In news– Recently, a new genus and species of plateosaurus sauropodomorph dinosaur has been identified from two fossilized skulls, one from a juvenile and other an almost adult individual, found in Jameson Land, a peninsula in eastern Greenland.
About Issi saaneq–
- Issi is a plateosaurus dinosaur described in 2021 from the Late Triassic Malmros Klint Formation of Greenland.
- It has been named Issi saaneq to pay tribute to Greenland’s Inuit language and means “coldbone” .
- Palaeontologists from Harvard University unearthed two well-preserved dinosaur skulls during an excavation in East Greenland in 1994.
- One of the specimens was originally thought to be from a Plateosaurus, a well-known long-necked dinosaur that lived in Germany, France and Switzerland.
- Now, an international team of researchers from Portugal, Denmark and Germany has performed a micro-CT scan of the bones, which enabled them to create digital 3D models.
- The two-legged Issi saaneq lived about 214 million years ago and was a medium-sized, long necked herbivore and a predecessor of the sauropods, the largest land animals ever to live.
- The new findings are the first evidence of a distinct Greenlandic dinosaur species.
- The dinosaur differs from all other sauropodomorphs discovered so far, but has similarities with dinosaurs found in Brazil, such as the Macrocollum and Unaysaurus, which are almost 15 million years older.
Sauropods–
- Sauropoda, whose members are known as sauropods, is a clade of saurischian (‘lizard-hipped’) dinosaurs.
- They had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their body), and four thick, pillar-like legs and they were herbivorous.
- These reptiles were the largest of all dinosaurs and the largest land animals that ever lived.
They evolved into several major subgroups: Cetiosauridae, Brachiosauridae (including Brachiosaurus), Camarasauridae (including Camarasaurus), Diplodocidae (including Diplodocus and Apatosaurus), and Titanosauridae.
Source: The Indian Express
