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Helena Independent Record More than 112 million years after its death, a new dinosaur species' head has been lifted from the oblivion of a rock formation near Harlowton. 
Tatankacephalus cooneyorum, a new species of ankylosaur, would have been a four-legged herbivore measuring 15 to 20 feet long, standing about 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weighing more than two tons."The best way to think of it is like a horned toad," said Kris Parsons, who along with her husband, Bill, discovered the animal in 1996. Other ankylosaurs had clublike tails, but the Parsons couldn't find any fossil evidence to say if that was true of this species. Tatankacephalus did have a protective, armorlike plating and two sets of spikes on each side of its head. It was discovered in the Early Cretaceous Cloverly geologic formation. "Ankylosaurs are very rare," said Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. "It's a cool discovery." Tatankacephalus would have lived at the same time as the claw-wielding velociraptor, made famous as a villain in the book and movie "Jurassic Park." Frenetic hunters Describing themselves as "the speed daters of dinosaur hunters," Kris said she and Bill spend much of their field seasons hopping from place to place in search of a new discovery. But when Bill found something unusual protruding from the ground on a ranch near Harlowton, the speedsters slowed down. "If it's something that doesn't look familiar, we spend much more time at it," Kris said. And speed had nothing to do with the ensuing 13 years that the Buffalo, N.Y., couple spent collecting the fossil remains, researching and writing about their unique find. "Not having Ph.D.s, to some degree we were being held to a standard that you better not get anything wrong," said Bill, a teacher and scientific illustrator. The couple also works as research assistants at the Buffalo Museum of Science. "I think our research was solid." Horner agreed. "It was a good find," he said. "We worked in that same area in the early '80s, and we found some pretty cool stuff, too." Horner added that the Cloverly formation, because it is only visible in North America in parts of Montana, Wyoming and Oklahoma, deserves more attention. Years to publish It took three summers to unearth the fragmented dinosaur skull, 90 percent of which was recovered. But when the couple tried to fit the skull in with other known species, there were too many differences. Kris remembers saying to Bill, "This isn't right, it's got to be something new." When they showed the skull to other paleontologists, they immediately determined it was a Sauropelta, another species in a separate Ankylosauridae subfamily. "But there were eight or nine important characteristics on this skull that don't look anything like Sauropelta," Bill said. "When we took our research and flipped it around, then we realized it's a much better argument to say it isn't a Sauropelta." Given that they have ties to Horner and the Museum of the Rockies, the Parsons knew they had to make sure their skull wasn't a juvenile skull of an already identified species. But once they determined that the dinosaur's brain case had been fused as it should in adulthood, they were confident in declaring it a new species. The skull will be moved to the Museum of the Rockies next summer for display. This winter, the museum is redesigning its dinosaur wing.
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