A new twist on an “old” tale
For immediate release ‐ March 24, 2025
Contact: Jon Pishney, 9192447913. Images available upon request
PBS NC’s SciNC program recently posted a video highlighting exciting research that was revealed last July. “Scientists just found a dinosaur no one knew existed” was produced by PBS NC in partnership with five students from the Hussman School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The story? A new dinosaur, Fona [/Foat’NAH/] herzogae, lived 99 million years ago in what is now Utah. At that time, the area was a large floodplain ecosystem sandwiched between the shores of a massive inland ocean to the east and active volcanoes and mountains to the west. It was a warm, wet, muddy environment with numerous rivers running through it.
Paleontologists from NC State University and the NC Museum of Natural Sciences unearthed the fossil – and other specimens from the same species – in the Mussentuchit Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation, beginning in 2013. The fine preservation of these fossils, along with some distinguishing features, alerted them to the possibility of burrowing.
Fona was a small-bodied, plant-eating dinosaur about the size of a large dog with a simple body plan. It lacks the bells and whistles that characterize its highly ornamented relatives such as horned dinosaurs, armored dinosaurs, and crested dinosaurs. But that doesn’t mean Fona was boring.
Fona shares several anatomical features with animals known for digging or burrowing, such as large bicep muscles, strong muscle attachment points on the hips and legs, fused bones along the pelvis – likely to help with stability while digging – and hindlimbs that are proportionally larger than the forelimbs. But that isn’t the only evidence that this animal spent time underground.
Find out more, and meet the paleontologist who discovered Fona, in the video.
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