Researchers have discovered fossils of four types of dinosaurs, including a Megaraptor and two groups of birds that lived at that time, in a remote area of Patagonia, Chile, that has become an important repository for fossils.
After collecting fossils in 2021 at Cerro Guido, located in the Valle de Las Chinas, near the border with Argentina, some 2,800 kilometers south of Santiago, scientists verified in the laboratory that they belonged to dinosaurs that had not yet been discovered. identified at that location. .
The Chilean Institute of Antarctica (Inach), in collaboration with researchers from the University of Chile and the University of Texas, in the United States, managed to identify remains of four types of dinosaurs, including teeth and postcranial bone parts of a Megaraptor. , belonging to the theropod family.
“It is always very interesting in scientific terms to discover something that had not been found before in the valley of Las Chinas, where we are beginning to get used to new discoveries of fossil remains,” Marcelo Leppe, Agence France-Presse (AFP), told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday. Director of Inach.
These carnivorous dinosaurs had raptor claws, small, sharp teeth, and large upper limbs, which, according to this research, places them at the top of the food chain in this area, where they lived between 66 and 75 million years ago, end of the s. the Cretaceous.
“One of the characteristics that allowed us to identify with great certainty its connection with the Megaraptoridae is, first of all, that the teeth are highly curved backwards,” said Jared Amudeo, a researcher at the University of Chile, quoted in the statement.
Two Unenlagia were also identified, linked to Velociraptors, which have an “evolutionary character, which would indicate that it would be a new species of Unenlagia or possibly a representative of a different clade (group), “he explained.
The researchers also found remains of two bird lineages: an Enantiornithe, the most diverse and abundant group of birds from the Mesozoic, and an Ornithurinae, a group closely related to modern birds.
In December 2021, Chilean paleontologists presented the remains of a Stegouros Elengassen, an enigmatic dinosaur whose club-shaped tail intrigued scientists, which had been discovered in this same area of Chilean Patagonia.
Source: TSF
