A new species of turkey-sized herbivorous dinosaur being named Diluvicursor pickeringi has been unearthed in southeastern Australia.
Artist’s impression of two Diluvicursor pickeringi foraging on the bank of a high-energy river within the Australian-Antarctic rift valley. Image credit: Peter Trusler.
Diluvicursor pickeringi (means Pickering’s flood-running dinosaur) lived approximately 113 million years ago (Cretaceous period) in what is known as the Australian-Antarctic rift valley.
“The species name honors the late David Pickering, who was Museums Victoria’s Collection Manager, Vertebrate Palaeontology,” said University of Queensland paleontologist Dr. Matt Herne and colleagues.
“David contributed significantly to Australian paleontology in the lab and field, and tirelessly assisted countless students of paleontology and researchers to achieve their goals.”
The partial skeleton of Diluvicursor pickeringi was discovered at the ‘Eric the Red West’ locality of the Eumeralla Formation in southern Victoria by volunteer prospector George Caspar in 2005.
“The fossilized tail and foot bones of Diluvicursor pickeringi give new insight into the diversity of the small, bipedal herbivorous dinosaurs called ornithopods that roamed the great rift valley that once existed between Australia and Antarctica,” the researchers said.
“This dinosaur shows for the first time that there were at least two distinct body-types among closely related ornithopods in this part of Australia.”
“One was lightly built with an extraordinarily long tail, while the other, Diluvicursor pickeringi, was more solidly built, with a far shorter tail.”
“Our preliminary reconstruction of the tail musculature of Diluvicursor pickeringi suggests this dinosaur was a good runner, with powerful leg retracting muscles.”
“Understanding the ecology of these dinosaurs — what they ate, how they moved, where they roamed — based on the interplay between anatomy and the environment presents exciting challenges for future research,” Dr. Herne said.
The Eric the Red West locality has additional importance as it helps build a picture of the ancient rift valley ecosystem.
“Fossil vertebrate remains at the Eric the Red West site were buried in deep scours at the base of a powerful river, along with flood-transported tree stumps, logs and branches,” Dr. Herne said.
“The carcass of the Diluvicursor pickeringi holotype appears to have become entangled in a log-jam at the bottom of this river.”
“The sizes of some of the logs in the deposit and the abundance of wood suggest the river traversed a well-forested floodplain. The logs preserved at the site are likely to represent conifer forests of trees within families still seen in Australia today.”
“Much of the fossil vertebrate material from Eric the Red West has yet to be described, so further dinosaurs and other exciting animals from this site are now anticipated.”
The discovery of Diluvicursor pickeringi is reported in the journal PeerJ.
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M.C. Herne et al. 2018. A new small-bodied ornithopod (Dinosauria, Ornithischia) from a deep, high-energy Early Cretaceous river of the Australian–Antarctic rift system. PeerJ 5: e4113; doi: 10.7717/peerj.4113
