--- title: "Scientists Found a Dinosaur’s Face, Complete With Its Skin" description: "The rest of dinosaur's body was intact, too, including the armor, spikes, limbs, and its stomach contents. Looking it in the eye might unnerve you." date: "2023-01-26" modified: "2023-01-26" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/dinosaurs-face-complete-with-its-skin" categories: - "Science & Energy" tags: - "dinosaur" - "dinosaurs" - "the digest" --- # Scientists Found a Dinosaur’s Face, Complete With Its Skin ![The rest of dinosaur's body was intact, too, including the armor, spikes, limbs, and its stomach contents. Looking it in the eye might unnerve you.]() *\Image: Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology\* ## Mesozoic Mummy In 2011, archaeologists uncovered one of the most — if not *the* most — pristine [dinosaur fossils]() yet: a near-whole ankylosaur, complete with its jagged spikes, most of its limbs, armor coating, and some of its guts and stomach contents. The most amazing detail, though? Its uncannily preserved face and skin. It took Mark Mitchell, a technician at Royal Tyrell Museum, an absurd 7,000 hours and nearly six years to meticulously exhume the fossil by delicately chipping away at the surrounding stone. For his efforts, he had the newly discovered specie of nodosaur — a type of ankylosaur — named after him: *Borealopelta markmitchelli*. "During preparation, I would piece together the blocks like a puzzle, and the animal started to really take shape," Mitchell said in a [new interview with *Ars Technica*](), describing the painstaking process. "Right before Christmas one year," he continued, "I had pieced together both sides of the neck and the head, and you could really appreciate the impressiveness of the specimen and that this was a living creature with astounding preservation." That's a holotype for the ages. The museum's curator, Donald Henderson, told *Ars* that he wagered it was a literal "one in a billion" find. https://twitter.com/arstechnica/status/1618387832107634688 ## World Building Researchers were able to get their hands on the remarkable specimen in 2017 after Mitchell had finished preparing it, and they've since published a series of impressive studies. One such [study]() led by Caleb Brown, a curator at Royal Tyrell, examined the bone structure known as osteoderms found on ankylosaurs, which in less freakishly preserved specimens, usually fall out of place. These ones remained in their natural spots, however, and Brown measured all 172 of them. "Many armored dinosaur skeletons are preserved disarticulated, meaning their bones are all jumbled up," Brown told *Ars*. "Having the osteoderms preserved in life position in this specimen, and other specimens, can give us clues as to how to reconstruct those specimens where the position of the armor is less clear." His study's big takeaway? The suggestion that those iconic spikes aren't actually meant to stave off predators, but to show off in order to attract mates. Another [study]() on the specimen led by Brown and his colleagues posits that the *Boreapelta* used a form of camouflage known as countershading, which heretofore hasn't been observed in creatures of its size, i.e. *big* ones. As *Ars* notes, the fact that such a formidably armored dinosaur also had to employ camouflage to survive may imply that the *Cretaceous* period was even more cutthroat than once thought. And the [most recent study](), published this month, offers an extremely rare look at the diet of dinosaurs like the *Borealopelta*. So while its fate may be set in stone, the *Borealopelta* continues to shape our understanding of the almost alien world of the dinosaurs. **Read more:** *[Researchers look a dinosaur in its remarkably preserved face]()* **More on dinosaurs:** *[In Terrifying News, Big Brained T-Rex May Have Been as Smart as Primates]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()