Saturday 31 March 2018

New Patagonian predator sheds light on mysterious meat-eating dinosaur group

The new predatory dinosaur Tratayenia rosalesi crosses a stream in what is now Patagonia, Argentina roughly 85 million years ago.
Although many new dinosaur species have been discovered over the past few decades, entire groups of these animals remain shrouded in mystery. One of these is the Megaraptoridae, a shadowy pack of predators that terrorized South America and Australia during the middle and late stages of the Cretaceous Period – the third and final time period of the Age of Dinosaurs. Today, paleontologists announced the discovery of a never-before-seen member of this motley crew that casts light on the skeletal structure of megaraptorids and the roles they played in their long-vanished environments. Named Tratayenia rosalesi, the new species is based on fossil bones collected in Neuquén Province, Argentina – located in the northern part of the wild, windswept region of South America known as Patagonia. A study of the new creature—named after the locality where it was found, Tratayén, and its discoverer, Argentine fossil hunter Diego Rosales—was recently published in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research.
According to study leader Juan Porfiri of the Museo de Ciencias Naturales of the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Neuquén, "When Diego told us about his find, we quickly got permission from the Dirección Provincial de Patrimonio Cultural


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-patagonian-predator-mysterious-meat-eating-dinosaur.html#jCp

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