#UALVP55900

[lycanthrop-ee]

On this episode of Scientists Being The Best: 

David Armsby is the paleoartist behind the short film Old Buck (the first of his WIP Dinosauria series, available here), which focuses on a herd of Styracosaurus albertensis. 

(Still directly from short film)

In David’s Making Of video, he explains that this choice of dinosaur was inspired by a particular fossil specimen of the same species, notable in that the rack of horns at the top of her frill was asymmetrical. This specimen, named UALVP55900 or, alternatively, Hannah, brought up a lot of questions about the classification of previous fossils - multiple other specimens have been named as different species due to different numbers or arrangements of horns, but this discovery raised the possibility that they could have all been natural variations of the same species.

The film references the theory that one of the previous specimens put into question was an extreme morph of the albertensis genus. The horns of the main character are directly based off of this specimen, and careful watchers will be able to spot the member of the herd with Hannah’s horn morph as well. 

(Diagram of Hannah)

Old Buck was extremely successful in paleo-scientific circles due to its accuracy - and the fact that David acknowledges and readily points out any inaccuracies included for storytelling purposes. Because of this, it made its way all the way back to the scientists at the University of Alberta, where Hannah is being studied. And...

(Photo from David’s post on the subject)  ...They showed the short film to the fossil. Naturally.