It was reported in November 2021 that an international team of palaeontologists from four countries—Brazil, Portugal, Germany, and Denmark—announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur after constructing digital three-dimensional (3D) models of previously unearthed dinosaur bones. The new species has been named ‘Issisaaneq’ which, in Greenland’s Inuit language, means ‘cold bones’.
The team performed a micro-CT scan of two skulls excavated earlier. These included an almost adult skull, excavated by a group of palaeontologists from Harvard University in Jameson Land, East Greenland, in 1991 (the holotype, NHMD 164741, consisting of a relatively complete skull with lower jaws and teeth) and the skull of a juvenile, discovered in the same place in 1995 (the paratype NHMD 164758 of a skull with lower jaws, more complete than the holotype).
In 1994, the skull was mistaken for an already-existing species, Plateosaurus trossingensis, which is a long-necked dinosaur species known to have existed in France, Germany, and Switzerland.
Both specimens are part of the collection of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
According to the study titled ‘A New Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Late Triassic (Norian) of Jameson Land, Central East Greenland’, fossils of Issi show features thought to be exclusive to Brazilian sauropodomorphs like Unaysaurus and Macrocollum. This predecessor to the sauropodomorph was the largest terrestrial dinosaur species to ever exist. The two-legged species was a medium-sized herbivore with a long neck that attained a length of 13 feet, was five feet tall and weighed up to 100 kg. However, compared to the very long-necked dinosaurs that came after, it would have been a very small animal.
Issi, a plateosaurid dinosaur from the Late Triassic MalmrosKlint Formation of Greenland, is the first non-avian dinosaur described from Greenland. Researchers trace it back to about 214 million years ago (when eastern Greenland was connected to Europe).
A report of the findings was published in the journal Diversity.
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