Discovery of a dinosaur with giant legs in China

A new dinosaur has been discovered that lived 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, and impressed researchers with the exceptional size of its hind limbs. The animal’s legs were twice as long as its thigh, a size that was probably adapted to life in a swamp, which made it easier for it to hunt for food.

The new species was described in research published in the journal nature After a fossil was found in Zhenghe County, Fujian Province, China. The animal has been named FujianVinator Miracle“Fujian” in reference to the place where it was discovered, and “venator” and “miracle” which mean hunter and stranger in Latin, respectively.

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Tyrannosaurus is the ancestor of modern birds

The dinosaur is classified as belonging to the clade My elephantsWhich includes all modern birds and some dinosaurs. According to researchers, the discovery Wow miracle It will allow us to understand the origin and evolution of the body plan of birds, which was little known in the Late Jurassic, due to the limited amount and diversity of fossils available for study.

Our comparative analyzes show that the observed changes in body plan occurred along the early avian line, which was largely driven by the forelimbs, eventually giving rise to the typical avian limb ratio. but, Fujianvinator is an alien species that deviated from this main path and evolved a strange structure of the hind limbs.

Wang Min, a paleontologist and lead author of the study, said in a statement:

The animal’s large legs indicate that it lived on land, unlike other members of the group My elephants At that time, its morphology was adapted to the aerial and arboreal environments. Moreover, they may have also been made Wow miracle Grand entrance.

Other vertebrate fossils have also been found in Zhenghe County, including fish and turtles with fins, indicating that the dinosaur was likely the king of the swamp.

The great diversity of fossils and the distinct paleoenvironment, in addition to the precise age constraints of the fossil-bearing horizons (148-150 million years ago) [milhões de anos]shows the great potential of Zhenghe as an emerging Jurassic vertebrate fauna that fills a key chronological and geological gap in our understanding of Northeast Asian ecosystems in the Late Jurassic.

Excerpt from the article

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