How a duckbill escaped a huge predator

Scales on the claw of a modern animal which researches say would heal similar to a dinosaur if injured

Fossilized skin was recently discovered in the Hell Creek region of Montana.  What makes this skin unique—apart from being over 65 million years old—is that it shows how dinosaurs healed.  Remarkably, they also found a matching skull to show the extent of the attack that the Hadrosaur survived.

Looking at the pattern of scales they noticed an area with scales which didn’t match the overall pattern.  Comparing the suspected scar to modern tissue with similar wounds they confirmed that the Hadrosaur was attacked by a large predator.

The find was reported by Cretaceous Research (click here for pictures of the skin and skull damage).  They point out that “Healing skin injuries appear to be rare in the fossil record for good reason – prey rarely escapes once the attacker latches onto it.”  Possibly the most interesting piece of evidence is that T. Rex was known to roam the area in large numbers possibly casting doubt on the recent opinion that T. Rex was a scavenger and not a predator.