Scientists find new species of dinosaur with an intriguing appendage: a ‘sail’ on its back

A new species of dinosaur with a fascinating appendage, a ‘sail’ on its back, has been discovered by scientists. So far, scientists have no idea about what was the purpose of this unique feature for the dinosaur.

They have been pondering over it, guessing could the feature have helped the animal in regulating body temperature? Or, did the dinosaur arrogantly use the sail for showoff?

In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal ‘PLOS ONE’, researchers have described the new dinosaur species as Morelladon beltrani.

Some 125 million years back, when it used to walk the Earth, Morelladon was only over eight-feet tall and stretched about 20-feet long. At that time, the animal belonged to the medium-sized ones.

Scientists found a partial skeleton Morelladon that they have explained in the new paper. They said the fossils were mainly vertebrae and pelvic bones.

With the help of the vertebrae, researchers were able to get information about the animal’s sail. They discovered elongated spinal bones that might have projected vertically from the back of dinosaur that formed the feature.

Speaking to The Christian Science Monitor in an interview, study author Fernando Escaso said, “It's difficult to know what is the main function or purpose of this tall neural spine”.

Dr. Escaso suggested that the sail was linked to thermoregulation for keeping the bodies of animals at a healthy temperature. However, he added that probably it was more like a hump of camel and stores additional fat for the animal for the times of insufficient food supply. He mentioned that they don’t have direct evidence all they have is just the bones, and no fat, no tissue.

Yahoo News reported that, these creatures stood out from the others in this Cretaceous Period landscape by virtue of the unusual sail-like structure on their backs, and experts today can only hypothesize about its function. Scientists announced on Wednesday the discovery near the town of Morella in Spain's Castellón Province of the fossil remains of a medium-sized dinosaur they named Morelladon, a four-legged herbivore that measured 6 metres (20 feet) long.

According to the Plos, Until recently, the Early Cretaceous European fossil record of styracosternan iguanodonts was composed of basal representatives of the node-based clade Hadrosauriformes sensu Sereno, or members of the outgroup. Delapparentia, Hypselospinus, Iguanodon, Mantellisaurus and Proa were the hadrosauriform styracosternans recognized from several Lower Cretaceous formations. A recent re-evaluation of the phylogenetic relationships indicates a new subclade of non-hadrosauriform styracosternans (‘iguanodontoids’) and includes most of these previously considered European hadrosauriforms. In this new view, all of the European Cretaceous large-bodied styracosternans lie outside of the Hadrosauriformes according to a new definition of the clade.

CS Monitor report said, Scientists discovered a partial skeleton Morelladon that they describe in the new paper. The fossils are mainly vertebrae and pelvic bones. The vertebrae tipped researchers off to the animal's sail. They found elongated spinal bones that would have protruded vertically from the dinosaur's back, forming the feature.

"It's difficult to know what is the main function or purpose of this tall neural spine," study author Fernando Escaso tells The Christian Science Monitor in an interview.