"Largest Meat-Eating Predatory Dinosaur" of Triassic Period, Actually a Timid Vegetarian
upstart writes:
Largest Meat-Eating Predatory Dinosaur" of Triassic Period, Actually a Timid Vegetarian:
Fossil footprints found in an Australian coal mine around 50 years ago have long been thought to be that of a large raptor-like' predatory dinosaur, but scientists have in fact discovered they were instead left by a timid long-necked herbivore.
University of Queensland paleontologist Dr. Anthony Romilio recently led an international team to re-analyze the footprints, dated to the latter part of the Triassic Period, around 220 million-year-ago.
For years it's been believed that these tracks were made by a massive theropod predator that was part of the dinosaur family Eubrontes, with legs over two meters tall," Dr. Romilio said.
This idea caused a sensation decades ago because no other meat-eating dinosaur in the world approached that size during the Triassic period."
However, findings made by a team of international researchers, published today in the peer-reviewed journal Historical Biology, in fact shows the tracks were instead made by a dinosaur known as a Prosauropod - a vegetarian dinosaur that was smaller, with legs about 1.4 meters tall and a body length of six meters.
Journal Reference:
Anthony Romilio, Hendrik Klein, Andreas Jannel, et al. Saurischian dinosaur tracks from the Upper Triassic of southern Queensland: possible evidence for Australia's earliest sauropodomorph trackmaker, Historical Biology (DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2021.1984447)
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