Dinosaur fans today will rejoice, but they will have to learn a new name, that of the Lessemsaurids, the first dinosaurs to reach gigantic sizes of around 10 tons, in the Triassic period
Dinosaur fans today will rejoice, but they will have to learn a new name, that of the Lessemsaurids, the first dinosaurs to reach gigantic sizes of around 10 tons, in the Triassic period.
A discovery that will make history books rewrite since it concerns the fossils of the oldest giant dinosaur, which lived 200 million years ago. The four skeletons found near the city of Balde de Leyes therefore force us to rethink when and how the dinosaurs got so big.
The bones were found by Argentine scientists from the University of San Juan and Conicet, the Argentine National Research Council.
Renamed by researchers "Ingentia prima", this new species belonged to the group of sauropods and its appearance on Earth dates back to 200 million years ago, 30 million years earlier than assumed so far.
The name 'Ingentia' (giant in Latin) refers to its colossal size, while 'before' indicates that it is the first known giant on the planet today.
"Before this discovery, gigantism was believed to have emerged during the Jurassic period, about 180 million years ago, but Ingentia lived in the late Triassic, between 210 to 205 million years ago", he said Cecilia Apaldetti, lead author of the study.
But the lessemsaurids tell us that at least some dinosaurs were able to reach giant sizes, between 8 and 10 meters, during the latter part of the Triassic, before extinction.
Their size was three times greater than that of other dinosaurs that lived in the same era. According to the study authors, Ingentia had a body mass of around 10 tons, roughly the weight of 2 or 3 elephants.
A real giant, especially for the time of evolution. Most of the animals that lived in the same period did not exceed 2 meters in height and 3 tons. What left Argentine scientists truly speechless was the fact that they exhibited "explosive" growth, a faster rate of bone growth than other late Triassic species. Thanks to the cavities of the bones, which made them lighter and to an evolved respiratory system comparable to that of birds.
#CONICET researchers reveal in a study that the first giant dinosaurs appeared 30 million years earlier than previously believed, from the discovery of a new species of dinosaur #Ingentiaprima found in #SanJuan https://t.co/q54unYpWbc pic.twitter.com/H6CDM324L4
- CONICET Dialoga (@CONICETDialoga) July 9, 2018
Huge behemoths lived millions and millions of years of the arrival of man on Earth.
The research was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
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Francesca Mancuso
