The story began on 20 12, when Esteuf Niya Tempmü ller called her son, Brazilian paleontologist Rodrigo Tempmü ller. Esteuf told her son that his uncle had found some fossils on a rural property in Agudo, southern Brazil.
Miller told Life Science that this motherly hint quickly led to an important discovery: a previously unknown sauropod dinosaur skeleton was discovered, and the skulls of two dinosaurs were completely preserved. It is extremely rare to find the fragile skull of sauropods, especially in the Early Triassic period about 225 million years ago. [Photo: I saw an armored dinosaur named Zur from Ghosts]
The field work of extracting fossils from a rock took nearly a month, and the final rock mass weighed 5 tons (4.5 metric tons).
The fossils of Julang were painted with gypsum to be protected during transportation. But these fossils are so heavy that researchers need heavy machinery to move them. (CAPPA/UFSM) The analysis of dinosaur bones shows that this dinosaur named Macrocollum itaquii is the oldest long-necked sauropod dinosaur on record. In other words, it seems that sauropods developed their famous long necks, which enabled them to be in the early Norga (an era of Triassic)
But what does the researcher mean by "long neck"? "There is a clear definition," said Miller, the lead researcher of the study and a paleontologist at the Fourth Colonial Paleontology Research Center of the Federal University of Santa Maria. The neck length of newly discovered dinosaurs is twice as long as that of sauropods, such as Buriolestes schultzi and Eoraptor lunensis.
This is a cartoon showing all the bones (white) of the newly discovered dinosaur itaquii. (Miller, R. et al. Biocommunication. In fact, the extreme elongation found in the newly discovered cervical vertebrae of Itaquin monkeys usually occurs in Massopondylus, a sauropod found in young rocks in the early Jurassic, Muller said.
The name Macrocollum itaquii combines the Greek word "makro" and the Latin word "Colam" to represent the slender neck of dinosaurs. The name of this species is in memory of JoséJerundino Machado Itaqui, who helped establish the Paleontology Research Center of the Fourth Colony.
M.itaquii is about 1 1 foot (3.5 meters) long and weighs about 220 pounds (100 kg). However, Muller said that the individuals discovered by paleontologists are not yet fully mature, which indicates that adult individuals may be a little big. More importantly, although sauropods later walked on four legs, these sauropods were bipeds, which means they only walked on two legs.
"It has a small head and a long neck," Miller said. It has a big, sharp paw on its thumb. "The shape of its teeth indicates that the dinosaur was a herbivore, but it may have supplemented its food with meat," he added.
The researchers even created a new dinosaur group called Unaysauridae, which was composed of species from Brazil and India, and they were once connected in Gondwana. "Mueller said:" This group of studies helps us to understand the distribution of Triassic sauropods, indicating that they spread from the west to the east of Gondwana (a part of Gondwana) and later reached Loresia (today's North America and Eurasia). . [Photo: The pointed dinosaur is in Utah, but it has Asian roots. For example, Stephen Polopat, a postdoctoral fellow in paleontology in swinburne university of technology, Australia, said: "Itakui's discovery is the gospel of paleontology, because almost complete bones and sauropod fossil skulls are" really rare ",and he did not participate in this research.
This is one of the two well-preserved skulls of the newly discovered sauropod dinosaur sauropod. (Miller, R. et al. Biocommunication. Polopat told Field Science in an email: "I remember seeing a picture of a skull now named Macrocollum a few years ago, and I was shocked by how well it was preserved." Interestingly, such an ancient (early) sauropod has such a long neck, because it shows that the giant Colosaurus and its relatives have been carrying out various adaptation experiments, and these adaptations have obviously been well utilized by the subsequent sauropods in Jurassic and Cretaceous. For more than 100 million years,
In the study, Miller and his colleagues speculated that because the fossils of three Iquio individuals were found together, these dinosaurs may have lived in groups, which means they may have lived in groups. But polopat says there may be other factors at work.
"Although this may be true, it is also possible that several malachite individuals died in the same small area for different reasons," Polopat said. Maybe they gather around a rapidly drying water hole, or they fall into a swamp or mire independently, but for a relatively short time.
Polopat said that if researchers decide the reasons for strengthening friendly behavior, they can conduct detailed geological research on the site to determine the ancient environment.
This study was published in today's online edition of Biology Letters (165438+1October 2 1).
Photo of Titan: Meeting the largest dinosaur on record The first photo of dinosaur skeleton found in Alaska's Denari National Park: Exploring the symmetry of dinosaurs, whose ancestors were originally published in Life Science magazine.