The Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, 145 million years and the first period Jurassic known in Chile, is a new type of Dinosaur of the “most bizarre discovered so far” and is a true “evolutionary puzzle,” said Fernando Novas one of its discoverers.
The existence of this dinosaur is published in an article in the journal Nature , signed, among others, Novas, researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Buenos Aires, who studied the bones This specimen.
The “ Chilesaurus diegosuarezi ” was discovered in 2004 in the vicinity of Lake General Carrera, in Chile’s Aysen region (south of the Chilean Patagonia), the seven year old Diego Suarez -in whose honor the name-son of Chilean geologists leads.
This is a new dinosaur within the theropods , but does not belong to any known groups so far, but “is the first representative of a lineage hitherto unknown to science,” said Novas .
Among the theropods there canívoros famous as the Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus, but, unlike these, “Chilesaurus” was herbivorous, as revealed by his horny beak and teeth shaped spatula.
Thus, the discovery of this issue reinforces the theory that dietary diversification towards vegetarianism was more common than previously thought between basal theropods, the article published in Nature .
The size of a small horse, his arms were robust, but his hands had only two very short fingers ending in slightly curved claws, which shows that not used to hunt animals.
The Chilesaurus could be described as Novas, “like a lion-headed guanaco and withered hands like an ostrich.”
Its anatomy cause further confusion among paleontologists since his hip reminiscent of the herbivores, strictly ornitisquios dinosaurs and -anchos feet and four fingers are similar to those of more primitive dinosaurs.
That strange combination of anatomical features, Novas said is a “true evolutionary puzzle” and said that there is the possibility that these bones are a mixture of different types of dinosaurs that were in the same place.
Diego Suarez found, while hitting rocks with a hammer in search of fossils, a vertebra of a few centimeters and a rib, but later excavations unearthed more than a dozen “very complete and articulated” specimens, which leave no doubt that It was a dinosaur that combined all that variety of features.
Following the discovery of Suarez and once contacted the Argentine paleontologists Leonardo Salgado and Fernando Novas, it was decided to conduct a series of joint excavations, the first in 2010 between Chilean and Argentine experts in the area, which resulted in the collection of numerous skeletons .
The fossils were transferred to the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires, and “in the course of the following months were watching poking each of the bones that were part of a beautifully preserved skeleton” Novas said.
Already at that stage of technical preparation will be realized they were “facing a very strange dinosaur combining relevant anatomical features the three main lineages that dinosaurs are divided: theropods (mostly carnivores), ornithischians (strictly herbivores) and sauropodomorph (also herbivores).
Novas stressed the importance of this dinosaur for the country in which it was found, it is the first Jurassic Newspaper known so far in Chile, where there are very few documented- dinosaurs, one of the “best documented” theropod from South America and the first herbivorous theropod southern hemisphere.
Although Chilesaurus “was a very strange animal”, the large number of remains found suggests that this was one of the most common inhabitants in southern Patagonia 145 million years ago and reveals the story of the dinosaurs was ” much more complex than we imagined, “said the expert.
Researchers have not, so far, records the Chilesaurus had a close relative or a descendent, therefore, the aim of Novas and his team is now revealing what were their ancestors.
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