Scientists have discovered that an extinct relative of the wildebeest and a duck billed dinosaur had similar noses, Christian Science Monitor reports
Scientists found that the extinct relative of the wildebeest and the duck-billed dinosaur both had hollow crests on their heads that formed a trumpet shaped nasal passage.
Rusingoryx atopocranion, the mammal, lived about 65 thousand years ago, during the late Pleistocene, while Lambeosaurine hadrosaurs, the dinosaur, lived closer to 65 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous.
The bony crest is hollow, forming a trumpet-shaped nasal passage, unlike any seen in any other species.
The scientists said that this bizarre feature shared by the two species could be attributed to convergent evolution.
Convergent evolution occurs when two species belonging to different lineages independently evolve the same, or similar, features for the same function.
The paper was published in the journal Current Biology.
"We have an animal that its skeleton looks a lot like a wildebeest - it's actually very closely related to modern wildebeests - but its face looks a lot more like something you would see if you went way back in time to the Cretaceous and looked at hadrosaur dinosaurs," study lead author Haley O'Brien told The Christian Science Monitor in an interview.
"When I first saw the complete skulls , I was blown away," vertebrate paleontologist David C. Evans, who was not part of the study, writes in an email to the Monitor.
"The resemblance between Rusingoryx and some hollow-crested dinosaurs in the form of their nasal structures is truly striking, and there are clear parallels in how they evolved and grew. Both groups elongated their noses to such a degree that they evolved highly domed skulls to house their nasal passages on top of their heads, above their eyes."
Scientists believe the convergence could have occurred since both animals were herbivores and lived in herds.
The unusual nose could have helped the animals smell, bugle, or even regulate their temperature, Evans says. "The case for vocalization as the primary function of the nasal dome in Rusingoryx is by far the most convincing, as the authors advocate."
The Rusingoryx are very social, says Ms. O'Brien. "They live in herds and they use a lot of vocal signals to communicate. When we looked into the function of what this skull type might be doing in Rusingoryx, we really couldn't prescribe a function outside of that social vocalization."
O'Brien and her colleagues also suggested that Rusingoryx, and perhaps the dinosaurs, used this nasal dome to communicate at frequencies other animals cannot hear.
