Scientists have dated the remains to the Bajocian stage of the Middle Jurassic period, long before most known stegosaurus, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
The relatively small but fearsome-looking four-legged animal, about 2.8 meters in size from nose to tail, roamed the planet some 168 million years ago.
This particular skeleton found has a smaller and less developed scapula, narrower and thicker armor bases, different from all other Middle Jurassic stegosaurs discovered to date, although, according to the study, it has some similarities with some of the dinosaurs. earlier battleships, from more than 20 million years before the discovered specimen.
“All these features suggest that it occupies the place of the stegosaurus family in the dinosaur family tree”explained Dai Hui of the Chongqing Geological and Mineral Resources Exploration and Development Bureau, who led the investigation.
Furthermore, our analysis of the family tree indicates that it is one of the earliest divergent stegosaurus, along with the Chongqing lizard (Chungkingosaurus) and Huayangosaurus. All of them were unearthed in the Middle and Late Jurassic Shaximiao Formation in China, suggesting that stegosaurs could have originated in Asia.”
Instantly recognizable by their massive dorsal plates, long tail spikes, and tiny head, stegosaurus were quadrupedal, plant-eating dinosaurs.
Fossils of this type have been found on every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and 14 species of stegosaurus have been identified so far.
Among the best-known members of the Stegosauria are Huayangosaurus (one of the earliest stegosaurs), Gigantspinosaurus, notable for its massive shoulder spines, and Miragaia for its extremely long neck.
However, the fragmentation of fossil material has hampered attempts to understand how stegosaurs evolved and how they are related to each other.
With the discovery of this new species the mystery has begun to clear up.
Experts named the dinosaur “Bashanosaurus primitivus,” with Bashan referring to the ancient name of the Chinese area of Chongqing where the specimen was found, while the Latin word “primitivus” means “first.”
“The discovery of this Middle Jurassic stegosaurus from China adds to a growing body of evidence that the group evolved in the early Middle Jurassic, or perhaps even the Early Jurassic, and as such represent some of the earliest known dinosaurs to exist.” they feed on birdssaid Susannah Maidment, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
“China seems to have been a hot spot for stegosaurus diversity, with numerous species known from the Middle Jurassic to the end of the Early Cretaceous,” said the specialist, who was involved in the find.
Source: Ambito
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