Paleontologists have discovered the remains of the largest predator in Europe

10 June 2022, 19:40 | Technologies
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Scientists have discovered the remains of a dinosaur that was probably the largest land predator that ever lived in Europe. Fossils have been found off the coast of England, Science Alert reports..

Researchers believe that the remains of a giant bipedal predator found on the Isle of Wight belong to the largest theropod identified in Europe to date.. The only one that can compete for this title is Megalosaurus, known from an unpublished description of a large vertebra found in the Jurassic Geology of France..

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Theropods were the dominant group of dinosaurs, which included tyrannosaurs, megalosaurus, velociraptors, and spinosaurs.. In the early Jurassic, these creatures were the only large land predators, and spinosaurs were probably the largest of them..

Spinosaurus Fossils Found in Ancient Rivers in North Africa May Be Gigantic. Their body length could exceed 15 meters, and weight - 13 tons..

The remains found on the Isle of Wight are not as large, but, according to scientists, are significantly larger than the fossils of other spinosaurs found in southwestern Europe..

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It is noted that the remains of spinosaurs are extremely rare, only three such finds have been made on the Isle of Wight, which have been discovered in the past few years.. Barker and his colleagues believe that the discovered remains belong to a new species, but this cannot be unequivocally stated, since there are few remains..

The dinosaur's pelvic bones indicate that it was huge, and the membranes on the vertebrae indicate that it belonged to spinosaurs.. The environment in which the fossils were found is also consistent with what is known about spinosaurs so far..

The rock in which the remains were found is all that remains of a sandy lagoon in which the predator probably fished.. If the dinosaur looked like other spinosaurs, it was most likely a skilled swimmer..



The authors of the discovery tentatively named the dinosaur " However, the question of whether this creature was a spinosaurus or another theropod is still open.. Since researchers have only found skeletal fragments of the dinosaur so far, it has not yet been given a scientific name..

Earlier in the city of Ganzhou in southern China, scientists discovered a perfectly preserved dinosaur embryo that was preparing to hatch from an egg like a chicken.. The researchers estimate that the age of the embryo is at least 66 million years..




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