A chicken-sized dinosaur has been discovered after a long search for unusually small bones in northern Spain.
The new species has been named Foskeia pelendonum.
It is believed to have roamed our planet around 125 million years ago and belongs to an extinct group of herbivorous dinosaurs called ornithopods.
Despite its size, research has revealed that the dinosaur had an unexpectedly developed skull.
"Its anatomy is unusual," said paleontologist Penelope Cruzado Caballero of the University of La Laguna in Spain.
The fossils found belong to at least five different individuals, according to research an international team led by paleontologist Paul Emil Diedone from the National University of Rio Negro in Argentina, who has been working on this since 2013.
"I would say the most interesting part of this discovery is that it shows that there is still a lot of fossil material to be found and that most of it will come from small dinosaurs," Diedone told the BBC.
"Small dinosaurs were much more diverse than we previously thought, and it's possible that most of the groups we know of descended from small dinosaurs that grew larger over time," he added.
It was difficult to discover them.
Smaller dinosaur remains are more fragile and harder to find, Diedone noted.
"The sediments of some small bones disappear more easily," he added.
This dinosaur was unusually small, according to paleontologist Cohen Stein of the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, who co-authored the study.
It is believed to have been about 25 to 30 cm tall, about the size of a chicken.
"I think we can safely say that it is probably among the smallest, if not the smallest, on the European continent."
"And perhaps a contender for the title of smallest dinosaur ever," Stein told the BBC.
The small size of the fossils could indicate that they are juveniles.
But deeper research showed otherwise.
At least one was an adult, Stein explained.
As cubs, they probably walked on all fours, while as adults they became bipedal.
Fosca is the earliest known rabdodontomorf - subgroup ornithopod.
Rhabdodontomorphs were "probably very small to begin with, which would have allowed them to escape predators," Diedone explained.
"The small size is not compatible with long-distance running, but with finding a quick hiding place," he added.
A discovery that will take decades
Most of the fossils were found in 1998, and some more were found in the following years at the same site.
But it took them years to be identified.
Fidel Torcida Fernandez Baldo first discovered the site and collected most of the remains.
"We knew from the beginning that these bones were remarkable because of their small size," he said.
Researchers say the discovery of this species is significant for understanding the evolution of ornithopod dinosaurs.
Fosca comes from the ancient Greek word for light - fthe.
"Just because they were small doesn't mean they were evolutionarily simple," said paleontologist Marcos Becerra of the National University of Cordoba in Argentina.
They also had a special arrangement of teeth, with the front teeth pointing forward “like a giant trident in the middle,” Diedone noted.
In addition to their "somewhat unusual" teeth, they also had an "interesting skull," Stein added.
"It shows another example of the experiments that evolution has had," he added.
Skull
Previous research published in 2016 announced that these were fossils of a dinosaur called Vegetate ornithopod.
However, there was not enough information to formally identify him.
The latest research describes newly discovered parts of the skull.
This led to the naming of a type of dinosaur - Foscaea pelendonum.
"In living beings, in general, the part of the body that gives us the most information is the skull. It tells us about the chewing process, vision, the balance of the body," Diedone explained.
The shape of the head adapts very easily to the needs of the animal in its environment, "so these skull bones, however small and fragmented they are, give us a lot of information about the animal's lifestyle."
"It's important to document these things so we can learn how they grew, how they lived, how they died, and how they evolved, so we can understand how life in the past continually changed in changing environments," he explained.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube i Viber.
If you have a topic suggestion for us, please contact bbcnasrpskom@bbc.co.uk
- What the mysterious dinosaur song sounded like
- Spectacular discovery: Thousands of dinosaur footprints on a mountain in Italy
- When dinosaurs walked Serbia: First remains of extinct reptiles discovered near Pirot
Bonus video:
