About 100 million years ago in what is now Utah, a 3-meter-long cousin of duck-billed dinosaurs pulverized tough plant stems and leaves with its robust teeth and powerful jaws
It probably was too busy chewing to notice that the once-familiar world around it was transforming. But for the scientists who recently described this newfound species, its fossils offer clues about life during the middle of the Cretaceous Period , as rising air temperatures and sea levels reshaped leafy habitats on land. The plant-eater was an early ornithopod — a group of mostly bipedal herbivorous dinosaurs.
The bones included a skull, some ribs and vertebrae, limb bones and parts of the pelvis. Well-preserved Cretaceous skulls from this part of North America are extremely rare; the region once bordered a vast inland sea, and bones fossilize poorly in coastal humidity, Zanno told CNN in an email. “Most of the specimens we find in the Mussentuchit are highly fragmentary or in rough shape,” Zanno said.
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