Davide Bonadonna
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Reconstruction of the life of Saltriovenator zanellai.
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Her name is Saltriovenator zanellaidinosaur predator family Ceratosauria (ceratosaurus), a group of large theropods. Saltriovenator zanellai is the oldest known ceratosaurian that lived at the time Sinemurian or period Jurassic awal about 198 million years ago.
To note, early Jurassic predatory dinosaurs were usually very rare, and most were small. Discovery of Saltriovenator zanellai, its genus and species described in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ by title “The oldest ceratosaurian (Dinosauria: Theropoda), from the Lower Jurassic of Italy, sheds light on the evolution of the three-fingered hand of birdsThe publication is accessible online and is an open access journal.
Saltriovenator zanellai was the largest and most powerful theropod of the Early Jurassic, predating the appearance of theropods with a body mass of more than 1,000 kg. The radiation of the larger and relatively more stocky theropod averostran earlier than previously known may represent one of the factors that triggered the trend of gigantism in Early Jurassic sauropods.
The partial skeleton of Saltriovenator zanellai was accidentally discovered in 1996 by Angelo Zanella, an amateur fossil seeker and collaborator of the Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano. The fossil was found in a large mine located in the foothills of the Alps, on the Swiss-Italian border near Saltrio, less than 50 miles (80 km) north of Milan, Varese Province, Lombardy. Saltriovenator zanellai was the first Jurassic dinosaur discovered in Italy.
“Despite being fragmentary, Saltriovenator exhibits a mosaic of ancestral and advanced anatomical features, seen in four-toed dilophosaurids and ceratosaurs, respectively, and three-toed tetanuran theropods, such as allosaurids,” said first author Dr. Cristiano Dal Sasso, from Milan’s Natural History Museum, who reassembled and studied the fossil for several years as reported by science daily.
Dal Sasso et al.
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Saltriovenator zanellai fossil fragment found in Italy.
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Davide Bonadonna
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Reconstruction of the life of Saltriovenator zanellai..
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Some of the Saltriovenator bones have signs of eating marine invertebrates. The marks are the first such cases of dinosaur remains and show that dinosaur carcasses were left in ocean basins and then submerged, remaining on the ocean floor for quite a while before being buried.
“From the results of taphonomical analysis, and the results indicate erosion of bone by marine invertebrates (the first record for dinosaur remains). Researchers suggest a complex history for the carcass before being buried on the well-oxygenated and well-lit seabed,” the researchers wrote. in the report.
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