Enigmacursor, new dinosaur species, to be at NHM
The Natural History Museum will put Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, a dinosaur species new to science, on display. The animal roamed North America during the Late Jurassic 145-150 million years ago. The museum’s experts have undergone scientific research on the specimen, answering a 100-year-old taxonomic tangle and defining the fossil as a new species to science.
Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae was a two-legged herbivore from the well-known Morrison Formation in the USA. It has been officially recognised as a new species of dinosaur and will be on display at the Natural History Museum for free for all visitors.
Standing at half a metre tall and measuring little more than a metre long, Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae would have ran around the floodplains of what is now the western USA, beneath the feet of giants such as Diplodocus, like Dippy, and Stegosaurus, like Sophie who is also on display at the museum.
The fossil shows signs that the individual was not fully grown, the top section of the vertebrate being not fully fused, suggesting a young animal. It is also believed to have been a swift runner. Its name is inspired by the mystery over its classification that has finally been resolved in a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, co-authored by Museum palaeontologists Prof. Susannah Maidment and Prof. Paul Barrett.
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