New ‘wallaby’ dinosaur discovered in Australia. Here’s what it looked like

Mar 12, 2019

By Herb Scribner

Scientists say they have discovered a new dinosaur that was about the size of a wallaby.

A group of researchers recently discovered the new Galleonosaurus dorisae, or Galleonosaurus for short, according to research published in the Journal of Paleontology. And apparently the dinosaur — which existed 125 million years ago in the Victoria, Australia, region — walked around on hind legs during the Cretaceous period.

Sound familiar? It should. The Galleonosaurus was akin to the modern-day wallaby.

“These small dinosaurs would have been agile runners on their powerful hind legs,” said Dr. Matthew Herne, a vertebrate palaeontologist from the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, according to CNET.

The Galleonosaurus, which was named for its jaw that looked like a galleon, was a smaller ornithopod (the most successful herbivores in that era of dinosaurs), BBC News reported.

Researchers from the Dinosaur Dreaming project, which runs out of Monash University and Museum Victory, discovered the dinosaur, which was reportedly smaller than most common ones.

Herne said he and his colleagues have spent the last decade looking through fossils of the area, Australia’s ABC reported.

This wallaby-sized dinosaur roamed the lost land between Australia and Antarctica.

Its name is Galleonosaurus dorisae, it had hips a bit like a bird's, and it's helping scientists understand where Australia's dinosaurs fit into the global picture. https://t.co/J1bCildlzD pic.twitter.com/Vduucl7W17

— ABC Science (@ABCscience) March 11, 2019

“It’s a lost world. None of this is now available or evident except for fossils, and the only place we can actually access these fossils is along the southern coast of Victoria,” he said.

Herne said that there were several species that were small and had hips like birds living along the rivers and lakes in the area.

“It seems that Galleonosaurus was no doubt closely related to possibly as many as four or five other species that look a little bit similar and were similar sizes,” Herne said. “But we can tell they’re different by the anatomy of the jaws and the teeth.”