By IANS/EFE,
Buenos Aires : A species of dinosaur that lived 190 million years ago has been found in Argentina, a researcher said.
“No discoveries with these characteristics had ever been made in the region. It’s an important discovery because it helps us understand the environmental diversity of the period,” researcher Santiago Bessone of the Museum Egidio Feruglio, an institution based in the Argentine Patagonian city of Trelew that was responsible for the expedition, told EFE.
The experts discovered on Bayo mountain, some 80 km from the Patagonian town of Gastre, fossils of at least two dinosaurs that apparently lived during the Jurassic period and about which little is known, museum experts said.
The scientists suspected that in the area there could have been dinosaur skeletons from the herbivorous sauropod family, which measured between 15-20 meters long and had a long neck, small head, big feet and a powerful tail.
These dinosaurs roamed the Earth at a time when mammals did not yet exist and when the climate and flora were very different from what they are today, the scientists said.
The expedition, which took place last month, “lasted about 20 days and now we are fully into the stage of studying and analyzing the fossils in detail”, said Bessone, a member of the team.
During their investigations, financed by German scientific institutes, the researchers found numerous bones, many of them embedded in heavy blocks of stone that still have not been moved from the place they were found, some 1,400 km south of Buenos Aires.
The skeletons are not complete, but it was possible to gather bones from the front and back legs, hips and spine.
The researchers also found “fossils of very primitive flying reptiles” of the pterosaur family that measured more than a meter long and were agile in flight, aided by wings with hollow bones.
Argentine Patagonia has become the epicenter of discoveries of animal skeletons from millions of years ago, which are found scattered over a number of terrains and can even be spotted by just walking around the region.
In December a group of Argentine experts also discovered a paleontological deposit in the Patagonian province of Neuquen, where fossil remains of dinosaurs were found that dated back 130 million years.