Image Source: Reuters
The fossil discovery in Argentina are known to be from the oldest known giant dinosaur and will give new clues about the evolution of these reptiles, we now know that gigantism appeared tens of millions of years earlier than previously believed, said the paleontologists who made the discovery. .
The Ingentia Prima, whose discovery occurred in 2015 in northwestern Argentina, but was recently published this month, lived about 210 million years ago during the Triassic Period, some 30 million years before the Jurassic, from when scientists thought they had the appearance of the first giant dinosaurs.
“As soon as we found it, we realized it was something different. We found a shape, the first giant one among all the dinosaurs. That’s the surprise,” said Cecilia Apaldetti, a government and San Juan University researcher.
Ricardo Martínez, co-author of the study, said that the herbivore Ingentia Prima, which means ‘first giant’, came to weigh more than 10 tons, and is larger than its peers which did not exceed three tons.
Among the two partial skeletons found in the Argentine province of San Juan, is a complete femur of the Ingentia that measures 1.3 meters, about three times the size of the largest known living beings of that time.
Argentine paleontologists Cecilia Apaldetti and Ricardo Martinez stand next to a bone of what could be the planet’s largest dinosaur, named Ingentia prima, at San Juan Natural Sciences Museum in San Juan, Argentina, July 18, 2018. Picture taken July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Miguel Lo Bianco
Martínez, who like Apaldetti is a researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET), explained that the large size of Ingentia, added to its long neck, allowed it to feed on plants that other dinosaurs could not reach.
Dinosaurs appeared for the first time in the Triassic Period, approximately 230 million years ago. These had a moderate size, far from the immense creatures of the subsequent Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods.
The Ingentia was discovered in the Balde de Leyes Formation, in the south of the province of San Juan, and the investigators assure that shortly they will be able to completely reconstruct their skeleton and exhibit it.
Argentine paleontologist Cecilia Apaldetti measures part of a bone of what could be the planet’s largest dinosaur, named Ingentia prima, at San Juan Natural Sciences Museum in San Juan, Argentina, July 18, 2018. Picture taken July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Miguel Lo Bianco
“This site will allow us to see something that until now is not clear anywhere in the world, and what happened at the end of the Triassic and the beginning of the Jurassic, where all the animals of the Earth were affected by one of the great mass extinctions that have occurred throughout evolution, “Martínez said.
Ingentia was one of the first members of a group of dinosaurs called ‘sauropods’ that later included the largest land creatures on Earth, including the Argentinian giants of Patagonia called Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus and Patagotitan.
Investigadores del #CONICET revelan en un estudio que los primeros dinosaurios gigantes aparecieron 30 millones de años antes de lo que se creía, a partir del descubrimiento de una nueva especie de dinosaurio #Ingentiaprima hallada en #SanJuan https://t.co/q54unYpWbc pic.twitter.com/H6CDM324L4
— CONICET Dialoga (@CONICETDialoga) July 9, 2018
