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‘New’ dino discovered after excavation in 1954 | Inland

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At first the connoisseurs mistakenly thought that they were the remains of a plateosaurus. Upon further analysis, they turned out to be from another dinosaur. It is a hitherto unwritten ancestor of the sauropods, herbivorous ‘long-necked dinosaurs’. The animal must have lived some 225 million years ago, the researchers said.

Long-necked dinosaurs became world famous for the Jurassic Park films of the 1990s. The ancestor now given a scientific description was a lot smaller than the huge sauropods that would later stamp out on Earth: paleontologists estimate from the incomplete remains that they found it to be 9 to 10 meters long. They immediately gave the dinosaur a name: Schleitheimia schutzi. It is a contraction of Schleitheim, the place where the remains were found, and the name of the finder, Emil Schutz.

Evolutionarily, the Schleitheimia was already very close to the sauropods. The animal was “very robustly built” and probably moved on four legs. “As you can see, you don’t always have to travel to exotic countries to discover new dinosaurs and gain new insights into their evolution – sometimes a visit to the local museum or a dig at the door is all it takes,” says paleontologist Oliver Rauhut, from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.

In the foreground is the new genus, Schleitheimia, and to the right a Plateosaurus in the background.—

In the foreground is the new genus, Schleitheimia, and to the right a Plateosaurus in the background.

Ⓒ Illustration: Beat Scheffold

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