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This dinosaur was hiding from European paleontologists and is still wanted: Okezone techno

DINOSAUR Large North American characters such as Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops are often the main characters in various films today. But did you know that these are just some of the types of dinosaurs on Earth. Their much smaller herds, native to Europe, were the subject of renewed attention after the publication of the magazine Fossil Record, which further explored their life on the island.

In the Late Cretaceous, between 100 and 66 million years ago, Europe was very different from today, in the form of a continent with large and small islands in shallow tropical seas. Therefore, the types of dinosaurs living in this area are different from those on Earth. They included small to medium-sized theropods, large-bodied and armored ankylosaurs, sauropods with characteristic long necks, duck-billed hadrosaurs, and rhabdodontids.

According to a Fossil Record study cited by Popular science, Thursday (7/9/2023), an important family in European islands in the Late Cretaceous was Rhabdodontidae. This family consists of herbivores that were typically small to medium sized by dinosaur standards and ranged from 6.5 to nearly 20 feet in length.

“They were probably two-legged herbivores, characterized by a rather stocky body, with strong hind limbs, short forelimbs, a long tail and a relatively large triangular skull that tapered towards the front and ended in a narrow snout.” said Felix Augustin, one of the authors of the study and a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Tübingen.

The fact that these dinosaurs had relatively robust skulls, strong jaws, large teeth and sharp beaks covered in keratin suggests that they were well adapted to eating tough plants.

Other evidence shows that this animal is a social animal. This is based on fossil remains found in groups with many other dinosaurs of various ages. Fossils of Rhabdodontids, or “bar-toothed” dinosaurs, have also been found in Europe only in rocks dating back 86-66 million years, indicating that they were endemic to the Late Cretaceous European archipelago.

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Previously, scientists had discovered nine different species of dinosaur fossils from France, Spain, Austria, Hungary and Romania.

Felix Augustin also added that the first Rhabdodontid species was given a scientific name more than 150 years ago, and most recently in November 2022. There is still much to be studied in depth about this dinosaur species, even though it has a long research history. This is because the representation of the dinosaur world is still very skewed towards the types of dinosaurs known in North America and Asia.

Western European rhabdodontids became extinct 69 million years ago, perhaps due to environmental changes that affected the plants they fed on. On the other hand, Eastern European dinosaurs lived millions of years longer and were among the last non-avian dinosaurs still alive at the end of the Cretaceous period.

Researchers are still searching for a complete Rhabdodontid skeleton because fewer Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils have been found in some parts of Europe than in North America or Asia. They were common during the Cretaceous period in Europe, but further information about their body proportions, posture, locomotion and feeding habits remains a mystery to paleontologists.

According to Felix Augustin, most of the recently discovered rhabdodontid fossils that have been well preserved in Europe for decades have yet to be studied. A collaborative research project is underway to discover more about the evolution and fascinating lifestyle of dinosaurs. (Taja Aurora Bianca)

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