Dinosaur research

The "Hamburg dinosaurs"

From the group of sauropods, specifically the Flagellicaudata, from the approximately 150 million year old Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic, USA), four largely completely preserved and recovered skeletons have been acquired for the new Hamburg Natural History Museum, including the rare finds of young animals of different ages. Such finds are also extremely rare in the Morrison Formation and have hardly ever been studied.

This is where the Hamburg project comes in, as part of which the four skeletons of different growth stages will be analysed with regard to various relevant questions.

Differences between young and old dinosaurs

The questions we are trying to answer with the help of the Hamburg dinosaurs are as follows: Do juveniles form different ecological niches than adults? Were the juveniles nestling or fledging? What can we say about the demographic distribution and population structure of these sauropods in the Morrison Formation?

With the help of histological studies on the original bones, the individual age of individual animals can be determined. Comparative anatomy and phylogeny allow us to determine which species the skeletons belong to in detail; in addition, geometric morphometrics give us clues to ontogenetic changes in the shape of individual bones.

If we correlate all this with the stratigraphy and geography of the Morrison Formation, we will be able to better understand how and where juvenile and adult sauropods lived and how nature was able to maintain such a high biodiversity and biomass of megaherbivores in the first place.