Ritika Katariya

A Kulindadromeus fossil was discovered in the Siberian region of Russia, buried deep under the mountain beds. The discovery of this dinosaur is credited to a number of paleontologists, including- Pascal Godefroit, Yuri Bolotsky, Michael Benton, Alexander Sizov, Paul Spagna, Maria McNamara, Danielle Dhouailly, and Sofia Sinitsa.

Although this was an uncanny place to be located, it is known to belong to a bonebed containing hundreds of disarticulated specimens. The procured remains, the fossil feathers, are rare to find according to science.

To add to its uniqueness, this dinosaur shows evolutionary structures similar to that of modern birds.

Although completely different genera, the filaments of this Ornithischian dinosaur resembled the body structures of many other feathered theropods. As the feathers were an important element of this discovery, they were well studied to draw further correlations to the theropods and other possible dinosaur groups.

The filaments of the Kulindadromeus were mainly of two types. The first type, the filaments covering the head, neck, and upper body, which were unbranched.

These types of feathers were thought to be exclusive to the theropods. The leftover feathers, especially the central feathers, were somewhat downturned.

The other type of filaments were the long ribbon-like filaments that extended all the way down to form the Kulindadromeus tail. The feathers present on the body also suggest that pterosaurs and dinosaurs, including birds, had body structures that made them ancestrally fluffy.

Earlier, science held that only theropods possessed the feature of being covered in feathers. This idea was likely because all the specimens that had been discovered supported this idea.

However, this dinosaur from the Siberian Jurassic debunked that long-held belief.

In fact, the discovery indicated that feathered body structures covered a larger section of dinosaurs and were more common than we think. Different species contained feathers and scales, and there were still so many unnamed dinosaurs present across history that weren't discovered to highlight this.

Thus, the discovery of the Kulindadromeus truly opened up new ideas. The discovery itself was a complex, intriguing, and one of a kind discovery in the history of science.

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The Baryonyx or the Baryonyx walkeri was first discovered in In 1983, by a fossil hunter William Walker who uncovered a giant claw in a brick pit in Surrey, England. Its initial research started indicating the resemblance to the Spinosaurus.

Walker's son-in-law then took the bone to specialists at London's Natural History Museum, (England) where they assumed the bone to be a part of some unidentified predator.

To uncover the mystery, the team then descended to Walker's pit, which yielded several new bones, including vertebrae, limb elements, and a slender snout.

Initial in 1986, Charig and Milner named a new genus and species with the skeleton as holotype specimen: Baryonyx walkeri. Just through the quickest findings, the snout and length of its jaws emerged as a distinctive feature.

Its jaws could take a lot of stress which is probably why they have a name meaning 'heavy claw.' The snout of Baryonyx was unlike that of most theropod dinosaurs: long and narrow, with rows of, finely serrated teeth.

The serrated teeth are a feature borne by animals like a crocodile who predate on and eat flesh.

Their teeth were rounded in cross-section rather than flat like the teeth of lots of other meat-eating dinosaurs.

Such a feature was more suited to a predator that ate fish. They also had sharp three-toed claws which a lot of modern piscivores have.

Subsequently, their remains revealed that they resided near rivers and freshwaters which made the researchers conclude that the Baryonyx was a fish-eating dinosaur who dipped and hunted in shallow waters alone. One of the first piscivores, the Baryonyx is a unique dinosaur in the Jurassic world.

Despite the striking resemblance of its specimen to the crocodiles of the modern world, it is not the ancestor of crocodiles, although the taxonomic identity of the fish-eating dinosaur was confirmed to be a Spinosaurus.

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The Platecarpus is an interesting creature in the history of the ancient world. Surprisingly, dinosaurs of all sorts used to exist in the world before us.

When you hear the word 'dinosaur' a huge reptile thumping on the ground is probably what you imagine.

But did you know, dinosaurs could not only walk or run but fly and swim as well!

Here, we have the Platecarpus that could swim and lived underwater! The Platecarpus is an aquatic reptile that swam in the oceans.

Upon the discovery of its first fossil by Professor B. F. Mudge, Dale Russell determined the remains to be too scattered to be placed within any genus, and called the specimen to be of 'uncertain taxonomic position'. Later, Prof. Edward Drinker Cope classified the reptile under a different genus called 'Clidastes planiformes'.

After much research, finally, the specimen was later given the status of a genus 'Platecarpus' in the year 1898 with a description and evidence as a medium-sized mosasaur by Russell.

While mosasaurs were most abundant in North America, the possibility of specimens being spotted across Belgium and Africa has also been expressed.

Through the research, the genus Platecarpus was discovered to have two taxons (Konishi and Caldwell) namely 'P ictericus' (Platecarpus ictericus) of the Late Cretaceous Niobrara Formation of Wallace County, Kansas and 'P. tympaniticus' (Platecarpus tympaniticus) is regarded as the most common genus of mosasaur in the Western Interior Sea, Kansas.

The latter was the most numerously collected mosasaur taxa in North America. The most unique and interesting feature of this species was the preservation of its fossil that contains skin impressions due to the presence of of soft tissues, certain pigments around the nostrils, bronchial tubes, and an exceptional tail fluke.

The preservation of the Platecarpus is thus regarded as totally groundbreaking.

Out of these, The skin impressions of the specimen are considered to be Apart from these amazingly uncommon attributes, the Platecarpus lungs were bifurcated into two halves and both the lungs were known to be functional.

A detailed analysis of the animal from the Upper Cretaceous by Konishi and Caldwell reveals the presence of a streamlined body which plants the seed of evolution of streamlined body in modern-day fishes. A deep red spot in one of the vertebrae was also found and interpreted as evidence of the presence of hemoglobin.

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The Aurornis was first discovered in present-day northeastern China.

The specimen was described as a primitive fossil -belonging to the group of feathered dinosaurs, by Hu Dong-Yu, Gareth Dyke, Pascal Godefroit, François Escuillié, Andrea Cau, and Wu Wenhao in the year 2013. The general name Aurornis was actually procured from the word 'aurora' which is Latin and means ‘daybreak,' and the Greek word ornis for ‘bird.'

The primitive feathered dinosaur was actually discovered by a farmer on work.

According to Pascal Godefroit of the Royal Belgian institute, it is a revolutionary discovery as it went through immense debate and controversy to stand against the Archaeopteryx as the earliest bird.

Other researchers like Dr. Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum in London, viewed it as a wonderful opportunity to re-define what you could call a bird and opened new avenues for re-evaluation of past discoveries.

The Aurornis was thus looked upon as a link to study the relationship between dinosaurs and birds, thus an important fossil in the history of bird lineage.

Although the title of the oldest bird was long held by the archaeopteryx, according to Gareth Dyke Aurornis ranks even ahead of the Archaeopteryx as the oldest member of the bird lineage.

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