In Depth
Changmiania is a genus of small ornithopod dinosaur that lived in Asia during the early Cretaceous. The genus was described in 2020 upon the description of two individuals whose level of preservation can only be described as exceptional. The describers speculated that these individuals may have been buried alive in their own burrows, and because this would have protected them from the ravages of erosion and scavengers pulling the bodies apart, these two dinosaurs not only still had their skeletons articulated but also three dimensionally preserved.
Further reading
- A new basal ornithopod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China. - PeerJ. 8: e9832. - Y. Yang, W. Wu, P. Dieudonn� & P. Godefroit - 2020.