![\"Life](\"https:\/\/cdn.sci.news\/images\/enlarge13\/image_14545_1e-Haolong-dongi.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nLife reconstruction of a juvenile Haolong dongi. Image credit: Fabio Manucci.<\/p>\n
Haolong dongi lived in what is now northeastern China during the Early Cretaceous epoch, around 125 million years ago.<\/p>\n
The new species was a type of iguanodontian<\/a>, a major group of ornithopod dinosaurs.<\/p>\n Evolutionarily, they sit between small, early bipedal ornithopods and the later, highly specialized duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs).<\/p>\n \u201cIguanodontia were the dominant herbivorous dinosaurs in most terrestrial ecosystems throughout the Cretaceous,\u201d said Dr. Pascal Godefroit from the Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels and his colleagues.<\/p>\n \u201cThe clade reached its zenith during the closing stage of this period, as hadrosaurids \u2014 or duck-billed dinosaurs \u2014 spread over most continents.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe discovery of remarkable \u2018mummies\u2019 from North America and Mongolia revealed precious information about hadrosaurid integument, which consisted of an intricate and often mosaic arrangement of tubercle-like and non-imbricating scales, with enlarged tabular scales along their dorsal midline.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBy contrast, less information is available about the integument of more basal iguanodontians, with only isolated patches of scaly imprints known in Tenontosaurus, Iguanodon and Mantellisaurus to suggest a scale pattern reminiscent of hadrosaurids.\u201d<\/p>\n Preserved integumentary structures in the holotype of Haolong dongi. Image credit: Huang et al., doi: 10.1038\/s41559-025-02960-9.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n