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While many baby dinosaurs looked very different from their parents, researchers in Germany found that some species actually looked like reduced copies of adults.
Paleontologists at the University of Bonn made the discovery by examining the skeleton of a young Plateosaurus. The almost complete skeleton, nicknamed “Fabian”, was found in 2015 in Switzerland (photo above).
Researchers “surprisingly” found that the young specimen’s physical characteristics and body proportions were “remarkably consistent” with the adult Plateosaurus, according to the study in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
“The fact that the Plateosaurus juvenile already looked like adults is all the more astonishing because it was ten times heavier,” Jens Lallensack, a paleontologist who participated in the study, told the DPA News Agency. .
Read more: Fossils show feathered dinosaurs had lousy lives
Long-necked Plateosaurus could weigh up to 4,000 kilograms
Other baby dinosaurs, on the other hand, looked very different from their adult adult versions.
Researchers found that young Mussaurus hatchlings, which are related to Plateosaurus, emerged walking on all fours – although adults only move on two, reported the DPA.
From mini to massive
The research team determined that “Fabian” was 2.3 meters long (7.5 feet long) and weighed between 40 and 60 kilograms (88 to 132 pounds).
When comparing “Fabian” to adult fossils, they found many anatomical similarities, with a few exceptions.
Read more: Fossil find points to ‘origin of modern world’ after dinosaurs went extinct
“The hand and neck of juveniles may be a bit longer – the bones of the arms a bit shorter and thinner,” Darius Nau, researcher at the Institute of Geoscience at the University of Bonn, told the DPA.
The long-necked, herbivorous Plateosaurus lived about 220 million years ago in northern and central Europe and Greenland. The adults were between 4.8 and 10 meters long and weighed up to 4000 kilograms.
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