2nd Luxembourg dinosaur discovery;
Credit: Roland Felten
Luxembourg's Museum of Naturtal History (Musée national d’histoire naturelle) has announced details of a second dinosaur find in the Grand Duchy.
Luxemburg paleontology never ceases to surprise us with spectacular discoveries. Pictured is a bone fragment of a second dinosaur identified for Luxembourg. After the predator was first presented four years ago, it has been identified as a herbivore close to the more well-known Ankylosaurs and Stegosaurs. The fossil is being exhibited from today at the 'natur museum'.
The bone fragment was discovered in Rumelange in Luxembourg; insignificant at first glance, it has recently been identified as the bone crest of the dermal cuirass of a thyrophore dinosaur. It was discovered by two amateur paleontologists and identified by the scientific collaborator of the National Museum of Natural History, Dr. Dominique Delsate, in collaboration with Dr. Xabier Pereda-Suberbiola of the University of the Basque Country.
Thyrophoric dinosaurs were medium-sized herbivores. The best known are undoubtedly Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus. The Luxembourg specimen belongs to a primitive representative of the group similar to Scelidosaurus.
The dermal patch of the Ottange-Rumelange find belongs to the second dinosaur described so far in Luxembourg and the first found in the Bajocian. On the other hand, it is one of the few discoveries of non-stegosaurian thyrophore dinosaurs in the Middle Jurassic period.
