Newly Discovered Dinosaur May Explain Earth’s Prehistoric Past

Researchers are considering the recently discovered Iani smithi (Iani), a mid-Cretaceous plant-eating dinosaur, a “last gasp” of a species as the planet’s climate warmed and altered life for its prehistoric inhabitants. 
According to a recent study from North Carolina State University, I. smithi was an early ornithopod — a species that would eventually lead to duckbill dinosaurs like Parasaurolophus and Edmontosaurus — that lived 99 million years ago. Researchers found the nearly intact fossil — including vertebrae, skull and limbs — of I. smithi in Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation. 
Newly Discovered Dinosaur May Explain Earth’s Prehistoric Past