BOZEMAN — A Montana State University professor has discovered a new dinosaur species that may fill in an evolutionary gap between other duckbilled dinosaurs.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that in a paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, MSU adjunct professor Elizabeth Freedman Fowler and her mentor, MSU paleontologist Jack Horner write about a new species uncovered near Rudyard on a 2007 dig.
In the paper, Fowler says the species, named a Probrachylophosaurus bergei, may fill a previously missing link between Acristavus and Brachylophosaurus, which lived about 3.5 million years apart. Acristavus do not have a crest at the top of its skull, while Brachylophosaurus do.
The new Probrachylophosaurus is dated between the two creatures and has a small crest.