New armored dinosaur had ears like a turtle

Australia has a new dinosaur, a bulky, armor-encrusted beast named “Kunbarrasaurus ieversi,” Australian Geographic reports. The remarkably well-preserved fossil was actually unearthed in 1989, but in the past researchers classified it as a different species along with several other specimens. A new analysis, published yesterday in PeerJ, claims that the fossil belongs in its own genus and species. When researchers examined the inside of the beast’s skull using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), they saw a complicated airway and a bizarre inner ear structure with huge open spaces. The inner ear was so strange it actually reminded the researchers more of a turtle’s skull than a dinosaur’s.

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