A team of paleontologists from the United Kingdom recently discovered a new species of dinosaur that had blade-like spines on the side of its body, which may indicate that these animals migrated to the area where they were found.
Fossils of species recently described as Fictipelta paretti It was originally found in 1993 in the Wessex Formation on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England. It was fully excavated the following year by a private collector and sold to the Dinosaur Island Museum in 2021, allowing it to be studied.
This species is an ankylosaurus, a herbivorous dinosaur that walked on four short legs, had broad, flat bodies, small heads compared to the body and a long tail with a club-like structure at the end. Furthermore, most species in the group had protective armor, a series of bony scales known as osteoderms.
Until then, the skeleton had been confused with the skeleton PolacanthusIt is one of the other two types of dinosaurs found in the region, the second being Helaeosaurus. But a closer look revealed that they had been wrong all along.
he [ V. barretti ] It is actually very different from Polacanthus. It has different contours on the neck and back vertebrae, while it also has more curved, blade-like protrusions that we don't see in the material. Polacanthus Which we have.
Susannah Maidment, the paleontologist who co-authored the discovery, responded Live sciences
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New types of dinosaurs
Furthermore, there are also differences regarding the time they lived in the area, with the skeleton of the new species dating back to 140 million years ago, while the new species' skeleton dates back to 140 million years ago. Polacanthus The oldest of them dates back to 134 million years Helaeosaurus Smaller than 143 million.
An evolutionary comparison between known ankylosaurid species, based on the similarities and differences between their skeletons, also indicated that V. Pareti It is not related to the other two species, being much closer to the species found in China. This suggests that a migration of armored dinosaurs occurred from Asia to Europe and was not known until recently, but more research is needed to confirm the hypothesis.
This type of dinosaur was named after Paul Barrett, a famous paleontologist at the Natural History Museum who was not involved in the study.
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