Newly identified dinosaur that lived on island of dwarfed creatures had an unusual head

CNN ^ | November 28, 2022 | Katie Hunt,

[BenLurkin]

Discovered in what’s now western Romania, the Transylvanosaurus platycephalus (flatheaded reptile from Transylvania) was 2 meters (6 feet) long — a relatively small size for a dinosaur, according to a new study. Its skull bones were unearthed in 2007 in a riverbed of the Haţeg Basin.

In the Cretaceous Period, this region of Romania was a tropical archipelago. Dinosaurs living there were smaller than their relatives elsewhere; paleontologists think these dinosaurs were an example of what biologists call “island rule,” where large animals isolated on islands become dwarfed or stunted in their growth over time and small animals become larger.

Sauropods, the largest type of dinosaurs that have ever lived, reached average heights of a puny 6 meters (nearly 20 feet) on the archipelago, for example, compared with 15 to 20 meters (49.2 to 65.6 feet) typical for the group.

[SteveH]

binocular vision? and in a herbivore??