New dinosaur species discovered in E. China
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Xinhua, January 14, 2012
The paper was published this month by British magazine Cretaceous Research and the two Japanese scientists, Masateru Shibata and Yoichi Azuma, are from the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum.
Ornithopods are a group of ornithischian dinosaurs that started out as small, bipedal running grazers, and grew in size and numbers until they became one of the most successful groups of herbivores in the Cretaceous world.
Though the species dominated the North American landscape, they were rare in Asia.
Before Yueosaurus, only four Ornithopod species had been found in Asia - in northeastern China's Liaoning and Jilin provinces, the Republic of Korea and Mongolia.
The beaked, herbivorous creature, only 1.5 meters long and one meter tall, is the smallest dinosaur ever found in the province, according to Zheng.
"They were great runners. They are really small, so they had to run away fast from those ferocious meat-eating dinosaurs," Zheng said.
Latest research has showed that some of them even burrowed and lived in holes in the ground, he added.
Zhejiang boasts vast areas of land rich in dinosaur and dinosaur egg fossils. Four new dinosaur species, three herbivorous and one carnivorous, had been discovered in the province before Yueosaurus, according the museum, which is located in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang.
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