“It’s beyond our wildest dreams,” David Evans, a Royal Ontario Museum paleontologist said about the newly discovered Zuul crurivastator.
Zuul, a new species and genus of dinosaur, is a pretty close doppelganger to the movie monster from the 1984 film Ghostbusters. The only exceptions are that the spiked dino is real and a plant eater.
Weighing between 1.4 and 4 tons, Zuul gulped down soft plants with its shovel-like mouth. The Zuul fossils were discovered in what is now northern Montana, where it died about 76 millions years ago.
Ankylosaurids, a club-tailed, armored dinosaur, like the Zuul are most famously known for their dangerous tails. Zuul has a sledgehammer-like club that could knock down massive dinosaurs – even the tyrannosaurus rex.
Evans and his colleagues gave the species its name “crurivastator” which, in Latin, means “destroyer of shins” and is the most complete ankylosaurid fossil set ever found in North America.
Dino lovers can see the new species in a new exhibit displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum.
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