In southwestern Germany, researchers have identified a previously unknown dinosaur species. The animal, called Tuebingosaurus maierfritzorum, lived about 203 to 211 million years ago in the Swabian Jurassic and was a herbivore, the University of Tübingen announced on Thursday.
The new species therefore bears a resemblance to the large, long-necked dinosaurs, the sauropods, and was identified in the recent study of dinosaur bones that have been known for 100 years. Experts previously assumed that the fossils stored in a collection were the remains of plateosaurs.
Fossilized bones reanalyzed
In a large-scale project, the researchers have now re-examined all the dinosaur bones stored in Tübingen. Most come from a quarry near Trossingen on the edge of the Swabian Jura, where numerous dinosaur bones have been found since the 19th century and often classified as plateosaurs.
When analyzing a skeleton found in Trossingen in 1922, the scientists found that many bones did not match those of a typical plateosaur. The remains indicate four-legged locomotion. This is in contrast to plateosaurs, which also resembled the long-necked Jurassic sauropods, but were probably still bipedal.
Animal was probably already a four-legged friend
The German experts reassigned Trossingen’s skeleton to the dinosaur family tree and found that they had discovered a previously unknown species and genus. Tuebingosaurus maierfritzorum was most likely already a quadruped and therefore much more closely related to the large sauropods that appeared later, such as Brachiosaurus or Diplodocus, than to the plateosaurs.
Source: Krone
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