Scientists have found dinosaur skeletons in Patagonia
2023.01.17 10:11
Scientists have found dinosaur skeletons in Patagonia
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – The remains of megaraptors that would have dominated the region’s food chain prior to their mass extinction have been discovered by scientists in Chile’s Patagonia region, making them the southernmost dinosaur fossils ever found outside of Antarctica.
According to the Journal of South American Earth Sciences, megaraptors, a carnivorous dinosaur that lived in parts of South America 70 million years ago, had fossils that were up to 10 meters long.
Marcelo Leppe, director of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH), told Reuters, “We were missing a piece.” We were aware that large carnivores would also be found in areas with large mammals, but we had not yet discovered them.
The fossils, which were discovered in the Magallanes Basin in the far south of Chile in the Rio de las Chinas Valley between 2016 and 2020, also contain some unusual remains of unenlagia, velociraptor-like dinosaurs that probably lived covered in feathers.
Jared Amudeo, a researcher at the University of Chile, said that the specimens had some characteristics that were not present in their Brazilian or Argentine counterparts.
He stated, “It could be a new species, which is very likely, or belong to another family of closely related dinosaurs,” adding that additional evidence is required to be conclusive.
Additionally, the studies provide additional insight into the conditions of the meteorite impact on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, which may have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
In contrast to the extremely warm climate that prevailed for the majority of the Cretaceous period, INACH’s Leppe noted a sharp drop in temperatures over present-day Patagonia and waves of intense cold that lasted for up to several thousand years.
According to Leppe’s assertion, “the enormous variation we are seeing, the biological diversity, was also responding to very powerful environmental stimuli.”
He stated, “The rocks of the Rio de las Chinas Valley show that this world was already in crisis before the meteorite.”
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