A new species of dinosaur was discovered by researchers while they were conducting a study on prehistoric crocodyliforms feeding on small dinosaurs.
Prehistoric crocodyliforms that are now extinct but belonged to the crocodile family fed on smaller plant-eating baby ornithopod dinosaurs. The first fossil evidence of the same was published late last month. Now, scientists have stated that while conducting the study they came across a discovery which suggested that these prey dinosaurs belonged to a different species of dinosaurs that is yet to be named.
The discovery was made when a large number of tiny bits of dinosaur bones were found in groups at four locations within the Utah Park. Bite marks were found on these bones and what made scientists sure that these dinosaurs were prey to crocodyliforms was when a crocodyliform's tooth was found embedded in one of the dinosaur femur. This comes as a very important discovery as dinosaurs were believed to be the most dominating species of their time.
"The traditional ideas you see in popular literature are that when little baby dinosaurs are either coming out of a nesting grounds or out somewhere on their own, they are normally having to worry about the theropod dinosaurs, the things like raptors or, on bigger scales, the T. rex. So this kind of adds a new dimension," Boyd Drumheller, of the University of Iowa said. "You had your dominant riverine carnivores, the crocodyliforms, attacking these herbivores as well, so they kind of had it coming from all sides."
Judging from the teeth marks that were found on the dinosaurs' bones, researchers state that the crocodyliforms too were unusually small in size, measuring not more than 2 meters long. According to researchers, if these crocodyliforms were larger, they wouldn't have had any problem gulping down these baby dinosaurs in one go without leaving teeth marks. Up until now, researchers believed that only large crocodyliforms interacted with large dinosaurs.
"It's not often that you get events from the fossil record that are action-related," Science Daily quoted Boyd as explaining. "While you generally assume there was probably a lot more interaction going on, we didn't have any of that preserved in the fossil record yet. This is the first time that we have definitive evidence that you had this kind of partitioning, of your smaller crocodyliforms attacking the smaller herbivorous dinosaurs," he said, adding that this is only the second published instance of a crocodyliform tooth embedded in any prey animal in the fossil record.
