It’s official: The UW Geology Museum made a big announcement today, one that’s 12 years in the making — or 230 million years, depending how you look at it. The ankle bone discovered on a Wyoming expedition in 2013 led by UW Geology Museum scientist David Lovelace and his field crew belongs to a completely new dinosaur — and it’s 10 million years older than the one previously thought to be the oldest ever discovered in the northern hemisphere.
“We’ve been waiting to tell you, and today the news drops!” the UW Geology Museum team wrote on its Facebook page today as they shared the news, along with the official paper, “Rethinking dinosaur origins: oldest known equatorial dinosaur-bearing assemblage (mid-late Carnian Popo Agie FM, Wyoming, USA),” published in January’s Oxford Academic’s Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
The new dinosaur, shown here in this artist rendering by Gabriel Ugeto, is named Ahvaytum bahndooiveche.
The new dinosaur species is named Ahvaytum bahndooiveche, which translates to “long ago dinosaur.” It was named in collaboration with seventh grade students and elders from the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, an effort the museum alluded to back in November when curator Carrie Eaton had a new trilobite named after her.
“Scientific names in general show a pretty significant bias toward scientists and especially white males,” Eaton noted at the time, adding that Lovelace and his team had just named a new reptile in cooperation with the Northern Arapaho, making it one of the first fossil species ever to be named in a native language.
The UW Geology Museum field crew is shown here working at “Garret’s Surprise” in Wyoming, the location where the new dinosaur was discovered.
What’s more, Lovelace grew up in Wyoming, making the area in which the discovery was made all the more thrilling and meaningful.
“Wyoming has a special place in my heart, and being able to work with Tribal partners, grow as a scientist, and share a critical story on the early evolution and dispersal of dinosaurs is beyond comparison,” Lovelace says.
Lovelace adds that the red rocks in which his team works are notorious for not having fossils. “So it’s a bonus to be able to show how important this unit of rock is, and that it has an impact on researchers globally,” he says.
Back home in Wisconsin, according to today’s social media post, the 230 million-year-old record-breaking remains now represent the “most precious ankle bone in the museum’s collection.”
The UW Geology Museum at 1215 West Dayton St. is free and open to the public 300 days a year, and for a small fee offers guided tours and self-guided group visits. Its collection contains over 120,000 geological and paleontological specimens used in education and research, plus hundreds of rocks, minerals and fossils on display.
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