Argentina has recently become a hotbed for strange dinosaur fossils. Last year, paleontologists in the country found dinosaur bones so large they believe they could have belonged to the largest land animal of all time. Now they’ve found something much smaller, and perhaps even stranger: a dinosaur that’s only about the size of a dog, but covered in so much armor that it resembles an oversized armadillo.
The newly discovered dinosaur has been given the taxonomic name Jakapil kaniukura, as paleontologists detailed in a recent article in the journal Scientific Reports. Jakapil kaniukura lived approximately 97 to 94 million years ago; he walked with two legs instead of four; he had tiny arms that looked like chicken wings; it possessed a short beak used to give sharp bites; and was equipped with a single ring of armor around his neck.
“The neck armor of this dinosaur is unique and protected that delicate area from attacks by predators,” explained one of the study’s co-authors, Sebastián Apesteguía. “The bones that are preserved from the arms show us that they were small,” which is unusual for dinosaurs in the group to which Jakapil kaniukura belonged, known as thyreophores. Thyreophores are defined as the group of “armored” dinosaurs, which are characterized by thick plates of bony armor that covered their bodies. Notable thyreophores include Stegosaurus, which had a series of mohawk-like spikes running down its back and into its tail; and ankleosaurus, which resembled a huge version of the extant horned toad, albeit with a club-shaped tail.
If Jakapil kaniukura sounds like the stuff of nightmares, don’t worry: even if it hadn’t gone extinct, it would almost certainly pose no threat to you. Like its thyreophore relatives, Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus, Jakapil kaniukura is thought to have been a herbivore, meaning it ate plants instead of meat. However, even if it had been a carnivore, Jakapil kaniukura was not very large, in fact, about as long as a retriever-sized dog (under 5 feet).
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The discovery of Jakapil kaniukura is also scientifically significant for several reasons. As the paper’s authors explain, the diminutive dinosaur has some “unusual anatomical features” that include many features not usually associated with thyrophorans of that period. It is also the first definitive thyrophore species from Argentine Patagonia,” which is remarkably south for a thyrophore, given that they had previously only been discovered in the northern hemisphere. In fact, this is the thyrophore that is known that has been discovered anywhere in the world.the south side of the equator.
Also, while most thyrophorans walked on four legs, Jakapil kaniukura “appears to exhibit a bipedal stance,” the researchers write, meaning it walked on only two legs, like humans. The dinosaur is also notable because its discovery in the southern hemisphere indicates that thyreophores were much more widely distributed than previously thought. They also survived until the Late Cretaceous in South America, which was between 100.5 million and 66 million years ago, just before the famous mass extinction of the dinosaurs.
The scientific name of the dinosaur should also be highlighted, as it uses indigenous languages. The word “Jakapil” derives from a term meaning “squire” in the Puelchea or Tehuelchea indigenous language of northern Argentina. Similarly, the word “Kanikura” is derived from the indigenous Mapudungun words for “ridge” and “stone”.
Paleontologists are also pleased to have received a surprisingly complete fossil of the dinosaur, as they were able to recover some of the spines that ran along the animal’s back, an almost intact lower jaw, as well as leg bones and arms and neck, back. and tail vertebrae.
The scientists also released a video online showing a computer-simulated reconstruction of Jakapil kaniukura presented by paleoartist and Chilean paleontology student at the National University of Río Negro Gabriel Díaz Yantén.