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The new species found, named Ingenia prima, is about three times larger than the largest Tribadic dinosaurs and was found in 2015 at the Balde de Leyes deposit in the province of San Juan, 1,100 km away. 39, west of Buenos Aires
The discovery was published Monday in the specialized magazine Nature Ecology & Evolution and made public in Argentina by the Agency of Scientific Diffusion (CTyS) of the National University of La Matanza .
we found it, we realized that it was something different. We found a way, the first to be giant, among all the dinosaurs. That's the novelty, "says Cecilia Apaldetti, a researcher at the Institute and Museum of Natural Sciences at the University of San Juan (Imcn) and Conicet (National Council for Scientific and Technical Research) .
Researchers found vertebrae in the neck. and tail, the bones of the forelegs and parts of the hind legs.
According to Apaldetti, co-author of the study, this species "shows a growth strategy unknown until now and indicates that the origin of gigantism appeared long before it was thought. "
It is" herbivorous, quadruped dinosaurs that are easily distinguished by having a very long neck and a very long tail, group sauropods ", he said. Until this discovery, it was considered that gigantism had arisen during the Jurbadic period, about 180 million years ago.
The researcher Ricardo Martínez, also co-author of the book, argued that "Ingenia prima" date from a very high Tribadic high 205 million years. "
The team is working on the levels of the Tribadic, a time when dinosaurs were just beginning to appear. The first ones were small, but they evolved towards gigantism to defend themselves against the predators.
According to scientists, Ingenia prima is the first dinosaur to reach gigantism and although it is far from 70 tons, sauropods weigh heavier. Great at the end of the Cretaceous, the rate of bone tissue accumulation was greater than that of its time and the largest giants that inhabited Patagonia, south of Argentina.
– Cyclic Growth –
Dinosaur bone sections show cyclical seasonal growth, with a different type of tissue than other sauropods, allowing for growth very fast.
It is estimated that the species reached between 8 and 10 meters, since the found specimen, which measured between 6 and 7 meters, was juvenile and was still developing. And that weighed about 10 tons, the equivalent of two or three African elephants. Another feature of the species is the existence of "pneumatic cavities" in the bones that lightened the weight and would have promoted its growth, explains the work.
The dinosaur was found in the Balde de Leyes deposit, in San Juan, discovered in 2001 and hundreds of specimens were mined from 2014. The site, several thousand hectares, was a kind Savannah at the end of the Tribadic
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