HARROW: A missing link in evolution was found when a discovery of a new species of dinosaur fossil was made at north central Montana.
A dinosaur fossil around 79 million years old was unearthed by a team from Montana State University. The fossil turned out to be that of a duck-billed dinosaur that was most likely the ancestor of the Maiasaura, the state’s dinosaur.
“When everything was cleaned, it revealed this little crest [on its head] like nothing we’d ever seen,” said Elizabeth Freedman Fowler, who was also a curator of paleontology at the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum in Malta.
The fossil was named Probrachylophosaurus bergei which roughly means early short-crested lizard. Its characteristics fit in well between the Acristavus gagslarsoni, a dinosaur that thrived about 80 million years ago with no crest on its head, and the Brachylophosaurus canadensis from at least 77 million years ago that had a big, flat crest on its nose.
It also became known as the Super Duck because of its size, being one of the larger members of the duck-billed dinosaur family.
