[Animals] Dinosaur named after 2-faced Roman god could be 'missing link' in duck-billed dinos' evolution

[BirSaNN]

The plant-eating, raptor-like dinosaur lived during a time of great transition around 99 million years ago and was named after the Roman god Janus.

Paleontologists have unearthed a never-before-seen raptor-like dinosaur that lived during a period of extreme climate change around 100 million years ago. Researchers think the newfound species, named after the two-faced Roman god Janus, could be an evolutionary "missing link" between two key dinosaur groups.

The newly described species, Iani smithi, belongs to the clade Ornithopoda — an extinct group of nonavian, mostly bipedal dinosaurs with several birdlike features. It is unclear exactly how large this species was, but it likely grew to around 10 feet (3 meters) long. One of the standout features of I. smithi is its powerful jaw, which hints that the species exclusively ate plants. 

Researchers unearthed a partial skeleton of a suspected I. smithi juvenile in Utah's Cedar Mountain Formation in 2014. The bones — which include a nearly complete skull, several vertebrae and limb bone fragments — date to around 99 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous period.

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"Finding Iani was a streak of luck," study lead author Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University, said in a statement. "We knew something like it lived in this ecosystem because isolated teeth had been collected here and there, but we weren't expecting to stumble upon such a beautiful skeleton." 

The team described I. smithi in a new study published June 7 in the journal PLOS One.

The newly described genus Iani, of which I. smithi is the sole species, was named after Janus, the Roman god of change, who is often depicted with two faces. Researchers chose this name because I. smithi existed during a period of extreme climate change, which drastically altered the trajectory of dinosaur evolution.

link: https://www.livescience.com/animals/dinosaurs/dinosaur-named-after-2-faced-roman-god-could-be-missing-link-in-duck-billed-dinos-evolution