A monstrous femur found from the Ziliujing Formation in Yubei District, Chongqing City, China, just 2 kilometers from Chongqing Central Park, has helped paleontologists identify a previously unknown species of creature.

The specimen dates back to 193 million years, the early Jurassic period, and belongs to the Ornithischia order.

A research team led by paleontologist Xi Yao from Yunnan University (China) named the new beast species Archaeocursor asiaticus.

According to a paper published in the scientific journal iScience, this is the earliest branching Ornithischia species ever discovered in Asia.

"Ornithischia, a prominent dinosaur clade, diversified into various forms such as ankylosaurs, stegosaurs, hadrosaurs, ceratopsians and pachycephalosaurs throughout the Mesozoic," Sci-News quoted Dr. Yao as saying.

According to the authors, by the early Jurassic, Ornithischian fossils were abundant and diverse in the southern supercontinent Gondwana.

Meanwhile, in the northern supercontinent Laurasia - where most of the land in Asia today belongs - the fossil record of this dinosaur order is very sparse.

During the time when Ornithischia dominated the southern supercontinent, the northern supercontinent was mainly occupied by a group of large armored dinosaurs.

Therefore, the appearance of Archaeocursor asiaticus is very valuable to paleontologists, which can help them understand more about how this group of dinosaurs arose and evolved in Laurasia.

This beast, despite its fearsome appearance, was small, measuring just 1 meter long, and was a plant eater. Phylogenetic analysis shows that it was closely related to a Gondwanan ornithischian, Eocursor parvus .

This discovery indicates that there must have been an earlier dispersal event of Early Jurassic Ornithischian dinosaurs from Gondwana to Laurasia, including East Asia, which appears to be independent and possibly earlier than the dispersal of armored dinosaurs.

This means that there is at least one previously unknown ancestral Ornithischia group, much older than the Chinese specimens as well as those from the global south, that scientists are hopeful of finding in the future.