Students confirm 1920s dinosaur find

EDMONTON, Alberta, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Three University of Alberta paleontology graduate students have confirmed an 85-year-old dinosaur find, discrediting a 1970s revision of the discovery.

Victoria Arbour, Mike Burns and Robin Sissons focused on the fossilized remains of a 76-million-year old armadillo-like, armored dinosaur discovered in 1924 in southern Alberta by the late Canadian paleontologist William Parks.

After traveling to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and conducting a detailed examination of the skeleton, the students discovered the specimen had been misidentified as the anklyosaur species Euoplocephalus during a middle 1970s re-classification, supposedly correcting the original 1924 research by Parks.

But after re-examining the bones found by Parks and comparing them to more recent ankylosaur finds from Alberta, the students determined Parks was right -- his dinosaur is an ankylosaur, Dyoplosaurus, meaning "double armored dinosaur.

The student's research is reported in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.