Paleontologists utter they’ve learned the fossilized bones of a brand contemporary vogue of early-branching neoceratopsian dinosaur in the Eastern prefecture of Hyogo.
Existence reconstruction of Sasayamagnomus saegusai. Image credit: Kanon Tanaka.
The newly-learned dinosaur roamed our planet one day of the Albian age of the Early Cretaceous epoch, between 113 and 100 million years ago.
Dubbed Sasayamagnomus saegusai, the animal measured about 0.8 m (2.6 toes) in dimension and weighed round 10 kg.
“This contemporary dinosaur possesses unfamiliar traits clear from any known ceratopsian,” University of Hyogo paleontologist Tomonori Tanaka and colleagues said in an announcement.
“Ceratopsians are a community of herbivorous dinosaurs known for his or her ample horns and frills on their heads, the most renowned being Triceratops.”
“As a outmoded ceratopsian, it lacked the ample horns and frills viewed in later species like Triceratops.”
The skeletal bits of Sasayamagnomus saegusai had been showcase in the Ohyamashimo Formation in southwestern Japan by the novice geologist Kiyoshi Adachi.
“The fossil involves 17 bones, most of which belong to a single person,” the researchers said.
“Thin sections of the tibia had been examined, revealing that this person was probably a younger, not fully matured person.”
The team’s prognosis signifies that the contemporary species kinds a community with Aquilops americanus, one of the most earliest neoceratopsian dinosaurs from North The USA, adopted by the sister species Auroraceratops rugosus from China.
“Sasayamagnomus saegusai is closely linked to outmoded ceratopsians from North The USA, suggesting that ceratopsians, which originated in Asia, can also simply have immigrated to North The USA round 110 million years ago one day of the mid-Cretaceous duration,” the authors said.
“All the draw in which by means of this duration, the japanese segment of the Eurasian continent and North The USA had been connected by the Bering Land Bridge, allowing animals to migrate between the two.”
“Additionally, indecent global warming resulted in mountainous forests in the Arctic jam.”
“The convergence of these two events probably facilitated the growth of ceratopsians from Asia to North The USA.”
The discovery of Sasayamagnomus saegusai is described in a paper published this week in the journal Papers in Palaeontology.
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Tomonori Tanaka et al. 2024. A brand contemporary neoceratopsian (Ornithischia, Ceratopsia) from the Lower Cretaceous Ohyamashimo Formation (Albian), southwestern Japan. Papers in Palaeontology 10 (5): e1587; doi: 10.1002/spp2.1587
