Scientists have discovered a new dinosaur from Argentina with powerful claws, feasting on an ancient crocodile bone.<\/p>\n
The new find was possibly 23 feet (7 metres) long and hailed from a mysterious group of dinosaurs called megaraptorans. They prowled across what\u2019s now South America, Australia and parts of Asia, splitting off into different species over millions of years.<\/p>\n
Megaraptorans were known for their stretched-out skulls and \u201chuge and very powerful claws,\u201d said Lucio Ibiricu with the Patagonian Institute of Geology and Paleontology, who was part of the discovery team.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not yet clear how these creatures hunted and where they fall on the evolutionary timeline \u2014 mainly because the fossils recovered so far were incomplete.<\/p>\n
In a new study, researchers said they uncovered part of a skull as well as arm, leg and tail bones from the Lago Colhu\u00e9 Huapi rock formation in Patagonia. They noticed unique features in the bones that made them realize this could be a new species.<\/p>\n
This latest member of the megaraptoran clan named Joaquinraptor casali \u201cfills a major gap by providing one of the most complete skeletons yet,\u201d Federico Agnolin with the Argentine Museum of Natural Science Bernardino Rivadavia said in an email. Agnolin was not involved with the research, which was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n
The creature likely lived between 66 and 70 million years ago \u2014 close to the time dinosaurs went extinct \u2014 and was at least 19 years old when it died, though scientists don\u2019t know what killed it.<\/p>\n
The front leg bone pressed against its jaws \u2014 belonging to an ancient relative of crocodiles \u2014 could yield some clues to its diet and whether it was the top predator on the humid prehistoric flood plains.<\/p>\n
Ibiricu named the new dinosaur in memory of his son Joaquin. While Joaquin was very young and hadn\u2019t yet developed a fascination with dinosaurs, Ibiricu still thinks he would have appreciated being named after one.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll children love dinosaurs so he would probably be a fan too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have discovered a new dinosaur from Argentina with powerful claws, feasting on an ancient crocodile bone. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85682,85683,85684,85685,49,48,85686,85687,85688,85689,85690,66,85691],"class_list":["post-165856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-dinosaurdiscovery","tag-fossilfind","tag-megaraptoran","tag-ancientpredator","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dinosaurclaws","tag-dinosaurfossils","tag-joaquinraptorcasali","tag-latecretaceousperiod","tag-patagoniandinosaurs","tag-science","tag-southamericandinosaurs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}