Nixie’s Girl Scout Gold Award

During the Cretaceous period, a large portion of Texas was submerged under the ocean. You’ll hear about the amazing sharks, fish, and reptiles once found in the oceans of Texas, but not a lot of people know what dinosaurs were roaming the land along those oceans.

The Protohadros byrdi was a Cretaceous era dinosaur first discovered in Flower Mound, Denton County, Texas, in 1994. It was discovered by Gary Byrd, a part-time paleontologist. He took his discovery to Southern Methodist University, where it was studied by paleontologist Dr. Yuong-Nam Lee and biologist Dr. Jason Head.

Dr. Head had the honor of naming the species Protohadros byrdi, “protohadros” meaning “first hadrosaur,” and “byrdi” for Gary Byrd. 

Despite the name, it is now believed that the Protohadros was not the first hadrosaur.

At the time of naming, it was believed to be the earliest hadrosaur, but further research has shown it was a few steps before hadrosaurs had even evolved!

The fossils we have found of Protohadros byrdi do not make a complete skeleton, but there is a lot we can tell about them by looking at what we have.

By looking at the size of the skull, we can estimate that Protohadros was around 22 feet long, which is the size of a city bus!

At the highest point on the curve of their back, they were almost 10 feet tall! 

We can also figure out what Protohadros byrdi ate by looking at their fossils. Their jaw structure indicates that they ate plants, making them an herbivore! This is backed up by their body shape, which is similar to other herbivores at the time.

Some believe that their downward turned nose indicates that Protohadros ate low growing plants, like bushes and ferns, but their strong back legs make others believe that they would stand up tall to reach the leaves on trees!

Since its discovery in 1994, more Protohadros byrdi bones, and even tracks, have been found in Tarrant County, Dallas County, and additional locations in Denton County.

One of these instances was in 2003, when paleontologist Art Sahlstein was on a walk with his daughter, Olivia, where she asked him about something she found on the ground. What she found was a fossilized Protohadros vertebrae. This find led to more amazing discoveries in what is now known as the Arlington Archosaur Site. 

In 2015, a heavy rain washed away sediment in Grapevine Lake, Denton County, which unveiled dinosaur footprints from 95 million years ago! Some of these tracks were from Protohadros byrdi, but some of them were from a carnivorous dinosaur called Acrocanthosaurus! Looking at the tracks, we can make the assumption that this carnivore was following the Protohadros for a yummy snack!

I gratefully acknowledge this project was funded by the Fred Ransdell Education Outreach Fund.