There is no Dana here, only Zuul!
So make sure you get their name right, because paleontologists have actually found a Zuul in America—Northern Montana to be precise. This real Zuul is a new species of ankylosaurine dinosaur, however, and has been dubbed Zuul crurivastator as its discoverers believe it resembles the Gatekeeper of Gozer from Ghostbusters.
When researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) pieced together the fossilized 75-million-year-old bones of the ankylosaurid specimen they acquired last year, they noticed something strange.
The remarkably well-preserved armored dinosaur — which was a new species — bore an uncanny resemblance to an already existing fictional character: Zuul, from the 1984 film "Ghostbusters."
The dinosaur and fictional demon both have a "short, rounded snout and prominent horns behind the eyes," according to a statement from the museum.
The discovery of, and the subsequent paper published in Royal Society Open Science, comes to us via Ars Technica. In the abstract for the paper, the authors, Victoria M. Arbour and David C. Evans, note that the Zuul-faced fossil was found in the Judith River Formation in Montana, a geologic formation that’s rich in fossils from the upper Cretaceous period — which took place between 80 and 75 million years ago.
The newly identified ankylosaurid's full name is Zuul crurivastator, with the species name translating to "destroyer of shins." Which I think is the best Latin name ever. The dinosaur belongs to a group of armored creatures that had massive, weapon-like clubs for tails. These tails were about 10 feet long and covered in spikes (so able to destroy the shins of any predators willing to take them on).
The Ontario researchers describe the creature in a new study published in the journal Royal Society of Open Science.
All in all, it was about 20 feet long, on par with a white rhinoceros.
The armored herbivore's bones came from the Judith River Formation of Montana.
"The preservation of the fossil is truly remarkable. Not only is the skeleton almost completely intact, but large parts of the bony armor in the skin are still in its natural position," Dr. David Evans, Temerty Chair and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, and leader of the project, said in a press release.
Those well-preserved bones helped confirm that this is indeed a new species.
"I’ve been working on ankylosaurs for years, and the spikes running all the way down Zuul’s tail were a fantastic surprise to me – like nothing I’ve ever seen in a North American ankylosaur," said Dr. Victoria Arbour, the lead author of the study. "It was the size and shape of the tail club and tail spikes, combined with the shape of the horns and ornaments on the skull, that confirmed this skeleton was a new species of ankylosaur."
It's been a good week for dinosaur discoveries. On May 9, researchers published a study identifying for the first time a creature that was discovered 20 years ago. It made the cover of National Geographic magazine at that time, but its species didn't get determined until now. That dinosaur, a type of giant oviraptor, resembled an ostrich and was about 25 feet long. It has been officially dubbed Beibeilong sinensis, or "baby dragon from China."
The "baby dragon" fossils are 90 million years old, so the two newly named dinos were not contemporaries and lived in different locations. But if they had ever come into contact, it's safe to say that Zuul's armor and tail could have helped protect it from the giant birdlike predator.
And they even got Dan Aykroyd to introduce it: