zubat:Third new sauropod dinosaur species found in Portugal. Lourinhã museum announced
zubat: Third new sauropod dinosaur species found in Portugal. Lourinhã museum announced on Tuesday the discovery of a third new species of sauropod dinosaur in the bones discovered nearby in 1996 and now studies by Portuguese Octávio Mateus and by Brits Philip Mannion and Paul Upchurch. “We thought for a long time that it was a species that was known in Spain, the turiasaurus, but in fact the anatomical differences we began to notice were sufficient for us to reclassify it, not just as a new species but as a new genus for science”, said Octávio Mateus. We now know they belonged to a sauropod, now called Zby atlanticus, which was about 19 metres long and four metres tall that lived 150 million years ago in the Upper Jurassic period. He explained that “various different crests on the bones of its limbs” helped to distinguish Zby atlanticus from other previously documented dinosaurs. The size makes sense when you consider that Portugal was also home to some of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs that ever existed. Girth and height must have given herbivorous Zby atlanticus a fighting chance against predators like Torvosaurus gurneyi, the largest carnivorous dinosaur ever to stomp around what’s now Europe. Between 2000 and 2002, excavations near Lourinhã discovered a complete rear leg, four metres long, a tooth and a tail bone, which are on exhibition in Lourinhã museum. -- source link