Five new species of dinosaurs have been discovered

Compilation of news from the years 2000-2001 - Two unknown species of dinosaurs were discovered in the USA and one in Italy * The strange Neutronichus and a small predator from the zoolosaur family lived 90 million years ago in a swampy forest * "A cousin of the dinosaur T. Rex" was discovered in Britain * A dinosaur was discovered that filtered its food from the water like a duck

21/06/2001
Scientists, investigating a mysterious period in the age of dinosaurs, excavated and discovered two new species of dinosaurs in the state of New Mexico. One of the species, which the researchers say is "very, very strange", belongs to the same lineage as the super carnivore Tyrannosaurus rex, but was content to eat plants.

Paleontologists Jim Kirkland and Doug Wolff, who announced the discovery, said the two dinosaurs - the strange Neuteronychus and a small predator from the as-yet-unnamed zoolosaur family - lived 90 million years ago in a swampy forest. Both had bird-like features, and both were likely feathered. They were less than a mile apart, near
The border between New Mexico and Arizona, in the area known as the Zuni Basin, which was a few kilometers away from the beaches, which is about 1,600 kilometers wide, and which divided North America. At that time - the middle of the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era
- There was an extreme warming of the earth, which melted the ice caps at the poles, raised the height of the oceans considerably and reduced the amount of dry land on the planet. Almost no dinosaur fossils have been found from this period. "The discovery opens a window to a period that we otherwise would not have known about," said Tom Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland who contributed to the study.

Nechus is a member of the theropod class of meat-eating dinosaurs, which includes Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus, but it likely evolved to be a vegetarian, said Kirkland, Utah's state paleontologist. It weighed about a ton, was about 4.5 to 6 meters long and stood about 3.5-3 meters tall. It was bipedal, and walked more upright than its carnivorous relatives. It had a long and thin neck, long arms, nimble hands, curved claws about 10 cm long on its fingers, a big belly, a small head, leaf-like teeth suitable for cutting vegetables and a relatively short tail.

Neuteronychus is the first dinosaur from the group of dinosaurs called therizinosaurus to be found in the United States. The other dinosaurs belonging to the group were found in China and Mongolia. Kirkland said the dinosaur reminded him of large, slow, large-clawed mammals that lived in the Ice Age.
and became extinct ten thousand years ago. "A modern equivalent could be the panda, which is also a vegetarian even though it evolved from meat eaters," Holtz said.

No feathers were found on the Neutronichus fossil, but researchers speculate that the dinosaur had feathers that left no trace of the muddy environment in which it was found.

The zoolosaurus is smaller than the Neutronichus: it is about two and a half meters long and about a meter high. Its body resembles that of the much larger Tyrannosaurus, but the Zolosaurus has proportionally longer arms. It feeds on lizards and small mammals. Wolf called the zoolosaur "the coyote
of the Cretaceous period".

No feathers were found on the zoolosaurus either, but the researchers speculate that it had feathers around its head, along its back, arms and legs.

A new species of dinosaur has been discovered: it filtered its food from the water like a duck

Paleontologists discovered a dinosaur with a beak-like snout, a body reminiscent of an ostrich with a long tail, and from the analysis of its exceptionally well-preserved remains, it became clear that it ate like a duck, that is: it filtered its food from the water like modern ducks do.
30.8.2001
By Tamara Traubman, the "Eretz"

Illustration: Field Museum - the ornithomimid dinosaur

Paleontologists discovered a dinosaur with a beak-like snout, a body reminiscent of an ostrich with a long tail, and from the analysis of its exceptionally well-preserved remains, it became clear that it ate like a duck, that is: it filtered its food from the water like modern ducks do.

The species, known as an ornithomimid, was first discovered more than ten years ago. But only now did researchers manage to find an individual of the same species whose skull preserved not only the bones, but also soft tissues. The researchers say that the tissue analysis revealed a comb-shaped structure, something that had never been discovered in dinosaurs before.

According to the researchers, the structure is very similar to the filter structure present in the beak of ducks. The dinosaur was discovered in excavations made last summer in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. The findings of the research are described in a report published yesterday in the scientific journal Nature. In the report another dinosaur is also described, which was discovered five years ago in the Canadian Rockies. Remains of a beak were found in both skulls.

