Paleontologists from Universidade Nova de Lisboa identify new dinosaur species in Greenland – Observer
A new species of dinosaur was completed, from fossils found in Greenlândia, by an international team of paleontologists, which includes Victor Beccari and Octávio Mateus, from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the Museu da Lourinhã, was released this Thursday.
A new species of dinosaur called Issi Saaneq, is a herbivorous dinosaur that lived 214 million years ago in Greenland, during the Late Triassic and was finalized in the latest issue of the scientific journal “Diversidade”, published on Wednesday and released in the press release this Thursday.
The fossils were found in 1994 by paleontologists at Harvard University, during expeditions to Greenland, and found in the Plateosaurus, found in Germany, France and Switzerland.
However, a study of fossils now carried out by Brazilian Victor Beccari for a master’s thesis in Paleontology at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, under the supervision of Octávio Mateus, compared the skulls and found enough anatomical differences that led the researcher to what would not be a Plateosaurus, but rather a new species.
“The two skulls are unique in many aspects of their anatomy, such as the proportions and shapes of the bones, but at that time the Earth was undergoing climate change that allowed the first herbivorous dinosaurs to reach Europe and beyond,” explain the researchers in press release.
‘Issi saaneq’, a name meaning “cold bone” in the Inuit language of Greenland, is the oldest herbivorous dinosaur known in Greenland.
During his lifetime, the supercontinent Pangea broke up, the Atlantic Ocean began to form, and that long-necked dinosaur was one of the first sauropodomorphs (the group of dinosaurs into which the greatest land animals of all time later evolved. ) living in the northern hemisphere.
During the late Triassic, an Eastern Greenland was linked to what is now Europe, but the transitional environment between the dry interior and the continent’s peripheral wetlands turned Greenland into a national territory with a very diverse fauna.
Despite several scientific expeditions to Greenland and the large number of discoveries, most of the fossils found were never discovered.
“This is the third new vertebrate species that our team named in honor of Greenland, which shows the scientific importance of that territory”, says Octávio Mateus, prevailing the importance of “having a thesis from Universidade Nova de Lisboa with these results and quality “.
The study carried out by Beccari, also a researcher at Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie Munich (Germany), was carried out in collaboration with researchers from the Lourinhã Museum, Martin Luther Halle-Wittenberg University, Germany, Geomuseum Faxe and the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark.
In addition to Victor Beccari and Octávio Mateus, the scientific article is also signed by Oliver Wings, Jesper Milàn and Lars B. Clemmensen, linked to those international institutions.
The studied fossils can be obtained at the Lourinhã Museum.