It is a fact that some mummified dinosaur fossils are confusing. Because we know that dinosaurs and humanity did not live in the same time period. Paleontologists are also very confident that dinosaurs did not wrap their dead after dissection as the ancient Egyptians or Incas did, and did not attempt to embalm themselves like some monks from a Buddhist tradition.
So how can mummified dinosaur fossils ever be real? The answer is hidden in the skin of dinosaurs. There are some dinosaur fossils that have been described as “mummified” because at least some of the skin has survived.
Skin preservation in fossils is rare, and paleontologists think it requires a remarkable combination of circumstances. But recent discoveries show that this is not as uncommon as previously thought. At the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Dr. Stephanie Drumheller and her colleagues offer an explanation for why there may be more skinned dinosaur fossils around than expected.
The traditional view of mummification argues that preserving the skin requires drying the carcass and then burial so quickly that neither scavengers nor rotting bacteria can reach it. Therefore, the discovery of an Edmontosaurus named NDGS 2000 near Pretty Butte in the Hell Creek formation with bite marks on intact skin fragments put a question mark against this conventional view. These were the first signs of carnivores reported on a mummified dinosaur.
Clearly, this specimen was not protected from scavengers by being quickly buried. However, a mummification occurred with degraded proteins indicating that the leather was genuine, not stuffed.
Drumheller’s explanation states that in the late Cretaceous, Edmontosaurus skin was not considered a savory food. Instead, crocodile relatives who feasted on this unfortunate individual wanted to reach his internal organs. The bite marks on the skin represent efforts to clear an obstacle. Once they had overcome the barrier, they ate the delicious bits and left their skin and bones. The article suggests that the holes drilled by carnivores allow “gases, liquids and microbes associated with dissolution” to escape.
The authors named the process catchy “dessication and deflation” and noted that it has been observed to preserve modern mammalian skins. However, they do not suggest that all previous dinosaur mummies, including the amazingly preserved hadrosaur that is currently being mined, arose this way. Instead, they suggest there are at least two different ways that dinosaur skin was transformed into something that could survive through the ages.
The authors note that even if NDGS 2000 had not been discovered, there is a problem with the traditional explanation of embalming because the processes of desiccation and rapid burial don’t really fit well with each other.
“Explanations of these contradictory protection pressures are often speculative and unsatisfactory, as they rely on unrealistic fast drying modes or ignore the effects of smaller scavengers and decomposers,” the article says.
Given the climate of North Dakota at the time and the alligator-shaped teeth marks on its bones, there are probably even greater problems for dinosaurs that died in wet environments, as they probably did for this Edmontosaurus.
Usually only small pieces of dinosaur skin survive, but this is not the case for the NDGS 2000. Most of the skin of his hind half, as well as his front right leg, remains intact.
Co-author Dr., of the North Dakota Geological Survey. Clint Boyd said in a statement; “Soft tissues such as skin can also provide a unique source of information about other animals that interact with a carcass after death,” he says.
The research is published as open access in PLOS ONE.
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