Dino identified — no bones about it

Three University of Alberta students have settled a 85-year dispute over a 76-million year old dinosaur skeleton.

The paleontology graduates — Victoria Arbour, Robin Sissons and Mike Burns — were in Toronto at the Royal Ontario Museum studying a skeleton that had been uncovered in southern Alberta in 1924.

The species of the skeleton had been classified twice: First by Canadian paleontologist William Parks in 1924 as Dyoplosaurus, or "doublearmoured dinosaur," and later by researcher Walter Coombs, who reclassified it in the early 1970s as Euoplocephalus.

The students discovered that Parks was right all along in his original identification of the species.

"We are always revising old ideas, especially in paleontology," said Arbour. "It’s not that people are making mistakes, but that old ideas are just not supported any more."

The fundamentals of science essentially revolves around constantly questioning studies and taking a closer look at them, which is exactly what these students did.

Arbour explained that Coombs made the mistake because he assumed that the dinosaur skeleton didn’t have enough unique attributes to be classified as a different species altogether. Instead, he chose to classify the remains into a previously named species, that of Euoplocephalus.

The three students did not intend on proving facts or species classifications wrong when they initially started their research.

In fact, they came upon the skeleton by chance.

Arbour explained that her group wanted to examine the family of anklyosaur dinosaurs. She was interested in the pelvis and clubbed tail, Burns wanted to study the skull and armoured covered body, and Sissons was to examine the feet and limbs of the dinosaur family.

All three students were drawn to this particular skeleton because it shared all three of their areas of interest.

But when they completed their research and began to share notes, they started to realize the mistake that had been made.

Proof that Park had correctly named the fossil initially as Dyoplosaurus can be credited to the discovery of more fossils in the past few decades. Arbour said that comparing old fossils with new findings helped with the correct classification.

"We found that there were enough differences in the toes, pelvis and armour of Dyoplosaurus to consider it distinct from Euoplocephalus," she said. "So, where for a long time it was thought that there was only one anklyosaur species from Alberta, it turns out there were actually two."

By correcting the scientific community with the proper species name of the skeleton, Arbour and her fellow students also reminded the community of an important lesson — scientific studies are never to old to be questioned.

"It’s always worth going back to take a look at old papers to see if they hold up to new specimens and new technology," Arbour said.

The students’ findings will be published in the next edition of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, but this won’t be Arbour’s first appearance in a professional science publication. She’s been in a few papers earlier this year, mostly for her work on the tail clubs of the anklyosaurs.

Arbour is currently working on her PhD, with focus on understanding family relationships within the anklyosaur species. She received her master’s degree from the U of A in 2008, and her bachelor’s degree in Earth Sciences and Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, her hometown, in 2006.

She is positive that she wants to stay in her field after she graduates, but even after her great scientific find, she isn’t exactly certain on what to do specifically.

"Hopefully get a job," Arbour laughed. "I would love to continue working in a university or museum as a paleontologist."

ysumamo@canwest.com