(ORDO NEWS) — Paleontologists at the Brazilian National Museum announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur that lived in the territory of the modern South American republic 70-80 million years ago. The ancient lizard was named Berthas aura Leopoldina, portal G1 reported on Thursday.
The find was made at the so-called pterosaur cemetery in the area of the city of Cruzeiro do West, 30 km from Curitiba, the administrative center of the southern state of Parana. According to scientists who have been working on the restoration of the animal’s appearance for seven years, during excavations that lasted from 2011 to 2014, they managed to find a fairly large number of bones of this Cretaceous dinosaur.
“We have a skull, jaw, spine, bones of the shoulder girdle and pelvis, front and hind limbs. Thus,” Bertha “is one of the dinosaurs of the Brazilian Cretaceous period that have come down to us in the most complete form,” the portal quotes the director of the museum as saying Alexandra Kellner. The reptile was named after the famous Brazilian zoologist Berta Lutz, Empress Maria Leopoldina and named after the last samba school “Imperatriz Leopold’s”.
The animal had a unique skull shape and, unlike other relatives whose remains were previously found on the continent, had no teeth. This fact makes scientists wonder what exactly the ancient reptile ate. “We could assume that her diet was different from most of the dinosaurs in this group. But the fact that the animal did not have teeth does not in itself mean that it could not eat meat,” says museum researcher Giovanni Alves di Sousa.
As for the external dimensions of the reptile, its length was about one meter from the nose to the tip of the tail, and its height was about 80 cm. The weight of the animal, moving on its hind legs, did not exceed 8-10 kg, scientists believe.
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