Friday, May 18, 2018

10 Amazing Newly Discovered Armored Animals


Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

We might expect armor among newly discovered species of dinosaurs, but, unexpectedly, newly discovered species of fish, mollusks, spiders, and even worms, also have armor. Among both prehistoric and gargantuan animals as well as modern and tiny creatures, armor seems a more popular protective adaptation than we might have realized previously.

10 Mummified Dinosaur

Its unusually well-preserved condition has earned a newly discovered armored fossil the nickname “dinosaur mummy.” Among its remains are intact skin, armor, and “some guts.” According to scientists, it's the most well-preserved specimen ever found. Its head resembles a grotesque rock carving.



A member of the new nodosaurs species, the quadruped herbivore was “covered in spiky plates” and weighed between 2,800 and 3,000 pounds. Due to its unusual preservation, the fossil itself is 2,500 pounds. After crude oil miners discovered the fossil in 2011, researchers spent about 7,000 hours preparing the “mummy” for display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology near Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. (LINK 1)

The newly discovered dinosaur had double defenses: armor and camouflage. Characterized as the “dinosaur equivalent of a tank,” the massive animal was 18 feet long. Its underside was lighter than its reddish-brown back, a form of camouflage known as countershading. Scientists believe the dinosaur was a carnivore. Caleb Brown, of the museum, said, “This nodosaur is truly remarkable in that it is completely covered in preserved scaly skin, yet is also preserved in three dimensions, retaining the original shape of the animal.” As a result, the appearance of the fossil is remarkably similar to how it would look were it alive today. (LINK 2)

9 New Tyrannosaur Species

The newly discovered Daspletosaurus horneri, a species of tyrannosaurine dinosaur, is a “cousin of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex.” The new species of predator lived during the Late Cretaceous epoch, 75 million years ago, in Asia and North America. About 9 m (30 ft) long and 2.2 m (7.2 ft) tall, it had a “wide snout, small orbital bones and slit-like pneumatic openings on the inside lacrimal bone” (a small bone that forms part of the eye socket). It preyed on horned dinosaurs, duck-billed dinosaurs, dome-headed dinosaurs, and “smaller carnivorous dinosaurs.”



Dr. Thomas Carr, a paleontologist with Carthage College, said some areas of the dinosaur's face included “extremely coarse bone that supported armor-like skin on the snout and on the sides of the lower jaws,” which “would have protected tyrannosaurs from abrasions, perhaps sustained when hunting and feeding.” Despite its partially armored face, the dinosaur's snout and jaws were extremely sensitive: a network of “small nerve openings” allowed nerves to relay sensations, “producing a sensitivity similar to that of human fingertips.” (LINK 3)

8 Unusual Dinosaur

The herbivorous, four-legged ankylosaurus Kunbarrasaurus ieversi is a newly discovered armored dinosaur. It lived 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. Most of its skeleton was discovered intact in 1989 in Queensland, Australia, but it wasn't until new research by University of Queensland paleontologist Lucy Leahey that it was discovered that the fossil is that of a species other than the one to which the remains were originally assigned.



The dinosaur “had unusual characteristics, including “a parrot-like beak, bones in its skin and an inner ear similar” to that of a turtle. It is “more primitive than the majority of other well-known ankylosaurs from North America and Asia,” said Dr. Steve Salisbury, also of the University of Queensland and a member of Leahey's team. Later ankylosaurs were more heavily armored, diverging from the same line of dinosaurs from which the stegosaurus descended. (LINK 4)

7 “Uniquely Armored” Lizard

After catching a live specimen of one of the armored lizards of Angola, Dr. Edward Stanley, a herpetology research associate with the California Academy of Sciences, subjected the reptile to computerized tomography (CT) scans to obtain information about the specimen's “uniquely armored body.” The scan's X-rays showed “the tiny, bony spikes of Cordylus namakuiyus are actually embedded in the lizard’s skin rather than attached to the skeleton itself.”



Stanley saw for himself how the lizard uses its armor to protect itself. He observed the lizard dart headfirst into the crevice of a rock, leaving only its intimidating spines exposed to discourage predators. As soon as he spotted the lizard, Stanley suspected he might have found a new species, which turned out to be the case. Studying Cordylus namakuiyus will advance herpetologists' knowledge and understanding of reptiles. (LINK 5)

6 Giant Fish



Researchers have discovered an unusual extinct ancient fish, the Bothriolepis rex. A member of the Antiarchi group, it was a giant among its kind, measuring 1.7 m (5.5 ft) long. Scientists are excited by the identification of the new species, the fossil of which was originally discovered 25 years ago. Dr. Jason Downs, a research associate with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, said, “The large body size and the thick, dense armor present a unique opportunity to address questions about the lifestyle of this unusual group of armored swimmers.” Despite its ferocious appearance, the fish's “flat bottom and downward facing mouth” suggest it probably fed on “detritus plant or animal material in the mud or sand.” Its armor protected it against the marine predators of its day. (LINK 6)

5 Tiny Catfish



A newly discovered extinct armored catfish is an equally amazing find. The Pareiorhina hyptiorhachis was found off the coast of Brazil, in the Rio Rio Paraíba do Sul basin. Its species name, hyptiorhachis, derives from a combination of two Greek words, hyptios (supine) and rhachis (ridge), referring to the thick ridge running along its back, from its dorsal fin to the tip of its tail. The size of the armored catfish is also unusual. At a length of only 3 to 3.5 cm (1.18 to 1.38 in), it is among the smallest of the catfish order. (LINK 7)

4 Mollusk

One of the more amazing newly discovered armored species is the West Indies fuzzy chiton (Acanthopleura granulata). Its armor does double duty as its eyes, protecting the mollusk as it allows the organism to see. Whereas we have only two, “protein-based” eyes, the chiton has hundreds, and they're made of the mineral known as aragonite.

Research shows the chiton's eyes work the same way as ours, as their “mineral lenses focus light on the retina, which is covered in photoreceptors.” What was unclear until recently is whether each of the mollusk's eyes forms its own discrete image or whether the eyes collectively form one composite image based on the information of all the individual eyes.



Materials scientists Ling Li of Harvard University and Christine Ortiz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have determined the fuzzy chiton sees mostly a “blur.” They hooked up one of the creature's lenses “to the end of a microscope objective in a water bath,” which enabled the scientists to see what the mollusk saw when it looked at a “fish-shaped silhouette”: “a somewhat blurred, but recognizable, shape” that's sufficient to alert the chiton to the presence of a predator. Further understanding of the animal's armor-vision awaits additional research. (LINK 8)

3 Snail

A newly discovered species of deep-sea snail has amazing iron-based armor. Its magnetic “interlocking” plates, made of the iron sulfides pyrite, or “fool's gold,” and greigite, protect it against other, predatory snails, deflecting the “specialized teeth” their attackers use to “inject venom.” Normally, iron sulfides lack stability, but Aners Waren, a biologist with the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, said, “That may not be the case at [the] depths” at which the armored snail makes its home.



The snail is the first known to use iron sulfides structurally. Although its scales strongly resemble those of animals that lived 540 to 500 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period, genetic and anatomical tests prove the snail is a new species “related to other common groups of modern snails.” (LINK 9)

2 Spiders

Although armored spiders (Tetrablenmidae) are not unknown, a new genus and five new species that Professor Shuqiang Li and his research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered in caves in Southeast China are unusual. Like others, a “complex pattern of covering” armors their bodies, but most armored spiders are “found in soil or leaf litter,” not in caves. Two of the species the team discovered have only four eyes, and the cave species has none. The new species is among the 2,000 new species found in China over the past decade. (LINK 10)



An even stranger newly discovered spider species, Electroblemma bifida, lived 99 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period. It inhabited tropical or subtropical forests in the Southern Hemisphere. The spider featured an unusually long projection “extending from [its] upper” shell, or carapace, the tip of which was twice split and may have contained the spider's four eyes. The spider was armed with “complex, horned fangs.” Erin Saupe, a paleobiologist at Yale, believes the fangs, which were equipped with “prongs at their tips,” were a “sexual characteristic” distinguishing females from males and could be used for hunting or self-protection.

“This is a particularly bizarre form of this armored spider family,” said Paul Selden, an invertebrate paleontologist at the University of Kansas, whose team described the new species in a scientific journal. (LINK 11)

1 Worms


One of the rarest fossils of annelid worms, Pumulitid machaeridian, was found in downtown Ottawa, Canada. Only the eighth such specimen known to exist, it consists of an almost whole skeleton. Dave Rudkin, of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, first understood the importance of the find. In appearance like modern bristleworms, “with stout walking limbs,” the newly discovered specimen was also equipped with “a set of mineralized plates.” Paleontologist Jakob Vinther, who collaborated with Rudkin in interpreting the Ottawa fossil, explained, “the plates themselves were rigid, but they could move relative to one other, providing plumulitids with a protective body armour very similar to the flexible metal armour invented by humans 450 million years later.” (LINK 12)



Collinsium ciliosum, or Hairy Collins’ Monster, an ancestor of today's velvet worms, is one of the first soft-bodied worm to develop “rows of spiky armor” to protect itself. The four-inch-long eyeless worm lived in China 515 to 518 million years ago and used its six pairs of feathery “front limbs to sieve food from the water” into its downward-facing mouth. Paleontologist Martin Smith said the worm would be a contender should there ever be a “Cambrian weirdest creature contest.” (LINK 13)




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