Dinosaur skull shape varied drastically during growth

University of Michigan paleontologists have asserted that long-necked sauropod Dinosaur, Diplodocus, went through drastic changes in skull shape during normal growth.

To reach the end, paleontologists John Whitlock and Jeffrey Wilson, along with Matthew Lamanna from the Carnegie Museum examined the skull of a juvenile sauropod dinosaur, rediscovered in the collections of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

The discovering has been explained in the March issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

‘Adult sauropod skulls are exceptional, but juvenile skulls are even rarer,’ said Whitlock, a doctoral candidate in the U-M Museum of Paleontology. ‘What we do know about the skulls of sauropods like Diplodocus has been based completely on adults so far.’