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Fossils unearthed on a hill in northwestern China are forcing scientists to reconsider the story of a line of dinosaurs that has produced the largest animals that have ever crossed the planet.
Lingwulong shenqi, one of the first members of the well-known group of herbivorous dinosaurs called long-necked sauropods, long-tailed, small-headed and paw-shaped legs. Lingwulong lived 174 million years ago during the Jurassic period.
His name means "Amazing Lingwu Dragon", the closest town to the site where a farmer saw fossils while grazing sheep. bones of at least eight to ten individuals of Lingwulong, the largest being about 57 feet (17.5 meters) long, said the Xing Xu paleontologist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications
Lingwulong represents the oldest known advanced member of the sauropod lineage, as defined by the anatomical features that distinguish it from the primitive sauropods that appeared dozens of years ago. millions of years
. There are 15 million years ago, the appearance of advanced sauropods, a lineage that would later include Jurassic giants such as Diplodocus and Brontosaurus, as well as Cretaceous monsters such as Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus and Patagotitan that were the largest recorded terrestrial animals.
"Previously, we thought that all these advanced sauropods appeared 160 million years ago and have diversified and spread rapidly across the planet in a time window of only 5 million. years, "said paleontologist Paul Upchurch, co-author of the study.
" However, the discovery of Lingwulong means that this assumption is incorrect and now we have to work with the idea that, in In reality, this group and its main constituent lineages appeared a little earlier and more gradually, "he said Upchurch
Lingwulong lived in a warm and humid environment with lush vegetation that included conifers, ferns and other plants.His neck was not as long as other sauropods, and he could have brushed low, sweet plants with his pigeon-shaped teeth.Because so many people have been found together , researchers suspect that Lingwulong, like other sauropods, lived in herds.
Lingwulong belonged to a subgroup of sauropods that were previously absent from East Asia because they evolved that this land mass was separated from the rest of Pangea, an ancient supercontinent.
"Our findings indicate that East Asia was still connected to other continents at that time," Xu said
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