Researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), working with colleagues in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, have just described a remarkable new species of dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of northern Spain. Their findings are the subject of a read-only paper in Papers in Palaeontology.
The tiny herbivore, named Foskeia pelendonum, lived around 125 million years ago, yet it is already forcing palaeontologists to rethink part of the ornithopod family tree. The discovery provides another striking example of how the fossil record continues to grow in detail, resolution, and explanatory power.
This will come as an unwelcome development for creationists, who still cling to the claim that evolution is “just speculation” and that the fossil record contains no meaningful evidence of transitional relationships or evolutionary diversification. On the contrary, finds like Foskeia show exactly what evolutionary science predicts: new lineages appearing in the right strata, in the right environments, with a mixture of ancestral and derived traits that help clarify how later forms evolved.
Creationists will, of course, respond in the usual way. Some will insist that this dinosaur is “just another dinosaur”, as though classification and evolutionary relationships are irrelevant. Others will retreat to the vacuous assertion that it represents merely “variation within a kind”, without ever defining what a “kind” is or explaining why such variation produces a nested hierarchy that maps so precisely onto geological time. And as always, the more committed will simply dismiss the evidence altogether, because no amount of fossil discovery can compete with a belief system that must remain true regardless of what the rocks contain.
Yet the significance of Foskeia pelendonum lies precisely in the details. This was not simply a juvenile form of a larger dinosaur, but a genuinely small-bodied species, confirmed by bone histology to have reached adulthood. Even more intriguingly, it possessed unexpectedly specialised skull and dental features, showing that evolutionary change does not always follow the simplistic “bigger and more advanced” caricature imagined by creationists, but often proceeds through ecological experimentation, miniaturisation, and adaptation to local conditions.
Far from undermining evolutionary theory, discoveries like this strengthen it. They refine the dinosaur family tree, help fill long-recognised gaps in the ornithopod record, and demonstrate once again that the history of life is written not in Bronze Age mythology but in the sedimentary archive of deep time — an archive that continues to contradict creationism with every new fossil unearthed.
Background^ Small Ornithopods, Deep Time, and Dinosaur Diversity. Ornithopods were a highly successful group of plant-eating dinosaurs that flourished throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous. They ranged from small, lightly built runners to the later, highly specialised duck-billed hadrosaurs. Far from being a monotonous “kind”, ornithopods diversified into numerous lineages, each adapted to different environments, diets, and lifestyles over tens of millions of years.Details of the find and its significance for evolutionary biology is explained in a news release from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
Foskeia pelendonum belongs to a subgroup known as rhabdodontomorphs, a lineage of ornithopods that became especially important in Europe during the Cretaceous. These animals show a distinctive combination of traits linking earlier, more generalised ornithopods with later, more specialised herbivores. Fossils like Foskeia help palaeontologists understand how these branches evolved and how Europe’s dinosaur fauna developed in relative isolation as the continent became fragmented into island environments.
One of the most significant aspects of this discovery is that Foskeia was not merely a juvenile dinosaur. Researchers examined the microscopic structure of its bones (bone histology) and found evidence that at least one specimen had reached adulthood. This confirms that this was a genuinely small-bodied species, not simply a young individual of a larger animal. Such studies allow scientists to reconstruct growth rates, life history, and metabolism — powerful tools that creationism cannot account for within its simplistic framework.
The discovery also highlights an important evolutionary principle: small size does not mean evolutionary primitiveness. Foskeia possessed unexpectedly specialised skull and dental features, showing that evolution often produces highly adapted forms in miniature, shaped by ecological pressures rather than any imaginary ladder of “progress”.
In short, fossils like Foskeia pelendonum do exactly what evolutionary theory predicts: they reveal intermediate branches, unexpected diversity, and a deep history of change across geological time — the very opposite of the static, separately created “kinds” demanded by creationist ideology.
Tiny new dinosaur Foskeia pelendonum reshapes the dinosaur family tree
An international team has described Foskeia pelendonum, a tiny Early Cretaceous ornithopod from Vegagete (Burgos, Spain), measuring barely half a meter long. Led by Paul-Emile Dieudonné (National University of Río Negro, Argentina), the study reveals an unexpectedly derived skull and positions Foskeia near the origin of the European herbivorous lineage Rhabdodontidae.
From the very first moment anybody sees this animal one is staggered by its extreme smallness, and yet it preserves a highly derived cranium with unexpected anatomical innovations.
Paul-Emile Dieudonné, lead author
National University of Río Negro
Argentina.
The fossils, representing at least five individuals, were first uncovered by Fidel Torcida Fernández-Baldor of the Dinosaur Museum of Salas de los Infantes.
