[ A size comparison of three rhabdodontids, (left to right) Mochlodon suessi, Rhabdodon priscus and Transylvanosaurus platycephalus. Illustrated by Peter Nickolaus. ]
"When you think of dinosaurs, you might automatically imagine iconic dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. But at the same time when these were stomping on the ancient coastal plains of North America, some of their very distant cousins were reigning over Europe's lands. During the Late Cretaceous (between 100 and 66 million years ago), Europe was an extensive archipelago with numerous small and large islands situated in a shallow tropical sea, the so-called Late Cretaceous European Archipelago. The dinosaur groups that lived on these islands were very different from those of other continents, often being much smaller than their mainland relatives. These European dinosaurs include small and medium-sized carnivorous theropods, armored ankylosaurs, long-necked sauropods, duck-billed hadrosaurs, and rhabdodontids. Arguably one of the most important of these European dinosaur groups is the family Rhabdodontidae, which groups together the most common medium-sized herbivores of the Late Cretaceous European Archipelago. A joint research team from the Universities of Tübingen (Germany), Budapest (Hungary) and Bucharest (Romania) recently reviewed what we know about these peculiar dinosaurs in a new paper published in the journal Fossil Record."
Read more: "Europe's very own dinosaurs: The enigmatic Late Cretaceous rhabdodontids"
