New carnivorous dinosaur species dating back 90M years discovered in Argentina
A team of scientists in Argentina discovered a new species of dinosaur that dates back 90 million years near the city of Plaza Huincul, in the province of Neuquen, according to the journal Papers in Paleontology.
Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) released a statement claiming that they and other experts “found the fossil remains of a new species of the family of abelisaurid theropods, a family of carnivorous dinosaurs.”
The new species has been named “Elemgasem nubilus,” after a Teleuche God of the same name and the Latin word for “cloudy days” respectively.
According to Mattia A. Baiano, the paper’s first author, the dinosaur was a carnivorous biped that was around 8 years old.
The dinosaur was 13-feet long and 7-feet high.
CONICET added that the dinosaur was from an era “characterized by global climate change and mass extinction events.”
“This family of dinosaurs dominated the carnivorous fauna during the Late Cretaceous (between 100 and 66 million years ago) of Gondwana, a continent made up of what is now South America, Antarctica, India, Africa, and Australia,” CONICET went on to say.
“Elemgasem nubilus was part of a fauna that has several carnivorous dinosaurs previously described as Patagonykus, Megaraptor, Neuquenraptor and Unenlagia, all from the same fossiliferous locality,” said Baiano
“Argentina, and in particular Patagonia, is, together with China, the United States and Canada, one of the most important places in the world in terms of paleontology,” Baiano said.
NY Post, 6 September 2022
