Brazil’s geological service on Thursday introduced a new species of dinosaur, a speedy animal that lived in the desert throughout the early Cretaceous interval. Image for Representation.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Brazil’s geological service on Thursday introduced a new species of dinosaur, a speedy animal that lived in the desert throughout the early Cretaceous interval.
The new species, referred to as Farlowichnus rapidus, was a small carnivorous animal in regards to the dimension of a modern-day seriema hen, or about 60-90 cm (2-3 ft) tall, in response to researchers. The discovery was revealed in scientific journal Cretaceous Research.
“From the large distance between the footprints found, it is possible to deduce that it was a very fast reptile that ran across the ancient dunes,” the geological service mentioned in a press release.
The early Cretaceous interval stretched from 100 to 145 million years in the past.
The fossilized dinosaur “trackways,” as scientists name them, have been first discovered in the Nineteen Eighties by Italian priest and paleontologist Giuseppe Leonardi in what immediately is town of Araraquara, in Sao Paulo state.
Leonardi donated one of many footprint samples, discovered in the so-called Botucatu formation, a gaggle of rocks fashioned by an historic dune desert, to Brazil’s Museum of Earth Sciences (MCTer) in 1984.
The footprints are completely different from all different recognized dinosaur footprints, mentioned MCTer paleontologist Rafael Costa.
