Analysis of organic material from the 110m-year-old nodosaur suggests it had red and white camouflage, indicating its spikes alone did not put off predators

It was built like a tank, covered in armour, and weighed about the same as a caravan – but this beefy dinosaur was still at risk of being gobbled up by predators, scientists have discovered.

Thought to have lived about 110m years ago, the giant herbivore is believed to be a type of heavily armoured dinosaur known as a nodosaur and would have reached up to 5.5 metres in length.



Currently on show at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada, its fossilised remains have stunned researchers, who have hailed it as the best-preserved armoured dinosaur in the world.



Not only are its bones preserved, but the fossil also boasts the creature’s armour, stomach contents and even a thin film of organic material, thought to be remains of pigments from the skin and horns.



Play Video 0:34 18ft nodosaur unveiled at Alberta museum – video

“It had this dense armour on its back – it would have looked almost like a pineapple, with dense angular horns,” said Jakob Vinther, a molecular palaeobiologist and co-author of the latest study from the University of Bristol, adding that it is likely the creature’s tail was covered in spikes. “On its neck and over its shoulders it had extremely long horns; even the face was covered in armour,” he said.



Now researchers say analysis of the thin film of organic material has yielded an intriguing discovery: the dinosaur was ginger on top.

“We could see that the organic compounds [in the film] were something that contained carbon, nitrogen and sulphur – that is something that we know is typical for [the pigment] red melanin,” said Vinther.

A one-in-a-billion dinosaur find Read more

It’s far from the first time that a dinosaur has been found to have a reddish hue, but the team says the fact that the belly of beast showed no sign of the film means that it was most likely pale underneath and only russet-coloured on the upper side.



That, says Vinther, suggests the dinosaur’s chainmail-like armour and spikes were not enough to deter hungry predators: the red and white pattern, he says, suggests it also boasted a camouflage effect known as counter-shading that can evolve quickly and is seen in many animals alive today, including gazelle.

“[Rhinos] also have horns and they can use those to dodge predation and things like that, but rhinos don’t have counter-shading and the reason is nobody messes with them,” said Vinther. “They have lost camouflage - they don’t need it.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The discovery that this nodosaur was camouflaged also had implications for the idea that predators such as T rex were simply scavengers. Photograph: Courtesy of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Drumheller, Canada

The new discovery, published in the journal Current Biology, also undermines the idea that predators such as the Tyrannosaurus rex were simply scavengers, said Vinther. “That [this nodosaur] is camouflaged means that it still was experiencing predation regularly – these animals got gobbled up and eaten by the large theropod dinosaurs,” he said. “Things were scary back then.”

Unearthed in 2011 at the Suncor Millennium Mine in Canada, the nodosaur’s discovery was a surprise since the site had previously only yielded fossils of ancient marine reptiles. Researchers believe that suggests the nodosaur might have met with a watery end, perhaps being caught in a stream, washed away and drowned.

In the years that followed its discovery, preparator Mark Mitchell painstakingly removed the extremely hard rock surrounding the dinosaur’s remains – a labour reflected in the name of the creature: Borealopelta markmitchelli.

“The bones themselves and the soft tissues are super soft, so it is almost like you could imagine trying to expose a wet chocolate hobnob from a lump of concrete,” said Vinther.

But the work paid off.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest “It is one of the most gorgeous, best preserved skeletons I’ve ever seen,” said the University of Edinburgh’s Steven Brusatte. Photograph: Courtesy of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Drumheller, Canada.

“There is always so much hyperbole when a new dinosaur is discovered, but this one deserves all of the superlatives. It is one of the most gorgeous, best preserved skeletons I’ve ever seen,” said Stephen Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study.

Brusatte said the research into the creature’s colouring is one of the first attempts to determine the colour of tissues other than feathers – adding that the results were surprising.

“We usually think of these [nodosaurs] as big, brutish, tank-like monsters with a dreary covering of armour,” he said. “To discover that this new species was ginger-coloured is a shocker.”

While the armour of such creatures was long thought to be for defence, the finding that beast likely had a counter-shaded body suggests spiky, inch-thick armour plates were not protection enough against predators like the T rex, Brusatte added.

“Unless you were lucky enough to be that one species on the top of the food chain, you probably lived in fear,” he said.

