Fossils & # 39; Amazing Dragon & # 39; unearthed in China Rewrite the story of the long-necked dinosaurs | Smart news

About 174 million years ago, a long-necked dinosaur roamed the plains of northwestern China. The Lingwulong shenqi or Lingwu Amazing Dragon, was a member of the Sauropod family, a group of dinosaurs that includes the famous Brontosaurus and the largest terrestrial mammals that roam the earth. The Lingwu dinosaur boasted about 50 feet from the head to the whipped tail, enjoyed a plant diet and – in a shocking twist to paleontologists – burst on the scene not only 15 million d & rsquo; years earlier than expected, but in a According to Newsweek's Aristos Georgiou an international team led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Xing Xu has uncovered fossils of eight to ten dinosaurs since the launch of excavations in 2005 Skeletal remains, paleontologists have reconstructed a profile of Lingwulong – recently published in the journal Nature Communications – and broken long-held beliefs about the origins of the sauropod family.

Xu tells Georgiou that the researchers thought that diplodocoids, a subgroup of a subgroup of sauropods known as neosauropods, emerged as a result of the split of Asia Pangea Sup There are about 164 to 158 million years old. (Neosauropods include most of the "famous" sauropod dinosaurs, such as apatosaurus and brachiosaurus.) As noted BBC News neosauropod fossils were found in North America, Europe and in East Africa, but so far, none has been more than 160 million years old, and none has been found in Asia. The lack of neosauropods in Asia has led scientists to conclude that the collapse of Pangea has created a vast sea that has prevented animals from the Jurassic period from moving to mainland.

According to Michael Greshko of National Geographic the new discovery suggests that the lineage of sauropods has branched in 15 million years earlier than in the past. we did not think so.

that many groups that were supposedly absent in China might have been present, but we still do not see them there due to poor sampling in the fossil record rather than a real absence " , paleontologist at University College London and co-author of the Paul study. In a statement from the UCL Upchurch adds that the presence of Lingwulong in Asia shows that multiple species of neosauropods have spread across the pangea idea that the dinosaurs of the world have become extinct. Asia have evolved independently of the rest of the world. Now, fossils dating back 174 million years are the earliest known examples of neosauropods, which has traced back the emergence of the Upper Jurassic to Middle Jurassic dinosaur family.

However, not all paleontologists are convinced. John Whitlock of Mount Aloysius College says to Jessica Boddy of Gizmodo that he does not believe that Lingwulong is a diplodocode and could be more related to the Chinese sauropods called Mamenchisaurus or Omeisaurus

Researchers are still learning about the "amazing dragon" and its habits, but Xu says Georgiou of Newsweek that Lingwulong probably traveled in herds and dined on plants at the lake. Philip Mannion, a co-author of the study and paleontologist at Imperial College London, further explains that the species was similar in appearance to other sauropods, although it has a slightly shorter neck.

"They were probably moving quite slowly.

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