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Paleontologists found the bones of at least eight individual lingwulongs after a farmer discovered several fragmented fossils. What does the incredible Lingwu Dragon tell about long-necked dinosaurs and Pangea? ( Zhang Zongda )
A newly discovered dinosaur species discovered in China challenged the theories about the evolution of some of the greatest creatures that have ever walked on earth.
In a study published in Nature Communications researchers reported a new Chinese species of sauropod that raises questions about the theories about the history of long neck dinosaurs
Amazing Dragon Of Lingwu
The discovery of the creature named Lingwulong shenqi Which means "the amazing dragon of Lingwu", suggests that sauropods appeared about 15 million years earlier than expected.
Xing Xu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences of Beijing, and his colleagues dug the fossils in several quarries of a hill near Ciyaopu in the city of Lingwu. A local farmer named Ma Yun found several fragmented fossils on the hill and sent them to local authorities, triggering an investigation. Paleontologists have finally searched the bones of at least eight individuals Lingwulong
Neosauropod
Lingwulong's anatomical features suggest that he is the oldest known advanced member of the family Sauropods, and different from primitive sauropods appeared tens of millions of years ago.
The newly discovered dinosaur was a neosauropod, a group of long-necked herbivores that includes Brontosaurus and Diplodocus.
Rewrite the History of the Sauropods
Previous research suggested that neosauropod flourished in the late Jurassic. There are between 163 million and 145 million years ago, but researchers estimate that lingwulong shenqi fossils date back 174 million years. This suggests that neosauropods roamed Pangea much earlier in the Middle Jurassic.
"This type of dinosaur is Middle Jurassic and at this age it is unexpected, because for this line of sauropods we have only fossils of later deposits," Xu said. "This means that a whole group of different lines of sauropods appeared on the planet earlier than we thought."
Fossils also proved that these long neck dinosaurs were in East Asia much earlier than expected. "This discovery has major implications for calibrating the timing of neosauropod diversification, provides the first glimpse of a previously hidden aspect of their evolutionary history, and questions the hypothetical status of East Asia as an island continent." isolated during the Jurassic ". Xing Xu and his colleagues wrote in their study.
The researchers that the Lingwulong is also the first neo-sauropodium of Asia. Scientists have long believed that these species did not enter Asia during the Jurassic Period
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