Researchers on Wednesday announced they have discovered a ferocious meat-eating dinosaur in Argentina, notable for having short arms like the T-rex, but hailing from a different branch of the family tree.
The Gualicho shinyae — nicknamed Gualicho — is a theropod, a two-legged, bird-like dinosaur. It stretched an imposing 6m from head to toe, and weighed an estimated 450kg.
It roughly resembles the Tyrannosaurus rex, but Gualicho, found in the north of Argentina’s Patagonia region, was not a close relative of the king of dinosaurs.
Image courtesy of Jorge Gonzalez and Pablo Lara via Reuters
Its stubby limbs evolved independently and not from a shared, short-armed ancestor — a clue that might help researchers better understand how the extinct animals evolved.
“This is a completely different lineage. We just froze up when we realized it,” Sebastian Apesteguia, a researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, told a briefing in Buenos Aires.
Its only known ancestor is the Deltadromeus, a leggy, carnivorous dinosaur with slender arms found in Niger.
The research on Gualicho in the scientific journal PLOS ONE was led by Apesteguia and Ruben Juarez Valieri, a specialist in carnivorous dinosaurs in Argentina’s Rio Negro Province.
The new dinosaur’s name Gualicho is in honor of a local indigenous deity with power over animals and the wind, and shinyae is in honor of Akiko Shinya, chief fossil preparator at Chicago’s Field Museum, who found the incomplete skeleton while working on the dig.
“We found Gualicho at the very end of the expedition. Pete joked: ‘It’s the last day, you’d better find something good.’ And then I almost immediately was like: ‘Pete, I found something.’ I could tell right away that it was good,” Shinya said.
She was referring to Peter Makovicky, the Field Museum’s curator of dinosaurs.
“Gualicho is kind of a mosaic dinosaur, it has features that you normally see in different kinds of theropods,” Makovicky said in a statement. “It’s really unusual — it’s different from the other carnivorous dinosaurs found in the same rock formation, and it doesn’t fit neatly into any category.”
“By learning more about how reduced forelimbs evolved, we may be able to figure out why they evolved,” Makovicky added.
Most of the recovered fossils are in the Patagonia National Sciences Museum and a provincial museum in the Argentine city of Cipolletti.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia