ANALYZING SAUROPOD DINOSAUR SKIN IMPRESSIONS TO CREATE A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE AND PHOTOGRAPHIC GUIDE FOR FURTHER DINOSAUR INTEGUMENT RESEARCH

Dinosaur skin impressions have been researched for decades. The Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation has produced several examples of dinosaur skin impressions. Still, dinosaur skin has not been comprehensively described in sauropods. Additionally, no single analog exists for dinosaurian scale patterns in modern reptiles. Revealing how various scale patterns arise and how they evolved into the patterns seen in modern reptiles might be achieved through a more extensive study of fossil skin impressions.

Over the years, several dinosaur skin impressions have been gathered from the Two Sisters Three Quarry, from the Morrison Formation of Northern Wyoming. The samples were unconfirmed as skin impressions until the summer of 2023 when two additional samples were found in situ with sauropod fossils. This study describes the Two Sisters specimens using an amalgamation of terms pulled from dinosaur skin literature which have been combined and refined into a condensed set of definitions. Twenty-six skin impression specimens found in the Two Sisters Quarry were photographed and each image was annotated with descriptions and highlights of the scale morphologies to provide an additional layer of clarity. Lastly, a table was created in Excel to catalog and compare specimen features allowing future researchers to track patterns of skin morphologies within a species and then compare unknown specimens to known samples and draw conclusions about the animal from which the impression came. This research will also provide future researchers with a universal language that can be expanded upon and used to describe skin impression specimens of various species, not only sauropods.