{"id":317009,"date":"2026-02-02T21:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T21:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/317009\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T21:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T21:53:10","slug":"tiny-new-species-of-herbivorous-dinosaur-unearthed-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/317009\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny New Species of Herbivorous Dinosaur Unearthed in Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new genus and species of diminutive bipedal dinosaur has been identified from the fossils found in Burgos province of Spain.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Life<\/a><\/p>\n

Life reconstuction of Foskeia pelendonum. Image credit: Martina Charnell.<\/p>\n

Foskeia pelendonum roamed our planet during the Early Cretaceous epoch, around 120 million years ago.<\/p>\n

The new species was a member of Rhabdodontomorpha<\/a>, a group of ornithischian dinosaurs that lived mainly during the Early to Late Cretaceous.<\/p>\n

The ancient animal was diminutive, roughly comparable in size to a modern chicken, marking it distinct from many of its larger ornithischian relatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning, we knew these bones were exceptional because of their minute size,\u201d said Dr. Fidel Torcida Fern\u00e1ndez-Baldor, a paleontologist at the Dinosaur Museum of Salas de los Infantes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is equally impressive how the study of this animal overturns global ideas on ornithopod dinosaur evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMiniaturization did not imply evolutionary simplicity \u2014 this skull is weird and hyper-derived,\u201d added Dr. Marcos Becerra, a paleontologist at the Universidad Nacional de C\u00f3rdoba.<\/p>\n

\u201cFoskeia pelendonum helps fill a 70-million-year gap, a small key that unlocks a vast missing chapter,\u201d said Dr. Thierry Tortosa, a paleontologist at the Sainte Victoire Natural Reserve.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a \u2018mini Iguanodon,\u2019 it is something fundamentally different,\u201d said Dr. Ta\u0301bata Zanesco Ferreira a paleontologist at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

\u201cIts anatomy is weird in precisely the kind of way that rewrites evolutionary trees,\u201d said Dr. Pen\u00e9lope Cruzado-Caballero, a paleontologist at the Universidad de La Laguna.<\/p>\n

The fossilized remains of at least five individuals of Foskeia pelendonum were collected from the Vegagete site in Burgos province, Spain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe site consists of the red-clay \ufb02oodplain deposits of the Castrillo de la Reina Formation<\/a>, and lies between the Villanueva de Carazo and Salas de los Infantes municipalities,\u201d the paleontologists said.<\/p>\n

A histological analysis confirmed that the largest specimen was a sexually mature adult.<\/p>\n

\u201cBone microstructure tells us that at least one individual was an adult with a metabolic regime approaching that of small mammals or birds,\u201d said Dr. Koen Stein, a researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowledge of growth and development is essential if we want to compare the anatomy of Foskeia pelendonum with other species.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung individuals are prone to changes in anatomical features as they grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the phylogenetic analysis, Foskeia pelendonum is a sister species to the Australian dinosaur Muttaburrasaurus within Rhabdodontomorpha, and expands the European clade Rhabdodontia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our results, the plant-eating dinosaurs form a natural group called Phytodinosauria,\u201d said Dr. Paul-Emile Dieudonn\u00e9, a researcher at the National University of R\u00edo Negro.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis hypothesis should be further tested with more data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite its small size, Foskeia pelendonum shows specialized dentition and evidence of shifting posture during growth, relying on bursts of speed in dense forests.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese fossils prove that evolution experimented just as radically at small body sizes as at large ones,\u201d Dr. Dieudonn\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future of dinosaur research will depend on paying attention to the humble, the fragmentary, the small.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discovery of Foskeia pelendonum is described in a paper<\/a> published in the journal Papers in Palaeontology.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

l-Emile Dieudonn\u00e9 et al. 2026. Foskeia pelendonum, a new rhabdodontomorph from the Lower Cretaceous of Salas de los Infantes (Burgos Province, Spain), and a new phylogeny of ornithischian dinosaurs. Papers in Palaeontology 12 (1): e70057; doi: 10.1002\/spp2.70057<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new genus and species of diminutive bipedal dinosaur has been identified from the fossils found in Burgos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[153807,8098,23429,18,1015,8101,153808,153809,4696,19,17,153810,153811,153812,153813,153814,133,383],"class_list":{"0":"post-317009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-castrillo-de-la-reina-formation","9":"tag-cretaceous","10":"tag-dinosaur","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-evolution","14":"tag-foskeia","15":"tag-foskeia-pelendonum","16":"tag-fossil","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-muttaburrasaurus","20":"tag-ornithischia","21":"tag-phytodinosauria","22":"tag-rhabdodontia","23":"tag-rhabdodontomorpha","24":"tag-science","25":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116003262368986219","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}