A pair of 214 million-yr-previous skulls are assumed to belong to the 1st unique dinosaur species identified in what is now Greenland, scientists say.
Specified the name Issi saaneq (or “chilly bone” in Greenlandic Inuit), the dino is considered to have been a extensive-necked, plant-eating sauropodomorph. It really is been reconstructed from two skulls found back again in 1994, which have been originally assumed to belong to Plateosaurus.
Following a closer investigation of the skulls – a single a juvenile, the other a late-stage juvenile or sub-grownup – and a comparison with other far more new fossil results, researchers have now made a decision that this is a species all of its have, an further branch to increase to the Late Triassic dinosaur family tree.
Living reconstruction of Issi saaneq. (Victor Beccari)
“The anatomy of the two skulls is unique in a lot of respects, for example in the condition and proportions of the bones,” states paleontologist Victor Beccari, from NOVA University Lisbon in Portugal. “These specimens unquestionably belong to a new species.”
Using a sort of X-ray technique recognised as a Micro-Computed Tomography (micro-CT) scan, researchers had been in a position to develop 3D styles of the skulls and decide on out critical discrepancies from the Plateosaurus – including variations in the placement and shape of the jaw.
Even though we will not know for positive how large Issi saaneq could possibly have been, if the species was like other plateosaurids, it is really possible it would have attained lengths of 3-10 meters (up to nearly 33 toes), a very similar size to Plateosaurus, as perfectly as the Macrocollum and the Unaysaurus: two relevant species found in contemporary-working day Brazil, which are almost 15 million yrs more mature.
When Issi saaneq was alive, the supercontinent Pangaea would have been setting up to break aside, forming the Atlantic Ocean in the approach. It truly is this shifting geography that signifies we now have dinosaur fossils unfold out all across the planet.
“At the time, the Earth was experiencing local weather improvements that enabled the very first plant-taking in dinosaurs to reach Europe and further than,” says sedimentologist Lars Clemmensen from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Issi saaneq skulls. (Victor Beccari)
Something else that is of certain interest about this discovery is that the sauropodomorphs have been the predecessors to the sauropods, the most significant animals to ever stroll on the face of the Earth – so this is pretty a important piece of the evolutionary jigsaw.
Though you will find a great deal of evidence for the Plateosaurus residing in what is now Germany, France, and Switzerland, only a few dinosaurs from this species have been dug up and documented in modern-day Greenland.
Now there is certainly evidence of a unique Greenlandic dinosaur species all of its very own. We can add it to the expanding list of new dinosaur species that are being identified and documented with every passing calendar year.
“It is exciting to uncover a shut relative of the effectively-recognized Plateosaurus, extra than a single hundred of which have currently been identified listed here in Germany,” states paleontologist Oliver Wings from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (MLU).
The analysis has been printed in Diversity.