Handout image launched on June 16, 2023 by Chile’s State University of an illustration by Mauricio Alvarez of a dinosaur, which stays have been found in the Chilean Patagonia on June 8, 2023. Chilean scientists have found a new species of duck-billed dinosaur that lived 72 million years in the past in the far south of Chile. ‘onkoken nanoi is the identify of this new dinosaur species from an ancestral lineage of hadrosaurs, which might have migrated to the Southern Hemisphere lengthy earlier than extra superior types, and it’s believed that they could have even reached Antarctica.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Remains of a species of herbivorous dinosaur beforehand unknown in the southern hemisphere have been found in Chile, difficult long-held beliefs concerning the vary of duck-billed dinosaurs, scientists mentioned Friday.
Measuring as much as 4 meters (13 toes) in size and weighing a ton, Gonkoken nanoi lived 72 million years in the past in the intense south of what’s now Chilean Patagonia.
Handout image launched on June 16, 2023 by Chile’s State University displaying the tibia of a dinosaur fossil on the Valle del Rio de las Chinas, Magallanes, Chile, on January 20, 2013. Chilean scientists have found a new species of duck-billed dinosaur that lived 72 million years in the past in the far south of Chile. Gonkoken nanoi is the identify of this new dinosaur species from an ancestral lineage of hadrosaurs, which might have migrated to the Southern Hemisphere lengthy earlier than extra superior types, and it’s believed that they could have even reached Antarctica.
| Photo Credit:
AFP
“These were slender-looking dinosaurs, which could easily adopt a bipedal and quadrupedal posture to reach the vegetation at height and at ground level,” mentioned Alexander Vargas, director of the paleontological community of the University of Chile and one of the authors of the examine revealed by the journal Science Advances and introduced in Santiago.
The discovery demonstrated that Chilean Patagonia served as a refuge for very historical species of hadrosaurs, a kind of duck-billed dinosaur widespread in North America, Asia and Europe in the course of the Cretaceous interval, from 145 to 66 million years in the past.
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Their presence in the distant southern lands stunned scientists, who must “understand how their ancestors got there,” Vargas mentioned.
Gonkoken nanoi, the fifth species of dinosaur found in Chile, was truly found in 2013, kicking off a decade-long investigation.
The identify Gonkoken comes from the Tehuelche language, the primary inhabitants of the area, and means “similar to a wild duck or a swan.”
