and Horner were partially right about the look Edmontosaurus’ Back. The fleshy crest, as depicted by Knight, actually begins at the top of the head and extends backward along the spine. The difference was that there was a point where this crest changed into a row of spikes, as depicted in the Horner version. The spikes were similar to those found on modern chameleons, where each spike matches one-to-one with the vertebrae below it.
“Another thing that was surprising Edmontosaurus The size of its scales was small,” says Sereno. Most of the scales were just 1 to 4 millimeters. They got a little larger toward the bottom of the tail, but even there they were no more than 1 centimeter. “You can find scales like this on a lizard, and we’re talking about an animal the size of an elephant,” says Sereno. The skin covered with these ultra-small scales was also incredibly thin, which the team had imagined. Removed from wrinkles found.
And then came the hooves. “In a hoof, the nail wraps around the big toe and wraps around the bottom of it in a wedge shape,” Sereno explains. Edmontosaurus It had singular, central hooves with a “frog” on its front legs, a triangular, rubber-like structure on the bottom. “They looked a lot like horse hooves, so they obviously weren’t invented by mammals,” says Sereno. “Dinosaurs had these.” On the other hand, the hind feet that handled most of the animal’s weight had three wedge-shaped hooves wrapped around three digits and a fleshy heel at the rear – a structure found in modern rhinoceroses.