Oldest ornithischian dinosaur from Asia identified in southwest China

KUNMING, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Researchers have unearthed a fossil of an ornithischian dinosaur in Chongqing Municipality, southwest China, and identified it as the earliest of its kind ever found in Asia, according to the School of Life Sciences, Yunnan University.

The discovery was jointly conducted by researchers from Yunnan University, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Chongqing Planning and Natural Resources Bureau. Their findings were published in the journal iScience.

Researchers found that the fossil, dating back approximately 190 million years to the Early Jurassic period, represents a highly primitive form of the ornithischian dinosaur.

Despite the preservation of only a single femur, its morphological features suggest it predates all other ornithischian dinosaurs found in Asia, potentially tracing back to the origins of this group.

A detailed bone histological study of the femur revealed that it belonged to a subadult individual whose growth had significantly slowed, indicating that it was nearing adulthood at the time of death. Given the specimen's length of just 9.3 centimeters, researchers estimate the dinosaur's total body length to be around one meter.