{"id":668882,"date":"2026-03-20T10:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/668882\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T10:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:06:13","slug":"new-species-of-plant-eating-dinosaur-unearthed-in-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/668882\/","title":{"rendered":"New Species of Plant-Eating Dinosaur Unearthed in Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new species of small plant-eating dinosaur has been identified from a partial skeleton of a juvenile individual discovered in the Republic of Korea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

An artist\u2019s interpretation of a juvenile Doolysaurus huhmini. Image credit: Jun Seong Yi.<\/p>\n

Doolysaurus huhmini lived in what is now Korea between 113 and 94 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous period.<\/p>\n

The ancient animal was a type of thescelosaurid<\/a>, a group of bipedal neornithischian dinosaurs from the Cretaceous of East Asia and North America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dinosaur skeletal fossil record in Korea has long been limited in both abundance and completeness,\u201d said Dr. Jongyun Jung, a paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin and Chonnam National University, and colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo date, only 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fossilized bones of Doolysaurus huhmini were recovered in 2023 from mid-Cretaceous rocks of the Ilseongsan Formation<\/a> on Aphae Island on the southwestern coast of the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n

The specimen consists of skull bones, vertebrae, hind limbs, and numerous gastroliths \u2014 stones swallowed to aid digestion.<\/p>\n

Advanced X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) allowed the researchers to reconstruct the dinosaur\u2019s internal anatomical details that are otherwise hidden in the rock.<\/p>\n

The animal may have had a fuzzy coat and was about the size of a turkey, but an adult Doolysaurus huhmini may have grown to twice that size.<\/p>\n

Histological analysis indicates that the individual was very young, likely two years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it would have been pretty cute. It might have looked a bit like a little lamb,\u201d said Professor Julia Clarke, a paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n

Doolysaurus huhmini is the first new dinosaur species discovered in Korea in 15 years and the first Korean dinosaur fossil found with portions of its skull.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first found the specimen, we saw some leg bones preserved and some vertebrae,\u201d Jung said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t expect skull parts and so many more bones. There was a fair amount of excitement when we saw what was hidden inside the block.\u201d<\/p>\n

The presence of a cluster of gastroliths, along with their size and estimated mass, suggests that Doolysaurus huhmini may have had a more omnivorous diet than previously assumed for closely related dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe morphology of gastroliths observed in Doolysaurus huhmini and other early-diverging neornithischians may indicate a generalized or omnivorous dietary strategy for this group,\u201d the scientists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, living birds exhibit considerable variation in stomach anatomy and gastrolith usage across clades, suggesting that caution is required when utilizing these data to infer the diets of non-avian dinosaurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discovery highlights the potential for additional skeletal finds in Korea, particularly at paleontological sites like Aphaedo where preservation conditions differ from those that produced the country\u2019s abundant trace fossils.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoolysaurus huhmini is consistent with richer dinosaurian diversity in the Cretaceous of Korea than is represented in its rich trace fossil record,\u201d the authors concluded.<\/p>\n

Their paper<\/a> was published online today in the journal Fossil Record.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

J. Jung et al. 2026. A new dinosaur species from Korea and its implications for early-diverging neornithischian diversity. Fossil Record 29 (1): 87-113; doi: 10.3897\/fr.29.178152<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new species of small plant-eating dinosaur has been identified from a partial skeleton of a juvenile individual…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":668883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[282559,16277,1265,43603,282560,282561,43606,282562,282563,282564,282565,282566,159,15243,282567,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-668882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-aphae-island","tag-cretaceous","tag-diet","tag-dinosaur","tag-doolysaurus","tag-doolysaurus-huhmini","tag-fossil","tag-gastrolith","tag-ilseongsan-formation","tag-korean-peninsula","tag-neornithischia","tag-omnivory","tag-science","tag-south-korea","tag-thescelosauridae","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116260948349848830","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}