discovered<\/a> in 1963 near the central western Queensland township of Muttaburra by local grazier Doug Langdon.<\/p>\nIt is among the most skeletally complete ornithopod dinosaurs from the supercontinent Gondwana and is the fossil emblem of the state of Queensland.<\/p>\n
In new research, University of New England paleontologist Matthew Herne and his colleagues examined different parts of the Muttaburrasaurus langdoni\u2019s skull from a new specimen.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur discovery re-defines several assumptions made about the bumpy-nosed species, which is the fossil emblem of Queensland,\u201d Dr. Herne said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first astonishing discovery was that Muttaburrasaurus langdoni had teeth at the tip of its snout.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was unexpected, because the beak (front part of the snout) of Muttaburrasaurus langdoni was thought to be toothless like many other well-known plant-eating species such as Iguanodon from Europe and the \u2018duck-billed\u2019 hadrosaurs, mostly found in the northern hemisphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut ornithischian dinosaurs of this size normally have beak-like snouts without teeth, with a good example of this being Triceratops.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, the beak of this Australian dinosaur wasn\u2019t toothless and most likely a pickier eater.\u201d<\/p>\n
With its narrow toothy beak, Muttaburrasaurus langdoni would have browed for particular leaves and seeds and possibly even invertebrates for variety in their diet.<\/p>\n
This also means that Muttaburrasaurus langdoni evolved from an earlier offshoot of the ornithopod dinosaurs from Camptosaurus and Iguanodon, when the earlier forms of the small-bodied ornithischians all had toothed beaks.<\/p>\n
This new finding can help place Muttaburrasaurus langdoni more accurately on the dinosaur tree of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe findings were made by extracting the brain imprint on the skull and the inner ears,\u201d said Flinders University\u2019s Professor Vera Weisbecker.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe realized that its inner ear was more like dinosaurs that walked on two legs, like Tyrannosaurus rex, than others that spent more time on all fours.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s possible that Muttaburrasaurus langdoni was a large herbivore walking and running on its hind legs when needed and used its front arms for support to crop food closer to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
The researchers also found that the characteristic \u2018bulbous\u2019 shape of Muttaburrasaurus langdoni\u2019s nose is comprised of entirely new bones that are not found in other dinosaurs.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinding the new bones was exciting because they revealed two large complex air chambers above the main inhaled airflow which would have slowed down air as it breathed in,\u201d Dr. Herne said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we suspect that they indicate a very acute sense of smell, perhaps to help the animal find food, detect predators or assist in directional navigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis feature of the nose also matches their very large olfactory bulbs \u2014 among the largest of any dinosaur \u2014 which are the parts of the brain where smell is processed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe use of advanced CT scanning, neutron scattering and synchrotron technologies provided detailed 3D digital models of the jaws and teeth,\u201d added Dr. Joseph Bevitt, a researcher at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).<\/p>\n
The study<\/a> was published online in the journal PeerJ.<\/p>\n_____<\/p>\n
M.C. Herne et al. 2026. Cranial anatomy, palaeoneurology, palaeobiology and stratigraphic age of the large-bodied ornithopod, Muttaburrasaurus langdoni Bartholomai and Molnar, 1981, from the mid-Cretaceous of Australia. PeerJ 14: e20794; doi: 10.7717\/peerj.20794<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research shows that the large-bodied ornithopod dinosaur Muttaburrasaurus langdoni from the mid-Cretaceous of Australia was no ordinary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85,34510,3619,22598,198442,6567,25078,48777,151084,198443,111,139,96740,69,198444,198445,155609,3654,147,34516,198446],"class_list":{"0":"post-381758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-cretaceous","10":"tag-diet","11":"tag-dinosaur","12":"tag-eromanga-sea","13":"tag-evolution","14":"tag-fossil","15":"tag-gondwana","16":"tag-muttaburrasaurus","17":"tag-muttaburrasaurus-langdoni","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nose","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-olfaction","23":"tag-olfactory-bulb","24":"tag-ornithopoda","25":"tag-queensland","26":"tag-science","27":"tag-skull","28":"tag-snout"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Muttaburrasaurus](\"https:\/\/cdn.sci.news\/images\/enlarge13\/image_14699e-Muttaburrasaurus-langdoni.jpg\")
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