Rare toothless dinosaur, likely a carnivore

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Today, a piece of land in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná is called the Pterosaurs’ Cemetery because of the hundreds of fossilized pterosaur bones found in the ancient basin. So when paleontologists working there unearthed a new fossil creature with a horny, parrot-like beak, they at first assumed it was yet another flying reptile.

Instead, researchers were shocked to learn that they’d found a whole new species of toothless dinosaur. Even stranger, the animal belongs to a group called the ceratosaurians—almost all of which were carnivores.

The fossilized skeleton, described in the journal Scientific Reports, belongs to a new species called Berthasaura leopoldinae that lived between 80 million and 70 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.

The formal name is a nod to Bertha Lutz, an important Brazilian scientist who championed women’s suffrage, and Maria Leopoldina, an Austrian who became Empress of Brazil and was a defender of the natural sciences.

“An absence of teeth alone doesn’t confirm eating habits,” he says. To suss out an ancient animal’s diet, scientists usually turn to a handful of techniques and tools. One involves examining stable isotopes left by food on fossilized teeth—impossible in Berthasaura’s case. Another creates a precise 3D model of the animal’s cranium to see how it would have moved while biting, tearing, or chewing possible food items. But because Berthasaura’s bones were found disarticulated, that can’t be done either.

Aline Ghilardi, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte notes the value of the skeleton being near-complete and extremely well preserved. 

Source - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/rare-toothless-dinosaur-is-an-oddity-among-its-carnivorous-cousins?

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