Reconstruction of the skull of Foskeia pelendonum© Dieudonné et al. 2025
From the beginning, we knew these bones were exceptional because of their minute size. It is equally impressive how the study of this animal overturns global ideas on ornithopod dinosaur evolution.
Fidel Torcida Fernández-Baldor, co-author
Dinosaur Museum
Salas de los Infantes
Spain.
The genus name Foskeia is derived from the ancient Greek. The prefix fos means ‘light’, given the very lightweight and small body size of grown individuals (Dieudonné et al. 2023). The combination of letters ‘skei’ derives from boskein, which means foraging. The species name pelendonum refers to the Pelendones, a Celtiberian tribe from the Fuentes del Duero (north of the province of Soria, southeast of Burgos and perhaps the southeast of La Rioja).The researchers emphasize the evolutionary significance of Foskeia.
Composite image of the foot skeleton of Foskeia pelendonum, its finding locality, and size comparison with a human being.
© Dieudonné et al. 2026
Miniaturization did not imply evolutionary simplicity — this skull is weird and hyper-derived.
Marcos Becerra. co-author
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
Córdoba, Spain.
Foskeia helps fill a 70-million-year gap, a small key that unlocks a vast missing chapter.
Thierry Tortosa, co-author
Sainte Victoire Natural Reserve
Saint-Antonin-sur-Bayon, France.This is not a ‘mini Iguanodon’, it is something fundamentally different.
Tábata Zanesco Ferreira, co-author
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Its anatomy is weird in precisely the kind of way that rewrites evolutionary trees.
Penélope Cruzado-Caballero, co-author
Universidad de La Laguna
San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain.
Histological studies supervised by Dr. Koen Stein (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) confirm that the largest specimen was a sexually mature adult.
Bone microstructure tells us that at least one individual was an adult… with a metabolic regime approaching that of small mammals or birds. Knowledge of growth and development is essential if we want to compare the anatomy of Foskeia with other species. Young individuals are prone to changes in anatomical features as they grow.
Dr. Koen Stein, co-author
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Brussels, Belgium.
Growth trajectory of Foskeia pelendonum, compared to an adult chicken. This trajectory is based on differently sized bony elements and their histology. Note the proportionally smaller forelimbs in the more mature individuals.© Dieudonné et al. 2026
A new phylogenetic analysis places Foskeia as sister to the Australian Muttaburrasaurus within Rhabdodontomorpha and expands the European clade Rhabdodontia. The dataset also recovers a topology reviving the long-debated Phytodinosauria.
Despite its small size, Foskeia shows specialized dentition and evidence of shifting posture during growth, relying on bursts of speed in dense forests.
In our results, the plant-eating dinosaurs… form a natural group called Phytodinosauria. This hypothesis should be further tested with more data. These fossils prove that evolution experimented just as radically at small body sizes as at large ones. The future of dinosaur research will depend on paying attention to the humble, the fragmentary, the smalls.
Paul-Emile Dieudonné.
Publication:
The discovery of Foskeia pelendonum is yet another reminder that the fossil record is not some static catalogue of unchanging “kinds”, but a vast, ever-expanding archive of evolutionary history. Each new find adds resolution to the picture, revealing not sudden acts of creation, but branching lineages, intermediate forms, and unexpected diversity shaped over immense spans of geological time. Far from being a problem for evolutionary theory, fossils like Foskeia are precisely what the theory predicts: organisms appearing in the correct strata, with mixtures of traits that clarify how later groups evolved from earlier ones.
Creationism, by contrast, has no coherent explanatory framework for such discoveries. It cannot account for why dinosaurs are found only in Mesozoic rocks and never in recent sediments, why their distribution follows the shifting geography of ancient continents, or why their anatomy forms a nested hierarchy of relationships that becomes clearer with every new specimen described. The only response available is the familiar mixture of denial, vague appeals to “kinds”, and the insistence that nothing in the fossil record will ever count as evidence, because the conclusion has already been decided in advance.
And *Foskeia* also undermines another creationist caricature: that evolution is merely a process of linear “progress” from simple to complex. Here we find a genuinely small dinosaur, confirmed as an adult by bone histology, yet possessing specialised skull and dental adaptations. Evolution does not work towards an imagined ladder of perfection — it explores ecological possibilities, producing both giants and miniatures, specialists and generalists, all shaped by natural selection and historical contingency.
So once again, a fossil pulled from the rocks of deep time quietly dismantles the creationist narrative. The history of life was not conjured into existence a few thousand years ago in a single week of supernatural magic. It was built, patiently and relentlessly, over hundreds of millions of years — and the Earth continues to preserve the evidence, whether creationists like it or not.
Every new dinosaur species described is another nail in the coffin of the myth of separate creation.
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