Horned reptile that roamed in India 250mn years ago found

A team of researchers from India and Argentina has identified a new species of horned herbivorous reptile that used to roam in the forests of central India more than 250 million years ago. This distant relative of the dinosaurs went extinct nearly 200 million years ago.

The latest finding becomes important as it challenges the notion that horned species were restricted to dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period (140 million years ago) of Mesozoic era.

“Our finding changes the idea that the horns were exclusive for dinosaurs during the Mesozoic era (about 252 to 66 million years ago). The finding proves that horns had already developed in a distantly related group at least 100 million year earlier than the first horned dinosaur” said Saswati Bandyopadhyay, a professor of Kolkata’s Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) who led the project.

The researchers have named the new species Shringasaurus indicus. The name ‘Shringasaurus’ was derived from ancient Sanskrit and Greek roots and refers to the horns on its skull (‘Shringa’ which means horn and ‘sauros’ which means reptile). ‘Indicus’ (Indian) refers to its country of discovery.

The study was carried out by two researchers from ISI and a scientist from Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales in Buenos Aires. The findings have been published in Scientific Reports — a journal of the Nature Publishing Group on August 21, 2017.

“The animal was around 4-metres long, quadruped and was about 1.25-1.50 metres tall at the hip, with a relatively long neck and small head. The most striking feature of this animal is its pair of large horns in the skull, directly above the orbits. It had leaf-shaped teeth with small cusps, suggesting that it was herbivore,” said Saradee Sengupta, a former senior research fellow of ISI.

The researchers, during the excavations in the Satpura-Gondwana basin in central India over the last one decade, had collected several bones and fossils of prehistoric animals. The discovery was made when the three-member team was analysing the bones. “The discovery of an animal like Shringasaurus is outstanding because its pair of large horns on the skulls constitutes a characteristic that was completely unexpected for this group of reptiles,” said Martin D Ezcurra, the Argentine scientist.

The researchers claimed that Shringasaurus probably used its horns as weapons with other individuals of the same sex to get access to mates. Researchers believe that after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, often known as the Great Dying about 252 million years ago, nearly 95% species became extinct. But later archosauromorphs (crocodiles, dinosaurs — including their descendants — birds and their ancestors) became progressively the dominant animals on land.

RESEARCHERS HAVE NAMED THE SPECIES SHRINGASAURUS INDICUS, WHICH REFERS TO THE HORNS ON THE REPTILE’S SKULL