Dinosaurs / Cretaceous / Borealopelta
Borealopelta
Cretaceous bor-ee-AL-oh-PEL-tah, “northern shield”
Borealopelta is famous for providing one of the most complete, three-dimensionally preserved dinosaur mummies ever recovered. Discovered in an oil sands mine in Alberta, Canada, this nodosaurid lived during the Early Cretaceous around 112 million years ago. 5 metres in length and weighing around 1,400 kilograms, Borealopelta was covered in articulated bony plates and possessed two large spikes extending from its shoulders. Because it was buried quickly in offshore marine sediments, its soft tissues, keratinous horn sheaths, and epidermal pigments were extraordinarily preserved. Chemical analysis demonstrated that Borealopelta exhibited countershading camouflage with a reddish-brown back, suggesting intense predation pressure from large theropods. In addition, its cololite revealed that its final meal consisted overwhelmingly of selected fern leaves.
Its exceptionally preserved fossil revealed reddish-brown countershading camouflage and preserved stomach contents composed mostly of ferns.
Where and when
Borealopelta lived in the Early Cretaceous, from 113 to 110 million years ago (Albian age). Its remains come from Canada, in the Clearwater Formation.
The numbers
Length 5.5 m. Mass about 1.4 t. Hip height about 1.4 m. That is 3.2 human-lengths, or 0.49 of a double-decker bus. These are estimates from near-complete skeleton; fields marked estimated by the site are length, mass, hip height.