A new dinosaur partial skeleton, including the skull and teeth was found on a beach near Cardiff. This fossil is analyzed by a team of British scientists led by Dr. David Martill of the University of Portsmouth. As a result, the dinosaur fossil was identified as a new species of the genus of theropod dinosaurs.
"About 40% of the skeleton (including the remains of the skull and the outside of the skull) represent a new genus and species of dinosaur Neotheropod basal picture," said Dr. Martill and colleagues from Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales, the University of Manchester and University of Portsmouth. They disclose it in a paper in the PLoS ONE journal.
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| Illustration of Dracoraptor hanigani. (Picture from: http://ind.pn/1PqFmiN) |
Dr. Martill and coauthors propose the name of 'Dracoraptor hanigani' for this new dinosaur.
"The genus name comes from the Dracoraptor offending Draco the dragon of Wales, plus raptor meaning robber, a common suffix used to theropod dinosaurs," they explained.
"The name of the species in honor of Nick and Rob Hanigan who found the skeleton," added the authors.
According to paleontologists, Dracoraptor hanigani has a small body, an agile carnivorous, with a high about 2.3 feet (70 cm) long and 6.5 feet (2 m), with a long tail too.
Hanigani is a distant cousin of T.rex and lived in the early Jurassic period, about 200 million years ago, possibly making it the oldest Jurassic dinosaurs in the UK or even in the world. This specimen is also the most complete theropod dinosaurs of Wales, and the first dinosaur skeleton of the Jurassic period in Wales.
It is estimated that the dinosaur fossils found are teenagers, because most of the bones are not yet fully formed.
"Now we have Dracoraptor, a juvenile theropod with a length of 6 feet, and relatively complete from the day-to-day very beginning of the Jurassic in Wales." the authors concluded. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | INDEPENDENT]
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