It was called 'Cold Bone' ('Issi saaneq' in Inuit language), the first dinosaur found in Greenland: lived 214 million years ago, it was a medium-sized herbivorous biped with an elongated neck, ancestor of the sauropods, the most large animals that never lived on land.
The identikit of the new species is published in the Diversity magazine by a team of Portuguese, Danish and German paleontologists led by Victor Beccari of the New University of Lisbon.
The researchers studied the well-preserved skulls of two specimens (one young and one near-adult), found in 1994 during an excavation in East Greenland by Harvard University paleontologists.
The finds were subjected to computerized microtomography and digitally reconstructed in 3D.
The 3D study of the two skulls of Issi saaneq (source: V. Beccari)
“The anatomy of the two skulls is unique in many respects, for example in the shape and proportions of the bones: these specimens certainly belong to a new species,” explains Beccari.
The two specimens lived 214 million years ago during the Late Triassic, the period in which the fragmentation of the supercontinent Pangea led to the formation of the Atlantic Ocean.
"At that time the Earth was experiencing climate changes that allowed the first herbivorous dinosaurs to reach Europe and even beyond," points out Lars Clemmensen of the University of Copenhagen.