![\"Life](\"https:\/\/cdn.sci.news\/images\/enlarge13\/image_14526e-Foskeia-pelendonum.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nLife reconstuction of Foskeia pelendonum. Image credit: Martina Charnell.<\/p>\n
Foskeia pelendonum roamed our planet during the Early Cretaceous epoch, around 120 million years ago.<\/p>\n
The new species was a member of Rhabdodontomorpha<\/a>, a group of ornithischian dinosaurs that lived mainly during the Early to Late Cretaceous.<\/p>\n The ancient animal was diminutive, roughly comparable in size to a modern chicken, marking it distinct from many of its larger ornithischian relatives.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the beginning, we knew these bones were exceptional because of their minute size,\u201d said Dr. Fidel Torcida Fern\u00e1ndez-Baldor, a paleontologist at the Dinosaur Museum of Salas de los Infantes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is equally impressive how the study of this animal overturns global ideas on ornithopod dinosaur evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMiniaturization did not imply evolutionary simplicity \u2014 this skull is weird and hyper-derived,\u201d added Dr. Marcos Becerra, a paleontologist at the Universidad Nacional de C\u00f3rdoba.<\/p>\n \u201cFoskeia pelendonum helps fill a 70-million-year gap, a small key that unlocks a vast missing chapter,\u201d said Dr. Thierry Tortosa, a paleontologist at the Sainte Victoire Natural Reserve.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a \u2018mini Iguanodon,\u2019 it is something fundamentally different,\u201d said Dr. Ta\u0301bata Zanesco Ferreira a paleontologist at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n \u201cIts anatomy is weird in precisely the kind of way that rewrites evolutionary trees,\u201d said Dr. Pen\u00e9lope Cruzado-Caballero, a paleontologist at the Universidad de La Laguna.<\/p>\n The fossilized remains of at least five individuals of Foskeia pelendonum were collected from the Vegagete site in Burgos province, Spain.<\/p>\n