At the end of the Triassic period, the area now known as Wyoming in the United States was home to a strange creature with a parrot-like beak and a dinosaur-like body. It has been named Beesiiwo cooowuse, a new species.
Newly Revealed Creature in the U.S. – (Photo: Gabriel Ugueto).
In an interview with Live Science, paleontologist David Lovelace from the University of Wisconsin-Madison stated that Beesiiwo cooowuse is not particularly large, weighing only 5-7 kg and measuring about 0.6 meters in length.
This herbivorous creature primarily consumed coniferous plants and ferns, using its parrot-like beak to effectively strip and cut leaves. It belongs to a larger group of ancient reptiles known as rhynchosaurs.
Five fossil specimens of rhynchosaurs have been excavated from the Popo Agie Formation, a geological formation from the Triassic period in the Bighorn Mountains, part of the Northern Rocky Mountains in the United States.
Three out of the five specimens belong to the new species Beesiiwo cooowuse. Since the site where it was uncovered falls within the territory of Native American lands, scientists collaborated with the Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office to name it using the Arapaho language, which means “large lizard from the Alcova area.”
A study recently published in the scientific journal Diversity indicates that it belongs to the group of the oldest lizards. The creature’s strange “hybrid” shape is not surprising, as it is a distant relative of both modern-day crocodiles and birds.
Because the specimen includes part of the creature’s jaw, it has also helped scientists reconstruct the landscape and environment of the region during the Triassic period.
