While the huge boy dinosaurs like the Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex dominated North America and nonetheless get most of the consideration from at the moment’s films, they were not the solely dinosaurs on Earth. Some of their very distant kin truly referred to as Europe house. These animals were a lot smaller than their American cousins, however are getting some renewed consideration. A brand new paper just lately revealed in the journal Fossil Record delves deeper into the lives of those island-dwelling dinos.
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Between 100 and 66 million years in the past (also referred to as the Late Cretaceous), Europe seemed very totally different than it does at the moment. The current day continent was truly an archipelago consisting of huge and small islands in a shallow tropical sea. Partially due to their isolation on these islands, the dinosaur teams that lived right here were totally different from these on the mainland. They included small and medium theropods, the feisty and armored ankylosaurs, sauropods with their signature lengthy necks, duck billed hadrosaurs, and rhabdodontids.
According to the research, the Rhabdodontidae household was a critical group in the Late Cretaceous European Archipelago. It consists of usually small to medium-sized—a minimum of by dinosaur requirements—herbivores that were about 6.5 to nearly 20 ft lengthy.
“They were probably habitually bipedal herbivores, characterized by a rather stocky build, with strong hind limbs, short forelimbs, a long tail, and a comparatively large, triangular skull that tapers anteriorly and ends in a narrow snout,” research co-author and University of Tübingen vertebrate paleontologist Felix Augustin defined in a press release. “They had a relatively robust skull with strong jaws, large teeth and a pointy beak that was covered in keratin, demonstrating that these dinosaurs were well-adapted to eating tough plants.”
There can also be some proof that they were quite social animals, as the fossilized stays of a number of people of various ages have been discovered grouped collectively. Fossils of rhabdodontids, or “rod tooth” dinosaurs, have additionally solely been discovered in Europe in rocks going again 86 to 66 million years in the past, suggesting they were endemic to the Late Cretaceous European Archipelago.
Scientists have discovered fossils from 9 totally different species from France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, and Romania.
“The first rhabdodontid species was scientifically named more than 150 years ago and the last one as recently as November 2022, so, although the group looks back to a long research history, we still have much to learn about it,” Augustin mentioned. “Generally, our portraying of the world of dinosaurs is heavily biased towards the well-known North-American and Asian dinosaur faunas.”
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The rhabdodontids in Western Europe died out 69 million years in the past, presumably due to environmental shifts that affected the vegetation they ate. However, these in Eastern Europe survived for tens of millions extra years and were amongst the final non-avian dinosaurs nonetheless current earlier than the finish of the Cretaceous Period.
Dinosaur fossils courting to the Late Cretaceous are extra uncommon in components of Europe than in North America or Asia, and scientists are nonetheless on the hunt for an entire rhabdodontid skeleton. Even although they were considerable throughout the Cretaceous of Europe, paleontologists are nonetheless puzzled by extra specifics of their physique proportions, posture, locomotion, and feeding conduct.
“In the past decades, a wealth of new, and often well-preserved, rhabdodontid fossils has been discovered throughout Europe, the majority of which still remains to be studied,” Augustin mentioned. “A joint research project is currently underway to study the available fossil material in order to gain new insights into the evolution and lifestyle of these fascinating yet still poorly known dinosaurs.”