Ruopodosaurus hand and footprints from Tumbler Ridge in Canada – Royal BC Museum via SWNS

With nothing more than the beast’s footprints, paleontologists in Canada have identified a new tail club-swinging armored dinosaur.

The 100-million-year-old fossilized prints were found at two different locations in the Canadian Rockies mountain range.

Researchers explained that there are two main groups of ankylosaurs. Nodosaurid ankylosaurs have a flexible tail and four toes, while ankylosaurid ankylosaurs have a sledgehammer-like tail club, and only three toes on their feet.

Unlike the well-known ankylosaur footprints of Tetrapodosaurus borealis found across North America, which have four toes, the new tracks have only three, making them the first known examples of ankylosaurid ankylosaur footprints anywhere in the world.

The research team named the new species Ruopodosaurus clava, meaning “the tumbled-down lizard with a club/mace” – referencing both the mountainous location in which the tracks were found and the distinctive tail clubs of these dinosaurs.

The research team reported their findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

“While we don’t know exactly what the dinosaur that made Ruopodosaurus footprints looked like, we know that it would have been about 5-6 meters long, spiky and armored, and with a stiff tail or a full tail club,” Dr. Victoria Arbour, the curator of paleontology at the Royal BC Museum.

“Ankylosaurs are my favorite group of dinosaurs to work on, so being able to identify new examples of these dinosaurs in British Columbia is really exciting for me.”

Dr. Charles Helm, scientific advisor at the Tumbler Ridge Museum, had noted the presence of several of the three-toed ankylosaur trackways around Tumbler Ridge for several years, and invited Dr. Arbour to work together to identify and interpret them during a visit in 2023.

The tracks date back to the middle of the Cretaceous period, about 100 to 94 million years ago, according to the researchers.

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No bones from ankylosaurids have been found in North America from about 100 to 84 million years ago, leading to some speculation that ankylosaurids had disappeared from North America during that period.

But the footprints show that they were alive and well in North America during the gap in the skeletal fossil record.

The discovery also shows that the two main types of ankylosaurs—nodosaurids and ankylosaurids, including this new three-toed species—co-existed in the same region during that time.

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“It is really exciting to now know through this research that there are two types of ankylosaurs that called this region home, and that Ruopodosaurus has only been identified in this part of Canada,” said Dr. Helm.

“This study also highlights how important the Peace Region of north-eastern BC is for understanding the evolution of dinosaurs in North America—there’s still lots more to be discovered,” added Dr. Arbour.

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