Show Dinosaur identified David Brown The W Washington hington Post Could an sized elephant-sized dinosaur with a skull so thin that thata a karate chop would have split it in two teeth that only lasted a month and a brain that yes was the size of a walnut ever be considered one of evolutions evolution's success stories Paul Sereno thinks so The University of Chicago paleontologist on Thursday unveiled a strange creature that is helping rewrite theories about what long- long necked plant-eating plant dinosaurs looked like and how they behaved appears to have spent a lifetime with its head in a hang-dog hang position Using a broad tooth-filled tooth mouth it grazed on ferns and horsetails growing at most a couple of feet off the ground It couldn't even hold its head horizontal getting leaves off trees was out of the question Many other dinosaurs including the more famous and less bizarre Diplodocus probably behaved similarly u using irig their long necks as ground- ground mowing booms not tree-top tree pickers cherry-pickers Sereno believes It took an extreme dinosaur to open our eyes to this like cow-like behavior he said Thursday at the National Geographic Society's headquarters in Washington wh where r a reconstruction of was mounted It is sort of silly to think that something wasn't doing this But we had missed the cows of the Mesozoic Other paleontologists agreed the new dinosaur will further dispel the notion that necked long-necked dinosaurs were the prehistoric equivalent of giraffes holding their heads high overhead Continued on is ident identified fied Continued from A Al AlIt 1 It would be hard to imagine a more compelling argument against that view said Kent Stevens a computer scientist at the University of Oregon who has done extensive research on dinosaur posture Matthew Carrano the curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian Institution d doubts the announcement of a bovine dinosaur willbe will willbe willbe be viewed with much skepticism There have been too many other strange-but- strange true discoveries in recent years What we are seeing is something that we just didn't know about before We are coming to accept the fact that this is going to tobe tobe tobe be a regular thing for us he said I r I a was discovered in the Sahara in the northwest African country of Niger in 1997 by Sereno who is also an explorer in residence at atthe atthe atthe the National Geographic Society It was excavated over three years by a large team that included two paleontologists from the University of Niamey in Niger who attended Thursdays Thursday's unveiling of ofa a size life-size model Parts of five skeletons were found including one that was 80 percent complete The dinosaur has several physical features that are extreme versions of adaptations seen in other grazing animals For example many grazers have broad faces and prominent teeth at the front of the jaw so that they can take in large amounts of food with each bite This is necessary because grass and s1 er 1 r s 11 h j J T r vf r F 4 University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno unveils Washington f Post Ph photo by Bill BUI OLeary O'Leary Geographic on n Society's headquarters in Washington Thursday at the National other ground cover is low in nutritional value mouth is isI t I wider than its skull a bit like a hammerhead sharks shark's and is the only terrestrial animal with that feature Furthermore all of its teeth are incisors lined up to form fonn a single clipping mechanism just under its lips |