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A dinosaur until then nicknamed the "Amazing Lingwu Dragon" was discovered in northwestern China, potentially rewriting the evolutionary history of a group of dinosaurs.
Paleontologist Xing Xu and a team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences a cluster of fossils belonging to Diplodocoids according to a new study published in Nature Communications.
Diplodocoids include well-known long-necked species such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus.
Fossils, dating from about 174 millions of years ago, were found in the Ningxia region of northwestern China.
The new discovery is 15 million years older than the first known members of this family up to now. has evolved everywhere.
The first Diplodocoid was named "Lingwulong shenqi", meaning "Lingwu's amazing dragon" after the city near where it was found.
Previously, we thought advanced sauropods arrived late Jurbadic and quickly became dominant on this planet, but this suggests that these dinosaurs evolved earlier and that they spread more slowly, "he said. M. Xu
., Lingwu and Ningxia Hui where fossil fragments of up to 10 partial skeletons (including parts of two skulls) ranging from juveniles to adults were discovered.
The new sauropod was based on the examination of these fossils, as Nature reported: "We name a new sauropod based on this material, and demonstrate that it is, to our knowledge, the first diplodocoid sauropod (and therefore also the oldest neosauropod), and the first in East Asia. "
" This discovery has major implications for calibrating the timing of neosauropod diversification, "[19459005Nature reported, and provides the "first glimpse of a previously hidden aspect of their evolutiona"
It was thought that the Diplodocoids had evolved after the disintegration of the supercontinent Pangea, but the discovery of these fossils has required rethinking.
Gentle Giants Eating Plants
These long-necked sauropods, which could extend up to 36 meters from head to tail, were the largest animals to have ever walked on land and dominated the planet 's "terrestrial ecosystems" for most of the dinosaur era. National Geographic the "Amazing Dragon" is "the first dinosaur of its kind ever found in Asia".
Scientists concluded that an inland sea had cut off East Asia and this so-called "mega-ditch" was preventing diplodocoids from reaching this region. "The discovery of our new animal … means that this hypothesis of isolation has been somewhat watered down, even seriously questioned," according to Paul Upchurch, paleontologist at University College London
. The groups supposed to be absent in China could have been present, but we do not see them there yet because of bad sampling in the fossil record rather than a real absence, "he said. said to National Geographic function (d, s, id) {
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