A new species of dinosaur called Transylvanosaurus platycephalus, a flat-headed reptile from Transylvania that lived about 70 million years ago, has been discovered by an international team of researchers at the UNESCO Tara Haţegului International Geopark, the University of Bucharest, the geopark’s administrator, said on Thursday.

This herbivorous dinosaur, named “Transylvanosaurus platycephalus” after the area where the fossils were found, lived about 70 million years ago, says the team led by paleontologist Felix Augustin of the University of Tübingen. The discovery was recently published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, according to a press release sent by Agerpres.

What the dwarf dinosaur, discovered now in Romania, looked like

“The name Transylvanosaurus platycephalus literally means ‘flat-headed (flat) reptile of Transylvania.’ The discovered bones, parts of the skull of Transylvanianosaurus, offer a new perspective on the evolution of the European fauna shortly before the extinction of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. This previously unknown species of dinosaur was about two meters long, walked on two legs and belonged to the Rhabdodontidae family. The body of the new dinosaur was small, as in the case of other dinosaurs discovered on the territory of Khatsegului Land, already known under the name of dwarf dinosaurs,” the cited source notes.

The international team of palaeontologists, led by Felix Augustin from the University of Tübingen, includes university professor Dr Zoltan Ciki-Sava from the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Bucharest, Dylan Bastiaans from the University of Zurich and independent researcher Mihai Dumbrave from Dorset.

“The limited food resources that were available in these parts of Europe at the time led to a reduction in the body size of these animals,” says paleontologist Felix Augustin, quoted in a press release from the University of Bucharest.

During most of the Cretaceous period, which lasted from 145 to 66 million years ago, Europe was a tropical archipelago. Transylvanianosaurus lived on one of the many islands of the archipelago along with other dwarf dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles and pterosaurs, paleontologists explained.

“With each newly discovered species, we disprove the widely held hypothesis that Late Cretaceous fauna would have been less diverse in modern Europe,” adds paleontologist Felix Augustyn.

10 species of dinosaurs found in Shara Hategului

Zoltan Ciki-Sava and his team from the University of Bucharest discovered the skull bones of Transylvanosaurus platycephalus in 2007 in a river bed in the Geopark. In addition, Ţara Haţegului is one of the most important sites in Europe in terms of Late Cretaceous vertebrates. In total, ten species of dinosaurs were discovered here.

“This diversity represents something unusual. In most cases, finds in Khatseg consist of only a few bones, but even they can sometimes provide surprising information, as, for example, in the case of Transylvanianosaurus,” says the university professor. Dr. Zoltan Tsiki-Sava.

The fossils of Transylvanianosaurus were able to survive for tens of millions of years because they were protected by the sediments of an ancient river bed until the waters of another modern river brought them back to the surface.

“If the dinosaur skeleton had simply surfaced and not been partially buried by river sediments, weathering and scavengers would have quickly destroyed all of its remains, and we would never have known that the species existed.” paleontologist Felix Augustin concludes in a press release from the University of Bucharest.