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During the late Triassic period roughly 230 million long time ago , a squat reptile with a honker - like mouth dwell in what is now Wyoming .
Paleontologists identified the corpse of the herbivorous reptile , which is a shank , or former archosaurian and therefore a aloof relative of advanced - sidereal day birds and crocodiles , as a novel genus and coinage of rhynchosaur , a chemical group of industrial plant eaters determine by their parrot - same beaks . The team account the newly key out metal money , which they dubbedBeesiiwo cooowuse , in a study published April 10 in the journalDiversity .
An artist’s interpretation ofBeesiiwo cooowuse, a newfound genus and species of rhynchosaur. In the background isHeptasuchus clarki, another Triassic beast that lived in the region.
" Beesiiwowas not especially big , " co - authorDavid Lovelace , a vertebrate fossilist at the University of Wisconsin - Madison , say Live Science in an email . He estimates that an grownup probably weighed between 10 and 15 pounds ( 5 to 7 kilo ) and was roughly 2 foot ( 0.6 m ) long .
Researchers can only speculate the specific works that it eat .
" We do bang from paleo pollen and plant life remains that there were definitely coniferous tree , fern and horsetail plants around that may have contributed to its diet , " Lovelace said . Its beaked oral cavity " could very well have been used for strip or clip leaves , but again , there is no direct evidence of this that I know of . "
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In total , fossilist unearth five rhynchosaur specimen at the Popo Agie Formation , a Triassic geological formation located in the Bighorn Mountains , part of the northerly Rocky Mountains . Three of the specimen , include shard of upper and lower jawbones , belong to the new species .
Because the fossil were located on Native American land , the researcher partnered with leaders from the Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Office to name the new speciesBeesiiwo cooowuse , which , in the Arapaho voice communication , means " big lizard from the Alcova area " of central Wyoming , harmonise to astatement .
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The naming is part of a collaboration among the Arapaho people , students from Fort Washakie Schools ( FWS ) located on the Wind River Indian Reservation and the university to decolonize palaeontology . Despite the abundance of fossils discovered in the American West , it ’s the first clock time a specimen found on Native land has been named in the Arapaho language .
" This is an exciting piazza to do fieldwork because this geologic formation has n’t really been studied in nearly a century , " Lovelace enounce in the argument . " We get this multicultural , multigenerational interaction in the flying field where elders , FWS scholar , UW - Madison student and scientist are all working together to integrate westerly skill , aboriginal science and traditional ecological knowledge . "
