Armour-Plated Dinosaur's Last Meal Found Preserved, 110 Million Years Later

The last meal of a huge armor-plated dinosaur has been found 110 million years later, still in its fossilized belly, in what is now northern Alberta.

First described in 2017, this thorny, 1,300-kilogram nodosaur (some 2,800 pounds) unearthed in 2011, is said to contain the best-preserved dinosaur stomach found to date.

After five years of careful work, exposing the dinosaur within the marine rock, the soccer-ball sized mass in tummy has now bestowed us with the first definitive glimpse into what large, plant-eating dinosaurs once munched on all those millennia ago.

"When people see this stunning fossil and are told that we know what its last meal was because its stomach was so well preserved inside the skeleton, it will almost bring the beast back to life for them, providing a glimpse of how the animal actually carried out its daily activities, where it lived, and what its preferred food was," says geologist Jim Basinger from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

That's something we've never really known about any herbivorous dinosaur. While this dinosaur represents just one species of one ankylosaur family - known as Borealopelta markmitchelli and without the archetypal 'club' tail of its closest relatives - it could help us better understand dinosaur digestion and physiology, especially since ankylosaurs are found on every continent, including Antarctica.

Some might even remember these dinosaurs from their brief cameo in the animated Land Before Time, in which the lumbering character Kosh does little more than munch on fruit and contentedly belch. In real life, however, some families of ankylosaurs might be pickier and prefer their vegetables. Read the free article.