A creature the size of a raccoon once roamed Utah and the West, featuring armored plates that made it look fierce.
Think giant relatives of the modern Gila monster.
The lizard’s remains were recently found at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah and it reveals a surprising diversity of large lizards at the pinnacle of the age of dinosaurs.
Named for the goblin prince from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” the new species Bolg amondol also illuminates the sometimes-murky path that life traveled between ancient continents.
The results of the study were published at the Science Daily website recently.
“Three feet tip to tail, maybe even bigger than that, depending on the length of the tail and torso,” said lead author Hank Woolley from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Dinosaur Institute. “So, by modern lizard standards they’re a very large animal, similar in size to a Savannah monitor lizard; something that you wouldn’t want to mess around with.”
It has amazed scientists engaged in this work.
“Discovering a new species of lizard that is an ancestor of modern Gila monsters is pretty cool in and of itself, but what’s particularly exciting is what it tells us about the unique 76-million-year-old ecosystem it lived in,” said co-author Randy Irmis, professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah and curator of paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Utah.
“The fact that Bolg coexisted with several other large lizard species indicates that this was a stable and productive ecosystem where these animals were taking advantage of a wide variety of prey and different microhabitats.”
Utah has a rich history of prehistoric creatures
Bolg represents an evolutionary lineage that sprouted within a group of large-bodied lizards called monstersaurs, which still roam the deserts from which Bolg was recovered. Woolley knew that a new species of monstersaur called for an appropriate name from an iconic monster creator, Tolkien.
“We know very little about large-bodied lizards from the Kaiparowits Formation in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, so I knew this was significant right away,” Woolley said.
“Bolg is a great sounding name. It’s a goblin prince from ‘The Hobbit,’ and I think of these lizards as goblin-like, especially looking at their skulls,” said Woolley. He used the fictional Tolkien Elvish language Sindarin to craft the species’ epithet. “Amon” means “mound” and “dol” means “head,” a reference to the mound-like osteoderms found on Bolg’s and other monstersaur’s skulls. “Mound-headed Bolg” would fit right in with the goblins — and it’s revealing quite a bit about monstersaurs.
“Bolg is a great example of the importance of natural history museum collections,” Irmis said. “Although we knew the specimen was significant when it was discovered back in 2005, it took a specialist in lizard evolution like Hank to truly recognize its scientific importance and take on the task of researching and scientifically describing this new species.”
The Natural History Museum of Utah offers a fascinating tour of Utah’s history with dinosaurs.
The evolutionary history of giants who roamed Utah long before people were here is detailed.
Curiosity awaits. That is the mantra of the museum.