- Scientists from the Universidad Nacional de San Juan in Argentina have discovered a new type of "giant" dinosaur.
- The dinosaur, named Ingentia Prima, is thought to be a "missing link" between small and large dinosaurs.
- The results suggest that more dinosaur species could be discovered that we still don't know about.
Further light has been shed on ideas previously proposed about how small, bipedal dinosaurs became gigantic, long-necked Sauropods, following a study recently published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Until now, researchers assumed that all types of dinosaurs grew gradually and that they all began to increase in size at roughly the same time during the Jurassic period.
Argentinean researchers at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, however, believe the trend towards gigantism may have begun much earlier than previously thought: a new dinosaur species dubbed Ingentia Prima has been found and it has none of the features typical among Sauropods — which were previously considered prerequisites for gigantism.
"As soon as we found it, we realized it was something different," said Apaldetti in a press release. "We found a shape, the first giant one among all the dinosaurs. That's the surprise."
After the beginning of the age of the dinosaurs, long-necked giants with bodies weighing in the region of 10 tons came about quite quickly — but just how exactly these column-legged giants sprouted from their comparatively tiny, bipedal ancestors has remained a mystery.
That is, until now. The reason so little was known on the subject was simply that the fossils linking the two dinosaur types together were missing from the timeline — and these recently discovered Sauropod fossils will finally allow conclusions to be drawn on when the growth spurts actually began.
The name of the new species, Ingentia Prima, derives from the Latin words for "huge" and "first", as the researchers consider it to be the "first of the giants". Cecilia Apaldetti and her colleagues at the Universidad Nacional de San Juan estimate the animal to have weighed in at over 10 tons and to have had a length (including neck and tail) of around 10 metres.
With its weight corresponding to that of about two or three African elephants, "Ingentia prima" could give us clues on how and when dinosaur gigantism began, according to the researchers. The scientists believe Igentia Prima could have laid the foundations for the giant Sauropods that would follow approximately 100 million years later.
The fossil also gives clues as to how exactly the dinosaur was able to grow so quickly: the team identified a birdlike respiratory system in which the animal would have been able to obtain oxygen and cool down more quickly. The exposed bones also show signs of separate growth spurts, while later Sauropods increased in size much more gradually, according to the researchers.
These results suggest that more dinosaur species we still don't know about are yet to be discovered.
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