U. of C. dinosaur hunter IDs new species
August 13, 2003
BY DAVE NEWBART Staff Reporter
Chicago Sun-Times

The dinosaur bones had sat in a government office in India for 25 years, largely unidentified.

But when Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist, searched through hundreds of them two years ago, he found evidence of a massive meat-eating creature rivaling Tyrannosaurus rex.

Now Sereno, 45, is credited with identifying another new species of dinosaur. He has discovered a dozen in his career.

Today Sereno is in India at an official unveiling ceremony that the president of India is expected to attend.

The discovery of the dinosaur skeleton, which includes the first dinosaur skull ever assembled in India, is "extremely important,'' said Ashok Sahni, a professor of geology at Panjab University in India who worked with Sereno on identifying the dinosaur.

Sereno and his Indian colleagues named the new dino Rajasaurus narmadensis, which means "regal dinosaur from the Narmada,'' the river bed in western India where the remains were found.

Rajasaurus roamed the earth some 66 million years ago, before the Himalayas had formed.

It was a brute. It walked on two feet, with stocky limbs that appear stronger than those of a T. rex, Sereno said. It was 35 feet long, 9 feet high at its hip and weighed 4 tons--making it slightly smaller than T. rex.

It overlapped the tail end of T.rex's time period, but T. rex apparently didn't roam the same area of the earth, making Rajasaurus the king of his turf.

"Its the biggest, heaviest predator from India,'' Sereno said. "It gives the impression of a sabotage attacker.''

Rajasaurus likely feasted on long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs, said Jeff Wilson, a former U. of C. student who is now a visiting curator at the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan.

The main difference between Rajasaurus and its closest relative, Majungatholus, is the shape of what appears to be a horn on top of its head, which may have been used for butting rivals.

Rajasaurus also appeared to have larger jaw muscles. And it has flattened claws good for attacking at close range, as opposed to running down prey.

"I've never seen anything like it,'' Sereno said.

Although most of Sereno's paleontological finds have been in Africa, he was doing fieldwork in India in the spring of 2001 when he learned of bones found during a 1983 dig. He asked to see them, and he was taken to an office of the Geological Survey of India in Jaipur.

Sifting through hundreds of bones found in a river bed, the researchers realized some were from a meat-eater, or theropod.

They found part of a brain case, then parts of both hips and sacrum. They also found vertebrae and a leg bone. Afer consulting a detailed map of where the bones were unearthed, they concluded they had bones from an individual dinosaur.

"There was a 'Eureka!' moment,'' Sereno said. "We realized in this seemingly random pattern of bones there was a skeleton.''

They found only 30 percent of the body, but have 70 percent of the skull, which is 2 feet long and weighs several hundred pounds. The skull is usually the most important element in identifying a species.

Indian officials allowed Sereno to bring bones to the United States for further study. It was the first time in decades India has allowed bones to leave the country.

U. of C. researchers spent several months cleaning the bones, and research technician Tyler Keillor made a cast of what the entire skull would have looked like.

This week, Sereno returned the bones to India and donated two detailed casts of the skull. "This is the first dinosaur face Indians will see,'' he said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission