{"id":25261,"date":"2025-06-29T19:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T19:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/25261\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T19:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T19:38:12","slug":"scientists-discover-goblin-prince-that-roamed-with-dinosaurs-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/25261\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover ‘Goblin Prince’ That Roamed With Dinosaurs : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

A newly discovered monstersaur roamed beneath the feet of giant dinosaurs<\/a>. Paleontologists have described the new species as a giant Gila monster-like reptile, and bestowed on it a name fit for fantasy royalty.<\/p>\n

The new species has been named Bolg amondol, which basically translates to “mound-headed goblin prince” in J.R.R. Tolkien<\/a>‘s Elvish language.<\/p>\n

“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,” says<\/a> Hank Woolley, paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Dinosaur<\/a> Institute.<\/p>\n

Although Bolg’s bones have been rattling around in museum drawers since 2006, the creature was only recently examined and described. The remains are a very fragmentary skeleton, but this was enough information for Woolley and team to identify it as a new species and place it in its evolutionary lineage.<\/p>\n

\"PaleontologistsA size comparison of Bolg amondol and a modern Gila monster. Highlighted bones in Bolg indicate the fragments it was described from. (Natural History Museum of Utah)<\/p>\n

Bolg is an early representative of Monstersauria<\/a>, a clade of lizards that includes the Gila monster<\/a> that still roams the region today. But where its modern counterparts can grow up to about 50 centimeters (20 inches) long, Bolg is estimated to have been much bigger.<\/p>\n

Related: Ozempic Literally Came From a Monster \u2013 And It’s Not Alone<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“Three feet tip to tail, maybe even bigger than that, depending on the length of the tail and torso,” says<\/a> Woolley. “So by modern lizard standards, a very large animal, similar in size to a Savannah monitor lizard; something that you wouldn’t want to mess around with.”<\/p>\n

Bolg’s remains were discovered in Utah in the United States, dating back about 76 million years, during the tail end of the dinosaurs’ reign<\/a>. Intriguingly, however, its closest known relative was from Asia’s Gobi Desert on the other side of the world, indicating that dinosaurs<\/a> weren’t the only creatures that managed to migrate across distant continents<\/a> that were once connected.<\/p>\n

The finding helps plug up some holes in the history of Monstersauria, but also fills out the roster of non-dinosaur reptiles that shared the planet with their famous cousins.<\/p>\n

The research was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A newly discovered monstersaur roamed beneath the feet of giant dinosaurs. Paleontologists have described the new species as…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[352,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-25261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-msft-content","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114768347470640069","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}