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When studying dinosaurs, it is the massive ones that generally get all the attention, and with good reason. Whether it is the fearsome T-Rex or the huge Brontosaurus, there is just something that demands attention when it comes to huge dinosaurs.
For palaeontologists in 1998, however, it was a much smaller dinosaur that caught their eye in the Castrillo de la Reina Formation in Spain.
They found small bones that they identified as being from ornithischian dinosaurs, but they were a lot smaller than they would have expected.
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At the time, some people believed that they must have come from juvenile animals, but further studies found that they were indeed mature adults. Once the research was completed, it was confirmed that they had found a new species, which the team named Foskeia pelendonum, which means Palendonian forager.
In a 2016 paper about this dinosaur species, it was said that it was related to the much larger Muttaburrasaurus, which lived on the other side of the planet.
This has helped researchers fill a 70-million-year gap in evolution that existed with dinosaurs as well, making it very important. In a statement, Professor Penelope Cruzado-Caballero of Universidad de La Laguna, said:
“Foskeia helps fill a 70-million-year gap, a small key that unlocks a vast missing chapter. This is not a ‘mini Iguanodon’, it is something fundamentally different. Its anatomy is weird in precisely the kind of way that rewrites evolutionary trees.”
One thing that makes this species special is that it appears to have walked on all fours during its youth, but much later in life, it would transition to being bipedal.
It is expected that it was a herbivore, though there is some debate in this area.
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As a smaller dinosaur, it had to have a way to avoid getting eaten by larger animals. Based on its bone structure, it is likely that it was able to engage in bursts of very high speed that it would use to escape, likely dodging through dense forests in order to evade predators.
This goes to show that even small dinosaurs play an important role in understanding of how these creatures evolved.
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