Inhabitants of the “Island of the Dwarf Dinosaurs” in present-day Transylvania in the Cretaceous: Transylvanosaurus (front right), as well as turtles, crocodiles, giant pterosaurs, and other dwarf dinosaurs. Credit: Peter Nickolaus
SciTechDaily has a post about the discovery of a new ornithopod dinosaur. The animal, Transylvanosaurus platycephalus, lived about 70 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. Its name means "flat-headed reptile from Transylvania". It was discovered in Transylvania, which was part of an island archipelago during the Cretaceous. Because it was an island, many of the dinosaurs discovered there are small due to island dwarfism. The animal was described in a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
In the new study, paleontologists Felix Augustin from the University of Tübingen, his doctoral supervisor Zoltán Csiki-Sava from the University of Bucharest, Dylan Bastiaans from the University of Zurich/Naturalis Biodiversity Center Leiden, and independent researcher Mihai Dumbravă from Dorset reconstruct various possibilities of how Transylvanosaurus reached present-day Romania. These include a suggestion that as with other Rhabdodontidae from Eastern Europe – the animals could have spread westwards, and later certain species could have returned to Transylvania.
Fluctuations in sea level and tectonic processes might have created temporary land bridges between the many islands and could have encouraged these animals to spread.
Furthermore, it can be assumed that almost all dinosaurs could swim to an extent, including Transylvanosaurus. “They had powerful legs and a powerful tail. Most species, in particular reptiles, can swim from birth,” says Augustin. Another possibility is that various lines of rhabdodontid species evolved in parallel in eastern and western Europe.
