Giant dinosaurs lived on Earth much earlier than previously thought, according to a team of excavators in Argentina who discovered the remains of a 200 million-year-old species.
The species, baptized Ingentia prima, was about three times the size of the largest Triassic dinosaurs from its era.
It was discovered in the Balde de Leyes dig site in San Juan Province, 1,100km west of the capital, Buenos Aires.
Photo: Reuters
The find was published on Monday in the specialist journal Nature Ecology and Evolution and revealed in Argentina by the National University of La Matanza’s Scientific Dissemination Agency.
“As soon as we found it, we realized it was something different. We found a shape, the first giant one among all the dinosaurs. That’s the surprise,” said Cecilia Apaldetti, a government and National University of San Juan researcher.
Excavators found several vertebrae from the neck and tail, as well as fore and hind leg bones.
Photo: AFP / AGENCIA CTyS
The species “exhibits a growth strategy that was unknown until now and indicates that gigantism originated much earlier than was thought,” said Apaldetti, the study’s coauthor.
These were “herbivore dinosaurs, quadrupeds, easily recognizable by their very long neck and tail, and from the sauropod group,” she added.
Before this discovery, it was thought that gigantism developed during the Jurassic period, about 180 million years ago.
Coauthor Ricardo Martinez said he believes I. prima is from “a late Triassic period, possibly 205 million years” ago.
The Triassic period extended from about 250 million to 200 million years ago and the Jurassic from 200 million to 145 million years ago.
The team has been studying the Triassic period, when dinosaurs were just beginning to appear. The first ones were small, but as they evolved they tended towards gigantism to defend themselves against predators.
I. prima was the first dinosaur species to reach gigantism, and even though it was a long way from the 70 tonnes of the biggest sauropods at the end of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago), the speed of bone tissue accumulation was greater than that of species from its era and the biggest giants that lived in southern Argentina’s Patagonia, the scientists said.
Its bone fragments displayed cyclical and seasonal growth, with a different kind of tissue to other sauropods, which allowed it to grow very quickly, they said.
It is believed that the species grew to 8m to 10m tall — the specimen found was a growing youth measuring 6m to 7m — and weighed about 10 tonnes, equal to two or three African elephants.
Another of the species’ features was air cavities in its bones, making it lighter and promoting growth.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS