SCIENTISTS have been shocked to find an extremely rare tooth of a dinosaur from millions of years ago in a shallow Southern creek.
The fossil was identified as belonging to a hadrosaur, a group of massive mammals that lived on land — but the tooth was found in an area that would have been underwater during the age of dinosaurs.
The dinosaur tooth, appearing to belong to a hadrosaur, is over half of an inch long[/caption]
The tooth was found on a summer fossil hunting trip to Shark Tooth Creek in Alabama[/caption]
Hadrosaurus were duck-billed dinosaurs that lived on land and grew up to 50 feet[/caption]
The “very rare, 84 million-year-old hadrosaur dinosaur tooth” was found in Shark Tooth Creek in western Alabama, according to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.
A group with the museum was on a summer trip looking through the local creek when they stumbled across the distinct artifact.
Dr. John Friel, the director of the museum, said he was surprised to find the tooth in a bed of gravel while accompanying the activity.
“I have been doing these trips for the past ten years, but this was the first time I have ever found a dinosaur fossil,” Friel told McClatchy News affiliate Miami Herald.
Friel said when he first picked the tooth up, he thought it might just be an oddly shaped piece of bone.
Shark Tooth Creek, about 50 miles southwest of Tuscaloosa, is a popular spot for visitors to hunt for fossils and oyster shells.
The area is full of fossilized teeth dating back more than 60 million years, when most of Alabama was covered by shallow oceans full of sea creatures.
So it’s not unusual to find a piece of shark tooth or bone on the level that used to be the bottom of the ocean — but then Friel took a closer look.
“However, when I turned it over and saw that it had a shiny enameled surface with a distinctive texture, I was fairly certain it was a tooth,” Friel said.
Friel and two university paleontologists confirmed it appeared to be the base of a hadrosaur tooth, over a half-inch long.
But during the time they were alive, hadrosaurs weren’t anywhere near the area that is now known as Alabama.
The water cuts through rock that “formed roughly 84 million years ago when this part of Alabama was submerged under the sea,” Friel said.
The area was likely entirely underwater at the time the dinosaur would have been alive.
Hadrosaurs were duck-billed, herbivorous dinosaurs that spent most of their time on land, according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology.
Why did the dinosaurs die out?
Here’s what you need to know…
- The dinosaur wipe-out was a sudden mass extinction event on Earth
- It wiped out roughly three-quarters of our planet’s plant and animal species around 66million years ago
- This event marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and opened the Cenozoic Era, which we’re still in today
- Scientists generally believe that a massive comet or asteroid around 9 miles wide crashed into Earth, devastating the planet
- This impact is said to have sparked a lingering “impact winter”, severely harming plant life and the food chain that relied on it
- More recent research suggests that this impact “ignited” major volcanic activity, which also led to the wiping-out of life
- Some research has suggested that dinosaur numbers were already declining due to climate changes at the time
- But a study published in March 2019 claims that dinosaurs were likely “thriving” before the extinction event
The fast-running species could grow up to 50 feet long and had hundreds of teeth.
CHILLING MYSTERY
The toothy surprise gave Friel a chilling clue as to what happened to the hadrosaur.
“All of the dinosaur fossils discovered in Alabama are thought to be of dinosaurs that died and were then washed out to sea where they were likely scavenged by sharks or other marine creatures before they were fossilized,” Friel said.
However, the mystery remains as to whether the dinosaur died before or after being washed out — or dragged — to sea.
Friel didn’t immediately return The U.S. Sun’s request for comment.
The tooth was added to the museum’s collection.
A hadrosaur’s skeleton on display at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2009[/caption]
