Australian paleontologists have identified the fossil, found in 2015 in the state of Victoria, and found that it belonged to a toothless dinosaur known as barosaur.
a study published in the journal Gondwana Research, and briefly about it tells the website Swinburne University of Technology. Strange bone, was found five years ago as a volunteer project Dinosaur Dreaming Jessica Parker in the cemetery of dinosaurs near Cape Otway in Victoria.
five-centimeter bone was originally identified by the staff of the Melbourne Museum as a cervical vertebra. It was assumed that he belonged to flying reptiles, perhaps the pterosaurs.
the Fossil was transferred to the paleontologists from the University of Swinburne, so they established what it was a type of pterosaur. However, the analysis of the vertebra showed that it had notches on both ends, which is not characteristic of the vertebrae of all known pterosaurs.
After lengthy research scientists have come to the conclusion that the bone belonged to a theropod, the ancient predator, linked by kinship with Tyrannosaurus Rex, a VelociRaptor… and modern birds. The only possible option is this was a predator who probably didn’t eat meat.
Paleontologists believe that was found in Victoria fossil of great for the vertebrae of a strange group of theropods called elaphrosaurus.
most of the known fossils of these dinosaurs have been found in Tanzania and China. They lived in the late Jurassic period, about 160-145 million years ago. However, the new Victorian barosaur was much younger. He lived about 110 million years ago.
Thus, it is only the second known to science barosaur the Cretaceous period and the first found in Australia. Scientists say that its length was about two meters. It isn’t enough for the well-known representatives of their kind.
“elaphrosaurus had a long neck, relatively light body and a short but thick limbs, says study co-author Dr. Stephen Poropat. It was a pretty strange dinosaurs. Several well-known skulls of elaphrosaurus show that young individuals had teeth. However, adults have lost teeth and to replace them came a powerful bone beak. We do not know whether such was the structure of Victorian elaphrosaurus, and we can find it only in the case if you ever find his skull.”
