{"id":93237,"date":"2025-08-24T09:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T09:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/93237\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T09:35:09","slug":"new-dinosaur-species-discovered-istiorachis-macarthurae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/93237\/","title":{"rendered":"New dinosaur species discovered: Istiorachis macarthurae"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Paleontologists have discovered a new dinosaur species with a very distinctive feature, a sail-like structure running down its back, the Natural History Museum in London announced on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The bones of Istiorachis macarthurae, named in honour of record-breaking British sailor Ellen MacArthur, were uncovered on the Isle of Wight, a small island just off the south coast of England, where it roamed more than 120 million years ago alongside other Iguanodon relatives \u2014 a group of herbivorous dinosaurs that lived from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous periods.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Scientists aren\u2019t exactly sure exactly why it had such an exaggerated sail-like feature on its back, though they hypothesize it might have helped the dinosaurs attract a partner and recognize each other as belonging to the same species.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Previously, this specimen, discovered about 40 years ago, was thought to belong to one of the two iguanodontian species known to have lived on the Isle of Wight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">But when retired doctor Jeremy Lockwood was re-examining the bones as part of his PhD studies, he realized that \u201cthis one had particularly long neural spines, which was very unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Identifying this distinctive sail-like feature helped define the dinosaur, which was around 2 metres (6.6 feet) tall and weighed around 1,000 kilograms (2,205 pounds), as a new species, Lockwood said in a statement. He published his findings in the journal <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/spp2.70034\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Papers in Palaeontology<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThe discovery of another iguanodontian from the Isle of Wight shows that this was a very diverse area in the Early Cretaceous,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019m sure there\u2019ll be more discoveries in the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Istiorachis macarthurae lived at a time when Iguanodon dinosaurs were evolving to develop taller and taller spines, he found.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cPartly, we think this was for muscle attachment,\u201d Lockwood said.\u201cIguanodontians were changing from small bipedal dinosaurs into much bigger animals that spent more time on four legs, so they would have needed stronger muscular support for their backbones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Even in this context, the Istiorachis macarthurae\u2019s backbone is unusual. Lockwood argues against one potential theory that the sail could have helped the dinosaur regulate its body temperature, saying that a \u201csail with a lot of blood vessels would be very vulnerable to attack and could cause massive blood loss if it was damaged.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Instead, he believes that \u201csexual signalling is the most probable explanation,\u201d meaning that the sail would fulfil a similar to a male peacock\u2019s tail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWhen a characteristic is exaggerated beyond its practical function in living animals, it is invariably due to the evolutionary pressure to attract a mate. Istiorachis\u2019 sail seems to be another example of that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">By Issy Ronald, CNN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paleontologists have discovered a new dinosaur species with a very distinctive feature, a sail-like structure running down its&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[712,49,48,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-93237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}