Jakarta –
Paleontologists discovered the fossilized forehead bone of a new species of dinosaur in Australia recently. This dinosaur is thought to have lived in Gondwana, an ancient supercontinent that existed 550 million – 180 million years ago.
The new dinosaur was identified as a species of Megaraptoridae. This type of dinosaur is a theropod, which has three claws like the T-rex. Because of this, this new dinosaur also ate meat (carnivorous), had very large hind legs compared to other dinosaurs, and had small front legs similar to arms.
Researcher Jake Kotevski and his colleagues stated that their find was the geologically oldest megaraptor skull fossil in the entire world. This is because previous findings often only found fossilized dinosaur teeth, as reported by the team of paleontologists in the journal Cretaceous Research.
Ancient Dinosaurs
Kotevski et al. reports the first non-teeth megaraptor dinosaur fossil. Kotevski et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2023.105769
This dinosaur is thought to be more ancient than other species because it was found in the upper Strzelecki Group, in the Gippsland Basin, Victoria. The Strzelecki Group is the oldest sedimentary layer from the earliest Cretaceous Period.
The Strzelecki Group unit consists of volcaniclastic sandstone (a composition of volcanic rocks), mudstone, conglomerate and thin coal deposited in a wide river valley between Australia and Antarctica. This sediment comes from an active volcanic system along the eastern side of Australia.
Mirip T-tex
Forehead bone fossil (frontal) This Megaraptoridae dinosaur shows similarities to members of the Tyrannosauroidea, the T-rex family. However, due to it being the first forehead bone of Megaraptoridae found in Australia, there are no local findings with which to compare it.
To overcome this, the researchers compared it with the forehead bone of a Megaraptor from the late Cretaceous Period in South America. However, the American dinosaur fossil was not fully mature and had a life span that was 30 million years apart from this new discovery.
However, the researchers concluded that this new dinosaur is an indication that the skulls of three-clawed Theropod dinosaurs became longer as they evolved. Apart from that, this finding strengthens the hypothesis that Megaraptor came from Australia as a result of the fragmentation of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana.
Watch the video “4 Dinosaur Diseases That Humans Also Experience”
(twu/pal)
2023-11-13 12:00:00
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