http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-992314.mp3
Albany, NY – In today's Academic Minute, Dr. Barry Albright of the University of North Florida introduces and describes a new species of dinosaur recently discovered in southern Utah.
Barry Albright is a Laboratory Lecturer in Physics at the University of North Florida. Prior to assuming his current post at UNF, Dr. Albright was Curator of Geology and Paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. It was over those years that he began research in southern Utah, where he returns each summer to continue his field work and studies on large marine reptiles, dinosaurs and other aspects of paleontology and geology. His research has also taken him to Antarctica, Patagonia and Mongolia. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside.
Dr. Barry Albright - Discovering Nothronychus Graffami
In 2000, I was part of a team from the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff that was conducting field work in southern Utah when one of our team found some unusual dinosaur bones. After about 6 months of study, it was determined that we had discovered a very rare type of dinosaur that belonged to a group previously known only from eastern Asia - a group called the therizinosaurs ("sickle-clawed reptiles"). We named it Nothronychus graffami for Merle Graffam, the discoverer.
Therizinosaurs were bizarre creatures - they had very odd bodies with a small head, a keratinous, turtle-like beak, tiny leaf-shaped teeth indicating that they ate plants, a long neck, an enormous, barrel-shaped gut, stumpy legs, and a short tail. But they had long arms with enlarged sickle-shaped hand claws that reached nine inches in length. Particularly bizarre, however, is that Therizinosaurs belong to the group of dinosaurs known as theropods - the predatory, carnivorous - yet their odd anatomy strongly suggests that they were plant-eaters, not predators. Not unlike the Panda bears today -mammalian Carnivors that eat bamboo! The large sickle-shaped claws at the end of the hands of Nothronychus were probably used, therefore, to pull-down branches with foliage or to rake through plant material, rather than to help capture, hold, and subdue prey.
Also unusual is that the specimen was excavated from sediments deposited in a marine environment, indicating that the bloated carcass must have floated offshore, where it then sank in a nearly complete state. Certain age-diagnostic species of mollusks found in direct association with the skeleton indicate that N. graffami lived in southern Utah about 92.5 million years ago.