Caveman’s Best Friend? Venezuelan Paleontologists Find Dog-Sized Dinosaur Remains

Sized up at only 3 feet long and one foot tall, a new dog-sized dinosaur of the early Jurassic period was recently indexed into the fossil record after Venezuelan paleontologists harvested skeletal fossils they found in the La Quinta rock formations of the Venezuelan Andes. With its fossils carbon dated at roughly 200-million-years-old, the new species named Laquintasaura venezuelae, because of the region it was discovered in, opens up an entirely new avenue of the evolutionary tree (also known as phylogeny) as it gives scientists a deeper understanding of the poorly documented late-Triassic/earl-Jurassic periods.

Belonging to the "Ornithischia" order of dinosaurs, because of their bird-shaped hip structures and beak-like mouths, the new species was not only an important find for the fossil record, but also a record-breaking record as the first dinosaur fossil ever found in the regions of Venezuela-the researchers reported in their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Related to other species of Ornithischia, such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops, Laquintasaura Venezuelae has already proven to be a valuable resource of information for scientists in the area, as it helps expand and support or deny current working theories about dinosaurs of its era.

"[Laquintasaura] expands the early palaeogeographical range of Ornithischia to palaeoequatorial regions, an area sometimes thought to be devoid of early dinosaur taxa" lead author and merit researcher for the Natural History Museum of London, Paul M. Barrett said. " [Also] it offers insights into early dinosaur growth rates, the evolution of sociality and the rapid tempo of the global dinosaur radiation following the end-Triassic mass extinction-helping to underscore the importance of the Ornithischian record in broad-scale discussions of early dinosaur history."

Complex in that it shatters many working theories about dinosaurs of the early Jurassic period, Laquintasaura Venezuelae will serve as a primary model for its order, as paleontologists are acquiring vasts amounts of information from remains found on Barrett's dig.

"It is always exciting to discover a new dinosaur species but there are many surprising firsts with Laquintasaura" Barrett says. "[Also], it is fascinating and unexpected to see they lived in herds, something we have little evidence of so far in dinosaurs from this time."

So what do we know about the species thus far?

Laquintasaura Venezuelae Stats

Order: Ornithischia

Era: Early Jurassic Period

Height: 25 cm, approximately 1 foot tall

Length: 3 feet

Stance: Bipedal (Walked on Two Legs)

Region: Northern South America

Diet: Mostly Herbivorous, but teeth suggest they were at times Omnivorous

Social Structure: Herd Dwellers; Social Creatures

And as digs continue in the Andes, in regions of Venezuela and beyond, paleontologists hope to find even more remains to help better document the species and help answer many unanswered questions of their linking ancestors.