Armored dinosaur was able to withstand the impact of a speeding car thanks to a bulletproof vest: study results

A new study shows that the dinosaur's armor was adapted for fighting between representatives of Borealopelta markmitchelli. In addition, it can probably withstand the impact of a high-speed car crash.

This became known as a result of recent research, where scientists examined the fossils of a dinosaur that could grow up to 5,5 meters in length and lived approximately 110-112 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous period. The fossil was so well preserved that scientists were able to determine the strength of the keratin plates and bone spines that covered them, write Live Science.

"This thing can withstand an F150 going at speed," said study co-author Michael Habib, a biomechanical paleontologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The well-preserved fossil did reveal a layer of keratin over the bone, but it was much thicker than expected - almost 16 centimeters in some places.

"The keratin layer over a modern cattle horn is only 1,5 cm thick," explained Habib.

By looking at the structure and size of the keratin shells and comparing them to the keratin armor of modern animals, such as porcupine quills, Habib and his colleagues calculated the force that nodosaurus armor could withstand. The team also created synthetic Nodosaurus armor and tested the synthetic armor against the bite force created by replicas of Acrocanthosaurus jaws.

Calculations showed that nodosaurs could probably withstand more than 125 joules of energy per square meter – similar to the force of a high-speed car crash.

"These animals did not wear plate armor. They wore body armor over plate armor,” Habib said.

The armor is so strong that it can withstand much more force than the predators of the time could inflict.

"This suggests that the armor could also have been used during fights between males competing for females," the scientist said.

On other fossils of armored dinosaurs, only bone spikes remained. That's because keratin -- the dead cells that make up structures like hair and nails -- doesn't fossilize well. So, when studying armored dinosaurs such as nodosaurs and stegosaurs, paleontologists hypothesized that the dinosaurs' primary defense against predators came from the bony armor structures left in the fossil, and that this armor may have been covered with a thin layer of keratin, like a turtle's shell.