High School Student Discovers Most Complete Skeleton Ever of Baby Dinosaur

Who says that archaeologists make all of the important finds? A chance discovery by a high school student has led to the finding of the youngest, smallest and most complete fossil dinosaur skeleton yet found of the tube-crested Parasaurolophus. The new fossil reveals a bit more about the development of this species of dinosaur.

The fossil itself was first discovered in 2009 by high school student Kevin Terris. Found within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, the fossil was missed by two professional paleontologists. They had actually walked within several feet of the bones just days prior to the discovery. Terris, in contrast, noticed the bones sticking from the rock. Once it was completely unearthed, researchers realized exactly how important the find was.

The baby Parasaurolophus was just six feet long when it died. This duck-billed dinosaur lived throughout western North America about 75 million years ago. The most notable feature of this herbivorous dinosaur was the long and hollow bony tube on the top of its skull, which researchers believed it used to blast sound for communication. Although partial skulls and skeletons of adult Parasaurolophus have been known for the past 90 years, this baby skeleton told researchers a bit more about how these dinosaurs grew. More specifically, the baby dinosaur had a low bump on the top of its head. This only later morphed into the curved tube of adults.

"Our baby Parasaurolophus is barely one-quarter of adult size, but it had already started growing its crest," said Andrew Farke, the lead project scientist, in a news release. "This is surprising, because related dinosaurs didn't sprout their ornamentation until they were at least half-grown. Parasaurolophus had to get an early start in order to form its unique headgear."

That's not all the new fossil revealed, though. It also showed exactly what sort of sounds that the baby dinosaurs may have made with this strange headgear.

"If adult Parasaurolophus had 'woofers,' the babies had 'tweeters.' The short and small crest of baby 'Joe' shows that it may have had a much higher pitch to its call than did adults," said Farke in a news release. "Along with the visual differences, this might have helped animals living in the same area to figure out who was the big boss."

Want to get a better look at this important fossil? The researchers have actually made 3D digital scans of the entire dinosaurs freely available online here.

The findings are published in the journal PeerJ.