The Sundarban
A unique species of minute plant-eating dinosaur has been known from a partial skeleton of a juvenile individual found in the Republic of Korea.
An artist’s interpretation of a juvenile Doolysaurus huhmini. Image credit: Jun Seong Yi.
Doolysaurus huhmini lived in what’s now Korea between 113 and 94 million years in the past, during the mid-Cretaceous interval.
The ragged animal changed into as soon as a kind of thescelosaurid, a bunch of workers of bipedal neornithischian dinosaurs from the Cretaceous of East Asia and North The United States.
“The dinosaur skeletal fossil anecdote in Korea has long been restricted in both abundance and completeness,” talked about Dr. Jongyun Jung, a paleontologist on the College of Texas at Austin and Chonnam Nationwide College, and colleagues.
“So some distance, most productive two dinosaur species from the country are known from Late Cretaceous partial postcranial skeletons, the basal ceratopsian Koreaceratops hwaseongensis and the early-diverging neornithischian Koreanosaurus boseongensis from the Seonso Conglomerate.”
The fossilized bones of Doolysaurus huhmini had been recovered in 2023 from mid-Cretaceous rocks of the Ilseongsan Formation on Aphae Island on the southwestern gallop of the Korean Peninsula.
The specimen consists of cranium bones, vertebrae, hind limbs, and a sizable quantity of gastroliths — stones swallowed to help digestion.
Evolved X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) allowed the researchers to reconstruct the dinosaur’s internal anatomical necessary points which would be otherwise hidden in the rock.
The animal may perhaps even merely maintain had a fuzzy coat and changed into as soon as in regards to the scale of a turkey, but an grownup Doolysaurus huhmini may perhaps even merely maintain grown to twice that size.
Histological evaluation indicates that the individual changed into as soon as very younger, doubtless two years earlier.
“I think it could perhaps perchance perhaps well were slightly glowing. It will also want looked a bit of love a minute lamb,” talked about Professor Julia Clarke, a paleontologist on the College of Texas at Austin.
Doolysaurus huhmini is the first unique dinosaur species found in Korea in 15 years and the first Korean dinosaur fossil found with portions of its cranium.
“After we first found the specimen, we saw some leg bones preserved and a few vertebrae,” Jung talked about.
“We didn’t interrogate cranium aspects and so many extra bones. There changed into as soon as a super quantity of excitement as soon as we saw what changed into as soon as hidden inside the block.”
The presence of a cluster of gastroliths, on the side of their size and estimated mass, means that Doolysaurus huhmini may perhaps even merely maintain had a extra omnivorous weight reduction program than previously assumed for closely linked dinosaurs.
“The morphology of gastroliths seen in Doolysaurus huhmini and numerous early-diverging neornithischians may perhaps even merely indicate a generalized or omnivorous dietary approach for this group of workers,” the scientists talked about.
“Then again, living birds explain phenomenal variation in belly anatomy and gastrolith usage at some stage in clades, suggesting that caution is required when utilizing these information to infer the diets of non-avian dinosaurs.”
The invention highlights the different of extra skeletal finds in Korea, in particular at paleontological sites love Aphaedo where preservation prerequisites fluctuate from of us who produced the country’s plentiful hint fossils.
“Doolysaurus huhmini is per richer dinosaurian diversity in the Cretaceous of Korea than is represented in its effectively off hint fossil anecdote,” the authors concluded.
Their paper changed into as soon as published online currently in the journal Fossil Document.
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J. Jung et al. 2026. A unique dinosaur species from Korea and its implications for early-diverging neornithischian diversity. Fossil Document 29 (1): 87-113; doi: 10.3897/fr.29.178152
