A labrador-sized dinosaur was wrongly categorised when it was found and is actually a new species, scientists have discovered.<\/p>\n
Its new name is Enigmacursor – meaning puzzling runner – and it lived about 150 million years ago, running around the feet of famous giants like the Stegosaurus.<\/p>\n
It was originally classified as a Nanosaurus but scientists now conclude it is a different animal.<\/p>\n
On Thursday it will become the first new dinosaur to go on display at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London since 2014.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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BBC News went behind the scenes to see the dinosaur before it will be revealed to the public.<\/p>\n
The discovery promises to shed light on the evolutionary history that saw early small dinosaurs become very large and “bizarre” animals, according to Professor Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist at the museum.<\/p>\n
When we visit, the designer of a special glass display case for the Enigmacursor is making last-minute checks.<\/p>\n
The dinosaur’s new home is a balcony in the museum’s impressive Earth Hall. Below it is Steph the Stegosaurus who also lived in the Morrison Formation in the Western United States.<\/p>\n
Enigmacursor is tiny by comparison. At 64 cm tall and 180 cm long it is about the height of a labrador, but with much bigger feet and a tail that was “probably longer than the rest of the dinosaur,” says Professor Susanna Maidment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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The Enigmacursor was a small dinosaur that lived alongside some of the biggest known<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n
“It also had a relatively small head, so it was probably not the brightest,” she adds, adding that it was probably a teenager when it died.<\/p>\n
With the fossilised remains of its bones in their hands, conservators Lu Allington-Jones and Kieran Miles expertly assemble the skeleton on to a metal frame.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to damage it at this stage before its revealed to everybody,” says Ms Allington-Jones, head of conservation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Gwyndaf Hughes\/BBC News<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nConservators Lu Allington-Jones and Kieran Miles assembled the dinosaur onto a frame for display<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n
“Here you can see the solid dense hips showing you it was a fast-running dinosaur. But the front arms are much smaller and off the ground – perhaps it used them to shovel plants in its mouth with hands,” says Mr Miles.<\/p>\n
It was clues in the bones that led scientists at NHM to conclude the creature was a new species.<\/p>\n
“When we’re trying to identify if something is a new species, we’re looking for small differences with all of the other closely-related dinosaurs. The leg bones are really important in this one,” says Prof Maidment, holding the right hind limb of the Enigmacursor.<\/p>\n
When the dinosaur was donated to the museum it was named Nanosaurus, like many other small dinosaurs named since the 1870s.<\/p>\n
But the scientists suspected that categorisation was false.<\/p>\n
To find out more, they travelled to the United States with scans of the skeleton and detailed photographs to see the original Nanosaurus that is considered the archtype specimen.<\/p>\n
“But it didn’t have any bones. It’s just a rock with some impressions of bone in it. It could be any number of dinosaurs,” Professor Maidment said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Gwyndaf Hughes\/BBC News<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nSusanna Maidment travelled to the US to look at the original Nanosaurus dinosaur<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n
In contrast, the NHM’s specimen was a sophisticated and near-to-complete skeleton with unique features including its leg bones.<\/p>\n
Untangling this mystery around the names and categorisation is essential, the palaeontologists say.<\/p>\n
“It’s absolutely foundational to our work to understand how many species we actually have. If we’ve got that wrong, everything else falls apart,” says Prof Maidment.<\/p>\n
The scientists have now formally erased the whole category of Nanosaurus. <\/p>\n
They believe that other small dinosaur specimens from this period are probably also distinct species.<\/p>\n
The discovery should help the scientists understand the diversity of dinosaurs in the Late Jurassic period.<\/p>\n
Smaller dinosaurs are “very close to the origins of the large groups of dinosaurs that become much more prominent later on,” says Prof Barrett.<\/p>\n
“Specimens like this help fill in some of those gaps in our knowledge, showing us how those changes occur gradually over time,” he adds.<\/p>\n
Looking at these early creatures helps them identify “the pressures that finally led to the evolution of their more bizarre, gigantic descendants,” says Prof Barrett.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Natural History Museum<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe fossilised remains are the most complete of any in the world for early small dinosaurs<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n\n
The scientists are excited to have such a rare complete skeleton of a small dinosaur.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, big dinosaur bones have been the biggest prize, so there has been less interest in digging out smaller fossils.<\/p>\n
“When you’re looking for those very big dinosaurs, sometimes it’s easy to overlook the smaller ones living alongside them. But now I hope people will keep their eyes close to the ground looking for these little ones,” says Prof Barrett.<\/p>\n
The findings about Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae are published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Georgina Rannard Science correspondent Reporting fromNatural History Museum, London Gwyndaf Hughes\/BBC News The full name of the new species is Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae dinosaur Gwyndaf Hughes Science videographer A labrador-sized dinosaur was wrongly categorised when it was found and is actually a new species, scientists have discovered. Its new name is Enigmacursor – meaning puzzling runner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[3020,6084,10678,1166,7979,5615,1793],"class_list":["post-31670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news","tag-dinosaur","tag-display","tag-dogsized","tag-history","tag-museum","tag-natural","tag-rare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31672,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31670\/revisions\/31672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}