Imagine a dinosaur burrowing like a wombat! In 2024, scientists unveiled Fona herzogae, a fascinating new species from Utah that lived 99 million years ago. This discovery is rewriting what we know about dinosaur survival tactics during the mid-Cretaceous.
Paleontologists from North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences discovered Fona in Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation. While it shared burrowing behaviors with modern animals like rabbits, this bipedal ornithopod was actually much larger at roughly the size of a large dog, reaching about 7 feet in length.
The evidence for its “underground” lifestyle is written in its bones. Fona possessed:
- Robust forelimbs with powerful bicep attachments for digging.
- Fused pelvic bones to provide a stable “anchor” while moving dirt.
- Large, strong hind limbs for bracing against tunnel walls.
These adaptations likely helped Fona escape the extreme heat and massive predators of of its time in North America. This find is a major milestone in ornithopod evolution, as Fona is now one of the oldest known members of the Thescelosaurinae (a lineage that eventually led to some of the most famous herbivores in history!).
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