It’s official: The UW Geology Museum made a big announcement today , one that’s 12 years in the making — or 230 million years, depending how you look at it. The ankle bone discovered on a Wyoming expedition in 2013 led by UW Geology Museum scientist David Lovelace and his field crew belongs to a completely new dinosaur — and it’s 10 million years older than the one previously thought to be the oldest ever discovered in the northern hemisphere.
“We’ve been waiting to tell you, and today the news drops!” the UW Geology Museum team wrote on its Facebook page today as they shared the news, along with the official paper, ” Rethinking dinosaur origins : oldest known equatorial dinosaur-bearing assemblage (mid-late Carnian Popo Agie FM, Wyoming, USA),” published in January’s Oxford Academic’s Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
New dinosaur ahvaytum bahndooiveche
The new dinosaur, shown here in this artist rendering by Gabriel Ugeto, is named Ahvaytum bahndooiveche.
The new dinosaur species is named Ahvaytum bahndooiveche, which translates to “long ago dinosaur.” It was named in collaboration with seventh grade students and elders from the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, an effort the museum alluded to back in November when curator Carrie Eaton had a new trilobite named after her.