The UB Dose of Science offers us a foray into the world of dwarf dinosaurs from today’s Western Transylvania together with assoc. prof. Zoltán Csiki-Sava, PhD, paleontologist and teaching staff at the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics of the University of Bucharest.
Episode number 9 of the UB Dose of Science series can be accessed with just one click below.
Recently, an international team of researchers, of which Zoltán Csiki-Sava is a part, managed to identify a new species of dinosaur, called the flat-headed reptile from Transylvania or, by its scientific name, Transylvanosaurus platycephalus.
As the guest of this edition of the UB Dose of Science shows, the newly discovered species of dinosaur lived towards the end of the Cretaceous period, approximately 70 million years ago, in Western Transylvania. Moreover, this region, which at the time was a tropical insular area, surrounded by seawater and isolated from other landmasses, was home to a varied fauna of dwarf dinosaurs. What does it mean that they were dwarfs? As an example, the Transylvanian flat-headed reptile was about 2-2.5 meters long, while its relatives from Western Europe, from the South of France, for example, reached up to 5-6 meters.
Although the new species was identified based on cranial fragments that did not include dentition, paleontologists determined, based on similarities with other dinosaurs from Țara Hațegului, that Transylvanosaurus platycephalus was an herbivorous species, closely related to other animals in the area, such as the well-known Zalmoxes, today a kind of mascot of the UNESCO International Geopark Țara Hațegului.
However, despite all these similarities, the discovered bones also highlighted significant differences compared to the cranial bones of Zalmoxes, the skull of this new animal being much wider, especially in the posterior area, hence the name flat-headed dinosaur.
As a novelty, Zoltan Csiki-Sava shows that Transylvanosaurus platycephalus was also closely related to dinosaurs that lived around the same time in Western Europe, respectively in France, which led to the conclusion that between Hațeg island and certain island regions in Western Europe temporary connections were created at some point that allowed dinosaurs to move between these areas.
Zoltán Csiki-Sava talks to us about all these phenomena and their implications, as well as the future plans of the team of paleontologists of which he is a part, in the ninth episode of the UB Dose of Science.
Zoltán Csiki-Sava, PhD, is associate professor at the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics of the University of Bucharest. He is a recognized researcher in the field of paleontology and has made important contributions to the documentation of Cretaceous vertebrate fossils. His results related to small mammals and dwarf dinosaurs from Romania have been published in numerous prestigious international journals.
His most recent contribution to the field of paleontology is the discovery, together with an international team of paleontologists, led by Felix Augustin from the University of Tübingen and which also includes Dylan Bastiaans, from the University of Zurich, and the independent researcher Mihai Dumbravă, of a new species of dinosaur that lived on the current territory of the UNESCO International Geopark Țara Hațegului. Following the characteristics identified by the researchers, this new species is called the “flat-headed reptile from Transylvania” or Transylvanosaurus platycephalus, after the area where it lived approximately 70 million years ago.
More details on this discovery can be found here, and the article describing the new species, “A new ornithopod dinosaur, Transylvanosaurus platycephalus gen. etc. Nov. (Dinosauria: Ornithischia), from the Late Cretaceous of the Haţeg Basin, Romania” was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (27.10. 2022, e2133610) and can be accessed here.
*Some of the photos and video materials used in the clip are part of the personal archive of Zoltán Csiki-Sava and the archive of the UNESCO International Geopark Țara Hațegului of the University of Bucharest.
The clip was filmed in the greenhouses of the “Dimitrie Brandza” Botanical Garden of the University of Bucharest.
Launched in October 2021, the UB Dose of Science is a project that proposes a focused and dynamic way to communicate scientific information in an attractive, lively and expressive format, establishing a platform for dialogue with the public interested in science.
Initiated within the Science Communication Program, launched by the University of Bucharest in 2018, the UB Dose of Science is aimed at the public and encourages the connection between the academic and non-academic milieus, based on current and interesting topics.
The guests of this series, intended to represent a synthetic and engaging way of communicating the various fields of science, are mainly professors and researchers from the academic community of the University of Bucharest.
The materials in the UB Dose of Science include short and dynamic presentations of topics relevant to contemporary society: pollution, climate change, education, digitalization, significant research contributions and others. Thus, in addition to the fundamental dimension of communicating scientifically validated information, the UB Dose of Science also proposes an important component of social responsibility, reconfirming the role and mission of the University of Bucharest within society and contributing to the awareness of acute problems of today’s world and to the promotion of possible solutions to these problems.
