Ankylosaurs Had Composite Armor

An anonymous reader writes "Ankylosaurs were the most heavily armored dinosaurs. Researchers thought their protective plates were a lot like modern crocodiles. But a new study by a University of Bonn grad student Torsten Scheyer found that fibers in the plates were woven for strength and lightness much like Kevlar or fiberglass. Good thing, as ankylosaurs had to contend with T. rex."

Comments

Re:how do they know what it was made of?

[Mattcelt]

Imagine a fish who dies and is fossilized. The scales show up as patterns in the fossil, right? In fact, depending on how it's preserved, sometimes you can cut through them and see a fairly accurate cross-section of the scales.

Now imagine a woven rush basket that somehow becomes fossilized (not likely, but just go with it). Now looking at the fossil, you're going to see the rises and falls of the individual reeds as they transverse all the perpendicular reeds in the design, and you'll be able to see the remnants of the grain running across and down the design as well. That's the sort of thing the student was studying - the anklyosaurus had a similar structure, only on a much smaller scale.

Fossilization doesn't turn something into a piece of amorphous rock - it preserves the topography (at least) of what was fossilized. So it's possible to examine not only the major features (skeletal structure, etc.) but also minor ones which were preserved. Some fossils, if preserved before flesh decay occurred (frozen instantly, caught in a tar pit, etc.) can even have the features of skin imprinted on the rock. That's how we know archeopteryx had feathers, for instance.

Hope that helps!