TRENTON — The last parts of a one-of-a-kind d dinosaur known as the “Destroyer of Shins” are being uncased after 76 million years.
The newly-discovered fossil of an armoured dinosaur with the pet name Zuul — for having similar characteristics to the demonic monster from the movie Ghostbusters — is unusually well preserved: A complete skeleton with an unprecedented amount of fossilized skin.
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Plant-eating Zuul — who would have been seven-metres long and weighed three tonnes — has a short snout, long horns behind its eyes and on its cheeks, a gnarly face and a sledgehammer-like clubbed tail tail to inflict damage on the shins or predatory opponents.
The Royal Ontario Museum acquired the skeleton of Zuul after it was discovered in Montana, just south of the Alberta border in 2014.
All its bones were in place — from snout to tail.
“Zuul not only enables us to unlock clues about armoured dinosaur evolution and how they lived, but also the rich fossil fauna found with Zuul lets us paint a vivid picture of its lush ancient world and reflect on climate change and extinction,” said museum paleontologist David Evans.
The ROM already has Zuul’s head and tail, but the torso from tail to neck is still encased in 30,000 of pounds of rock.
The last fossil parts of Zuul are currently being freed in Trenton by Research Casting International (RCI), a leader in fossil recovery.
One side of Zuul’s torso fossil has been prepared, but last week, the huge rock casing had to be flipped to prepare the other side.
It’s not something that has been done before, said Peter May, of RCI.
There were a few time when cables broke and the rock was being flipped, but the encasing was protected as it was in a metal cage. Having a pile of broken stones and fossil was averted.
RCI employee Amelia Madill has been painstakingly been removing rock from the fossil since February.
“I’ve been using a mini-jackhammer to chip away the matrix from the bone. It’s so exciting to work on because there are only a couple of mummified dinosaurs out there,” Madill said. “This will give us an actual picture of what it looked like.”
Most images of what dinosaurs looked like are educated guesses.
“We have a huge expansion of preserved skin. (Zuul) was likely buried rapidly to avoid decay, so we have impressions of the skin. The data on the skin is exciting because it can give us a perspective of what it looked like when living and we can look deeper into the molecular aspects of the skin,” Evans said.
“I think it’s the most beautiful specimen we will ever see.”
Zuul: Life of an Amoured Dinosaur will be on display in its entirely at the ROM, starting Dec. 15.
The exhibit promises to take visitors to the Cretaceous world Zuul inhabited. It will have cutting-edge technology and interactive storytelling to explore how this mighty dinosaur lived.
“We are thrilled to be introducing Toronto and the world to an extraordinary new dinosaur. The acquisition of Zuul not only enhances the ROM’s reputation as a leading scientific institution, but represents a significant new addition to our globally-renowned collection of late Cretaceous dinosaurs and fauna,” said ROM CEO Josh Basseches. “