According to the researchers, the beak of these dinosaurs seems to have been made of keratin, the material from which bird beaks and human hair and nails are made. Keratin-like material is rarely preserved in fossils.

The findings suggest that ornithomimids fed on small invertebrates, such as small shrimps, and other food particles that they filtered from water sources and river sediments. "This behavior has not been discovered in any other dinosaur," said one of the researchers, Dr. Peter Makowicki, in a statement published yesterday by the Field Museum in Chicago, where he works.

Ornithomimids lived 75 million years ago. The average height of an adult ornithomimid reached about two meters, and its length was about 4.5 meters. Thanks to its long legs, it was among the fastest moving dinosaurs. Ornithomimids belong to a group of dinosaurs called theropods, which includes carnivorous dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor. The earlier ornithomimids had teeth, as did the other dinosaur species belonging to this group. But later in evolution the ornithomimids lost their teeth and developed a toothless beak.

"We've always been used to thinking of the sauropods as animals with large teeth adapted to hunting," said Dr. Makowicki, "but the beaked ornithomimids adapted in a very different way, and may have lived on small invertebrates." According to him, "the birds of our time are theropods that have adapted to a wide variety of habitats and foods." Most paleontologists believe that certain theropods are the direct ancestors of birds, but some scientists - and especially ornithologists - still do not accept this explanation.

"We cannot state unequivocally that they ate in the same way as ducks," said the head of the research team, Dr. Mark Norrell of the Museum of Nature in New York. "But it is unlikely that these delicate structures were originally used to eat large animals."

A "cousin of the dinosaur T. rex" was discovered in Britain
13/05/2001
Next to the Eutyranus skeleton is a skeleton of a carnivore - a plant-eating waldosaurus

A completely new species of predatory dinosaur, a "cousin" of the Tyrannosaurus rex, was discovered on the Isle of Wight in the English Channel, south of the city of Portsmouth. This is one of the most significant archaeological finds discovered in Britain.

Aeotyranus langi - named after Gwynn Lang, a local collector who found the first bone - was a 4.5 meter high carnivorous taropod that lived during the Cretaceous period, about 120 to 125 million years ago.

The bones of the dinosaur, which were discovered on the edge of a cliff near the village of Bridgestone near Newport, caused great excitement among scientists from around the world, as the findings complete a missing link in the evolutionary chain of the T-Rex and other predators that appeared at a later time. From the findings, it appears that the Eutyranus was probably one of the ancestors of the T-Rex.

Among other things, the scientists speculate that the Eutyranus is also a relative of the velociraptor - a predatory dinosaur made famous in the movie "Jurassic Park". Some members of the research team suggested that all three dinosaurs - Eutyranus, T. rex and Velorkiaptor - evolved in the late Jurassic period 140 million years ago, from an unknown species of small carnivorous dinosaur, similar to Velociraptor.

The skeleton of Eutyranus Langi was found next to another skeleton of a plant-eating dinosaur from the same period - Holdosaurus, a species that was eaten by carnivorous dinosaurs. The Eutyranus skeleton is one of four carnivorous dinosaur skeletons found intact in Britain.

In a quarry in northern Italy, the remains of a predatory dinosaur of an unknown type, 8 meters long, were discovered

Lived in the Jurassic period 200 million years ago

11/11/2000
Italian palaeontologists announced Thursday that they had identified the remains of an unknown type of dinosaur. The dinosaur, which was a meat eater, lived about 200 million years ago. The remains of the dinosaur were found in the Salterio quarry, near Milan in northern Italy.

Giorgio Truzzi, the director of the paleontological department at the Historical Museum of Milan, said that according to the remains, the length of the dinosaur reached eighty meters, it weighed more than a ton, and that it had a long neck and its sharp teeth reached seven centimeters in length.

The scientists believe that the dinosaur lived in the Jurassic period and that it was related to more primitive forms of meat-eating dinosaurs. The Jurassic period lasted from 208 to 140 million years before our time. The new dinosaur was named Saltrizaurus after the quarry where it was discovered. More than a hundred fossilized bone fragments and one tooth were discovered there.