Scientists have excavated in Argentina the remains of a previously unknown species of carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 70 million years ago. The animal had small arms and perhaps used its powerful head to strike its prey.
The fossil skull of the dinosaur from the Cretaceous period, called Guemesia ochoai, was discovered in the province of Salta, in northwest Argentina. The researchers said it likely belongs to a group of carnivorous dinosaurs called abelisaurs, which walked on two legs and had stump-like arms that were even shorter than those of North America’s Tyrannosaurus rex.
The short arms may have forced Guemesia to rely on its skull and powerful jaws, the researchers said.
“It is so unique and so different from other carnivorous dinosaurs that it allows us to understand that we are dealing with an entirely new species,” Federico Agnolin, lead author of a study on the dinosaur published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and a researcher at Conicet, told Reuters. , the national science council of Argentina.
The animal, possibly a juvenile, lived just a few million years before an asteroid impact at the present-day location of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula approximately 66 million years ago, which wiped out about three-quarters of Earth’s species, including the dinosaurs.
Scientists believe that abelisaurs roamed what is now Africa, South America and India, and several dozen specimens have now been unearthed in Argentina — nearly all of them in southern Patagonia, far from the site of Guemesia’s discovery.
“We know he had a very keen sense of smell and was nearsighted,” Agnolin said, noting that he would have walked upright on his big feet, his solid skull leading the way.
“Some scientists think this could mean that the animal hunted its prey by attacking it with its head,” added Agnolin.
The discovery enhances Argentina’s reputation as a treasure trove of fossils of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
Guemesia is named after the hero of Argentine independence MartÃn Miguel de Guemes and Javier Ochoa, the museum employee who made the discovery.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
