Researchers have discovered a new dwarf dinosaur in western Romania and named it Transylvanosaurus platycephalus, or colloquially, "flat-headed reptile from Transylvania ."
According to CNN, experts from the University of Tübingen published their research results in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in November. The team shared new details about the prehistoric creature after carefully examining fragments of its skull, which was unearthed in 2007 from a river bed in the Haţeg Basin in Transylvania.
As shown in the illustration depicting the hadrosaurus Transylvanosaurus, this species has some very unique characteristics that set it apart from its other roaming relatives. First, they were relatively small for a dinosaur, only about 2 meters long, hence the group's "dwarf dinosaur" classification.
The discovery lends further support to what biologists call the "island rule," which suggests that when large animals are isolated on islands, their growth is stunted while smaller species grow larger. The reason for the opposite evolutionary rates is unknown, but it is thought that resource shortages on the island may have been a contributing factor.
"Almost all land animals on this island are small," study co-author Felix Augustin explained in an email to CNN. "One exception is pterosaurs, some of which reached gigantic sizes - the reason may be that they could fly and were therefore not affected by the island's limited resources.
Another more unusual striking feature of this species is the shape of their heads. As shown, Transylvanosaurus platycephalus has a very broad and flat head, making them different from all previously reported reptiles in the family Rhabdodontidae - This group lived in the late Cretaceous period, about 70 million years ago.
Researchers involved in the study said the newly discovered species lived on the island alongside other dwarf dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles and pterosaurs. They also say their findings help refute a common hypothesis that dinosaurs that roamed Europe during the late Cretaceous were low in diversity.
