A New Dinosaur Discovery Could Shed Light on the Final Age of the Dinosaur in Africa

A new dinosaur of titanic proportions unearthed in the Egyptian desert could help scientists shed light on the history of dinosaurs in Africa. The find, named Mansourasaurus shahinae and described in a paper published Monday in the journal Nature, “is the most completely preserved land-living vertebrate” from the end of the Cretaceous Period ever found on mainland Africa, the study’s authors write. Researchers said that the sauropod, a long-necked herbivore, was 80 million years old, 33 feet long, and weighed as much as 5.5 tons, according to Reuters. The remains, which included parts of the skull, jaw, shoulder, and forelimb, were discovered during an expedition from Egypt’s Mansoura University in 2013. Scientists hailed the “incredible discovery,” with Matt Lamanna, one of the study’s authors, calling it “the Holy Grail.” Fossil of school bus-sized dinosaur dug up in Egyptian desert https://t.co/rEWwGetjLE pic.twitter.com/EHnXl6FhYl — Reuters Top News (@Reuters) January 29, 2018 Dinosaur fossils from the end of the Cretaceous Period — 94–66 million years ago and considered the final age of the dinosaurs — “are exceeding rare” in Africa, Lamanna wrote in a blog post. The period also saw prehistoric continents begin to separate, leading some scientists, he said, to speculate that African dinosaurs began to evolve independently of their neighbors across the Mediterranean Sea....
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Archaeology Egypt onetime overnight Source Type: news