big dinosaur triceratops tyrannosaurus rex Although they dominate North America and are the most watched dinosaurs in cinema today, they weren’t the only dinosaurs on Earth. Some of their very distant relatives actually call Europe home. These animals were much smaller than their American relatives, but they are attracting attention again.a New papers recently published in journals fossil record Delve deeper into the lives of the dinosaurs living on the island.
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Between 100 million and 66 million years ago ( Late Cretaceous), Europe was very different from today.The current continent is actually An archipelago consisting of large and small islands in shallow tropical waters. Due to the isolation of these islands, the groups of dinosaurs living here differed from those on the mainland. These included small and medium-sized theropods, brave and armored antherosaurs, sauropods with distinctively long necks, hadrosaurs with duck-bills, and rhabdodons.
by study, Rhabdodontidae It was an important group of the Late Cretaceous European archipelago. This includes small to medium-sized herbivores, generally about 6.5 feet to about 20 feet in length, at least by dinosaur standards.
“They were probably habitually bipedal herbivores, of rather stocky builds with strong hind legs, short forelimbs, long tails, and relatively large triangular skulls that tapered forward and ended in narrow snouts. ”Felix Augustin, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Tübingen explained in a statement. “They had strong jaws, large teeth, and relatively sturdy skulls with horny, pointed beaks, indicating that these dinosaurs were well adapted to eating hard plants. .”
There is also some evidence that they were quite social animals, as fossilized remains of several individuals of different ages have been found together. Rhabdodontidae fossils, or “stick teeth Dinosaurs have also been found in rocks only in Europe Dating from 86 to 66 million years agosuggesting that it was endemic to the European islands during the Late Cretaceous.
Scientists found fossils 9 different species From France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Romania.
“The first Rhabdodontid species was scientifically named over 150 years ago, and the last one was only named in November 2022. We still have a lot to learn,” Augustin said. “In general, our depiction of the dinosaur world is heavily biased towards the familiar North American and Asian dinofauna.”
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Rhabdodontidae of Western Europe extinct 69 million years agoThis is probably due to environmental changes that affected the plants they ate. However, Eastern European dinosaurs survived for millions more, and he was one of the last non-avian dinosaurs extant by the end of the Cretaceous period.
Dinosaur fossils dating to the Late Cretaceous are rarer in parts of Europe than in North America or Asia, and scientists are still searching for complete rhabdodon skeletons. Although abundant in the Cretaceous of Europe, paleontologists are still puzzled by the finer details of their body proportions, posture, locomotion and feeding behavior.
“Over the past few decades, an abundance of new and often well-preserved rhabdodont fossils have been discovered across Europe, much of which remains to be studied,” Augustin said. said. “Collaborative research projects are currently underway to study available fossil material for new insights into the evolution and lifestyle of these fascinating yet little-known dinosaurs.”
