Researchers discover two
new dinosaur fossils in Antarctica
RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004
(02-26) 15:36 PST WASHINGTON (AP)
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/02/26/national1821EST0813.DTL
Researchers probing mountains and ancient seas in Antarctica have
discovered two previously unknown types of dinosaurs, the National
Science Foundation reported Thursday.
The fossilized remains, thousands of miles from each other, were
found less than a week apart on the frozen continent that once
had a far warmer climate.
One is an early carnivore, a relative of the fierce Tyrannosaur,
that would have lived many millions of years after the other dinosaur,
a plant-eating beast, was alive.
The carnivore was found on James Ross Island, off the coast of
the Antarctic Peninsula, by Judd Case, James Martin and their research
team.
According to their report, the bones represent a new species of
carnivorous dinosaur related to the enormous meat-eating tyrannosaurs
and the voracious, but smaller and swifter, Velociraptors featured
in the movie "Jurassic Park."
The researchers said features of the animal's bones and teeth
suggest the creature may represent a population of carnivores that
survived in Antarctica long after they had been succeeded by other
predators elsewhere on the globe.
"One of the surprising things is that animals with these
more primitive characteristics generally haven't survived as long
elsewhere as they have in Antarctica," said Case, dean of
science and a professor of biology at Saint Mary's College of California. "But,
for whatever reason, they were still hanging out on the Antarctic
continent."
Martin, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the South Dakota
School of Mines and Technology, said the size and shape of the
ends of the lower leg and foot bones indicate that the animal was
a running dinosaur roughly 6 feet to 8 feet tall.
Relatively few dinosaur fossils from the end of the Cretaceous
Period, which lasted from 144 million to 65 million years ago,
have been found in Antarctica.
This was one of only six dinosaur fossils that have been discovered
in the James Ross region of the Antarctic Peninsula, the landmass
that juts north from the southernmost continent toward South America.
Thousands of miles away in the continent's interior, a team led
by William Hammer of Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., found
embedded in solid rock what they believe to be the pelvis of a
primitive sauropod -- a four-legged, plant-eating dinosaur similar
to better-known creatures such as Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus.
The area known as Mount Kirkpatrick, the area was once a soft
riverbed before millions of years of tectonic activity elevated
it skyward.
Hammer, who discovered another dinosaur in that area in 1991,
had returned to the site of that find to continue his work.
Based on field analysis of the bones, Hammer and his fellow researchers
believe the pelvis, roughly 3 feet across, is from a primitive
sauropod that represents one of the earliest forms of the emerging
dinosaur lineage that eventually produced animals greater than
100 feet long.
Basing his estimates on the bones excavated at the site, Hammer
suggests the new, and as-yet-unnamed creature was between 6 feet
and 7 feet tall and up to 30 feet long.
Hammer said that the rocks in which the find was made helped to
establish that the creature lived roughly 200 million years ago,
millions of years before the creature that Case and Martin discovered
on the Antarctic Peninsula.
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