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An impressive brand-new genus and types of neornithischian dinosaur being called Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae has actually been recognized from a three-dimensionally maintained postcranial skeleton discovered in the Morrison Formation of Colorado, the United States.
Life restoration of Enigmacursor mollyborthwickaeImage credit: Bob Nicholls.
Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae wandered our world throughout in the Late Jurassic date, in between 150 and 145 million years back.
This dinosaur was a two-legged herbivore about 0.5 m (1.6 feet) high and a little over 1 m(3.3 feet)long.
The types would have been darting around the floodplains of the western United States in the shadows of giants like Diplodocus and Stegosaurus
“There are indications that the dinosaur was not completely grown: the leading area of vertebrae (the neural arches), which form individually to the lower parts and fuse together as the animal ages, were not completely merged in location, recommending Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae might have been rather young,” stated Natural History Museum, London paleontologists Susannah Maidment and Paul Barrett.
Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae‘s partial however three-dimensionally maintained skeleton with some associated teeth was uncovered in 2021 and 2022 from an industrial quarry of the Morrison Formation in Moffat County, Colorado
At the time, the specimen was believed to be a Nanosaurusa poorly-known types of little herbivorous dinosaur initially called in the 1870s.
On closer examination, the paleontologists considered the initial Nanosaurus specimen too improperly protected to work as a reputable recommendation for recognition.
With better-quality fossils having actually been discovered, they formally reserved the name Nanosaurus in the interest of taxonomic stability.
Distinctions in between the initial specimen and the brand-new specimen were the last pieces of the puzzle to validate it as a brand-new genus and types.
“The discovery of Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae improves the variety of ornithischian dinosaurs from the Morrison Formation and supplies brand-new info on their anatomy,” the scientists stated.
“In addition, it shows that there is extra puzzling variety of small-bodied Morrison Formation ornithischians, recommending they were a more varied element of these Late Jurassic communities than was formerly understood.”
A paper explaining Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae was released today in the journal Royal Society Open Science
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Susannah C.R. Maidment & & Paul M. Barrett. 2025. Enigmacursor mollyborthwickaea neornithischian dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of the western USA. R. Soc. Open Sci 12 (6 ): 242195; doi: 10.1098/ rsos.242195
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