'Amazing dragon' fossils rewrite the story of long necked dinosaurs
Science
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Fossils unearthed on a hill in northwestern China are forcing scientists to rethink the story of a lineage of dinosaurs that produced the world's largest animals
Scientists announced the discovery of Lingwulong shenqi one of the first members of the famous group of vegetarian dinosaurs called sauropods long-necked, long-tailed, small-headed and paw-shaped legs. Lingwulong lived 174 million years ago during the Jurbadic period.
His name means "Amazing Lingwu Dragon", the nearest town to the site where a farmer spotted the fossils while keeping sheep
eight to ten Lingwulong individuals, the largest of which was about 57 feet in length. long, said paleontologist Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led the study published in the newspaper Nature Communications . a big bone of the shoulder in situ Lingwulong shenqi. "title =" Two technicians measuring a large bone of the shoulder in situ of Lingwulong shenqi. "clbad =" adaptive media-object placeholder "/>
Two technicians measuring a large shoulder bone in situ of Lingwulong shenqi.
| Photo credit:
REUTERS
Lingwulong represents the earliest known advanced member of the sauropod lineage, as defined by anatomical features that distinguish them from primitive sauropods appeared tens of millions of years earlier. The discovery repels by 15 million years the appearance of advanced sauropods, a lineage that will later include Jurbadic giants such as Diplodocus and Brontosaurus as well as Cretaceous behemoths such as Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus and Patagotitan who were the largest land animals ever recorded
. "Previously, we thought that all these advanced sauropods appeared 160 million years ago and quickly diversified and scattered on the planet in a time window of only 5 million years," says Paul Upchurch. , paleontologist at University College London. . "However, the discovery of Lingwulong means that this badumption is incorrect and we must now work with the idea that, in fact, this group and its main constituent lineages appeared earlier and more gradually."
Dinosaur Eating Plants
] Lingwulong lived in a warm and humid environment with lush vegetation including evergreens, ferns and other plants. His neck was not as long as other sauropods, and he could have grazed on low, soft plants with his teeth resembling stakes. Because so many individuals have been found together, researchers suspect Lingwulong, like other sauropods, to live in herds.
Lingwulong belonged to a sauropod subgroup that was previously absent from East Asia because it evolved the rest of Pangea, a former supercontinent. "Our findings indicate that East Asia was still connected to other continents at the time," Xu said.
