A HEAVILY armoured dinosaur used camouflage to hide from predators despite being built like a tank, say scientists.
Fossilised remains of the creature found in a Canadian mine were so well preserved experts have been able to determine the colour of its scaly skin.
Borealopelta markmitchelli, which lived 110 million years ago in the Cretaceous period, was 18ft (5.5m) long and weighed a hefty 1.3 tonnes (2,800 pounds). Chemical analysis showed that the dinosaur would have had reddish brown knobbly skin and counter-shading – a common form of camouflage seen in animals with dark backs and lighter undersides.
“Strong predation on a massive, heavily armoured dinosaur illustrates just how dangerous the dinosaur predators of the Cretaceous must have been,” said lead researcher Dr Caleb Brown from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta.
The Cretaceous was a time when giant theropods, meat-eating dinosaurs that stood on two legs, roamed the Earth.
Although the king of them all, Tyrannosaurus Rex, lived millions of years after Borealopelta, the armoured dinosaur may have been hunted by some of its formidable ancestors. They include Acrocanthosaurus, a 38ft (11.5m) long monster weighing six tonnes.
A machine operator at the Suncor Millennium oil sand mine in northern Alberta stumbled upon the fossil in 2011. Experts from the Royal Tyrrell Museum took more than five years to remove the surrounding rock and reveal one of the best preserved dinosaur specimens ever uncovered.
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