New Species of Sauropodomorph that Shrank to Adapt to its Environment
Published:
A fossil of a new species of sauropodomorph has been discovered in the Late Jurassic strata (about 150 million years ago) of northern Germany.
The new species of sauropodomorph has been named "Europasaurus," meaning "European lizard."
At least 11 individuals of the discovered Europasaurus have been found, with the largest being 6.2m long, which is small for a sauropodomorph of this period. The discovery site was an island of about 200,000 square kilometers in the Late Jurassic, and it is thought that "this sauropodomorph evolved to be smaller to adapt to the environment of a small island with limited food and range."
A paper describing Europasaurus, titled "Bone histology indicates insular dwarfism in a new Late Jurassic sauropod dinosaur," has been published in the world-renowned scientific journal NATURE No. 441.