Scientists have discovered a new species of dinosaur that attained a length of 13 feet, was five feet tall and weighed up to 100 kg, said a report in Daily Mail. Researchers reported the discovery in a journal after their study based on visualisation of internal structures of the two almost complete skull fossils of the plant-eating dinosaur that was unearthed at Jameson Land of east Greenland in the early 1990s. The scientific name of the new species of dinosaur is ‘Issi saaneq’ which means ‘Cold Bone’. Earlier, Cold Bone was mistaken for an already-existing species. Now, an international team of palaeontologists from four countries - Brazil, Portugal, Germany and Denmark - have studied the skull fossil of Cold Bone and provided details of new species in a study published in ‘Diversity’ journal. The study has been named - A New Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Late Triassic (Norian) of Jameson Land, Central East Greenland.
According to researchers, Cold Bone was present on earth approximately 214 million years ago. At that time, East Greenland was connected to Europe. They said that Cold Bone belongs to a long-necked dinosaurs group called the sauropodomorphs. Later, some of the largest terrestrial animals of all time evolved from this group.
Study author Victor Bennari of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal told Dailymail, “Compared to the long-necked dinosaurs that came after, Issi would have been a very small animal.”
Cold Bone was a medium-sized, long-necked dinosaur. It was the first sauropodomorph to have reached altitudes over 40 degrees north. During an expedition to Greenland in the early 1990s, the palaeontologists from Harvard University recovered the two almost complete skulls and later classified them as a new species.
Now, the researchers studied the material (skulls) recovered in the 1990s. They scanned the skulls using a micro CT scan which helped in the visualisation of internal structures and bones. They also created 3D models of the remains. During the new assessment, researchers studied the dinosaur fossils in detail.
Cold Bone has a set of unique features, however, it also has similarities with Brazilian dinosaurs.
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