(ORDO NEWS) — In Argentina, paleontologists discovered the fossilized remains of an ancient predator, whose length was about ten meters. This makes it the largest known megaraptor to date.
The announcement of the opening was published on the website of the Argentine National Museum of Natural History, and is briefly reported by Fox News. The remains of a previously unknown species of pangolin about 70 million years old were discovered in Patagonia, in the south of the country.
The discovery was made by a team of 40 paleontologists, and it also included Japanese scientists from the National Museum of Tokyo. The expedition began in March. For a month, researchers explored a rocky area in the southwest of Santa Cruz province.
They put together a large collection of fossils. Among them, the remains of a huge animal belonging to the family of dinosaurs Megaraptor Idea stand out.
These megaraptors were a group of predators that inhabited South America, Asia, and Australia during the Cretaceous. They had a thin and light skeleton, as well as a long tail, which was used as a “steering wheel”.
They had powerful and long hind limbs that allowed them to run fast. But their main feature was frightening claws, the length of which reached 35 centimeters. Scientists believe that it was these claws, and not powerful toothy jaws and strong muscles, that were the main weapons of such megaraptors.
In this they differed, for example, from the famous Velociraptor or Rex tyrannosaurus. The length of these previously unknown predators reached 10 meters. Paleontologists believe that small herbivores, ornithopods, were the main prey for megaraptors. Their remains were also found in the area.
In addition, last year, the skeleton of the ornithopod Isasicursor was discovered here, which is also about 70 million years old. This means that megaraptors lived at the same time with them. By the way, these predators were three times larger than velociraptors and lived at the very end of the dinosaur era.
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