The findings solve a long-standing puzzle regarding European herbivores, showing that certain rhabdodontida Ornithopoda dinosaurs previously thought to be relatives of Iguanodon are actually Ceratopsia.
Researchers utilized a new, more complete skull find of Ajkaceratops alongside CT scans and evolutionary analyses to reevaluate the specimens, according to Civishir. The work was detailed in a study published in Nature by an international research team led by Susannah Maidment of the Londoni Természettudományi Múzeum and Ősi Attila of Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem.
The breakthrough centers on the Iharkút fossil site located in a decommissioned bauxite mine in Hungary’s Bakony region, which Ősi began excavating around the turn of the millennium as a geology student at ELTE, HVG reported.
Because the region existed for tens of millions of years as an isolated series of islands on the edge of the Tethys Sea, it produced distinctive endemic fauna found nowhere else on Earth, including armor-plated dinosaurs, large frogs, lizards, and a 80-to-90-centimeter fruit- and plant-eating crocodile with unusual teeth.
Long before the site gained international renown in paleontology, Ősi and his friend András Torma began collecting minerals and fossils there around 1998 and 1999 for the Bródy Imre Gimnázium, aided by teacher and deputy director László Mihályfi. The first vertebrate find at the location was a fragmentary vertebra of a mosasaur unearthed by Ferenc Szőke in 1999.
After consulting a geological map, Ősi identified the Csehbánya rock formation exposed by mining activity. Accompanied by a friend who was an honorary geologist and technical manager, he climbed down the quarry wall and chipped into a rock layer, uncovering a brownish bone that turned out to be the poor-condition vertebra of an armored dinosaur. Subsequent finds in the yellow sandstone layer launched continuous excavations spanning 25 years.