A new kind of dinosaur has been discovered in Switzerland

Paleontologist Ben Pabst participated in most of these discoveries.dr

In Argovie, it was not until 208 million years to dig up the skeleton of a kind of dinosaur hitherto unknown. Consequently, And twelve years for scientists to announce their discovery.

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The Frick (AG) clay career has delivered Platéosaure after Platéosaur in recent decades. Nevertheless, About twenty specimens have been found just in the past five years. Therefore, The excavations also made it possible to find an aetosaurus and some carnivorous new kind dinosaur been discovered dinosaurs.

Paleontologist Ben Pabst. Meanwhile, who has been studying the reptiles extinct in Switzerland since the 1970s, participated in most of these discoveries. Moreover, He was director of excavations from 2004 to 2023.

But his sensational discovery of 2013 had never been made public until now. Moreover, It took more than ten years before the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology reported that a new dinosaur of the. Similarly, Massopod family (long legs) was discovered.

Massopods are a subgroup of Saurischian dinosaurs Sauropodomorpha. Moreover, These long -neck herbivores lived for a very long time. Nevertheless, from the end of the Triassic at the end of the Cretaceous, or about 201 million years ago until 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs disappeared. Nevertheless, They were widespread worldwide, from Antarctica to Greenland.

It is unclear what this dinosaur looked like. But he had to look like his cousin, the Lufengosaurus Huenei, of the Massospondylidae family of the early Jurassic.Image: Alamy

A partially complete skeleton and the skull of the new Massopodan Sauropodomorph has been updated. The excavation was in geological layers dating from the Jurassic. This means that the newly discovered dinosaur lived around 208 million years ago.

Its skeleton presents a transient form hitherto unknown between plaosaurs and more advanced massopods. Based on this discovery, the researchers hypothesized that the massopodes of Asia could come from Europe.

The skull of a dinosaur of the group. of Massopoda recently discovered in the clay career of Frick.Image: Swiss Journal of Palaeontology

New kind dinosaur been discovered

New piece of puzzle for paleontologists

But why did the researchers not announce this exciting discovery earlier? Until now. the Musée des dinosaures de Frick in Argovie had not included the massopod found in 2013 in its list of discoveries. Andrea Oettl is director of the Dinosaurs Museum and had participated in the excavations at the time. She explains:

They imagined that they had found a new species, but could not be certain based on a visual analysis. The researchers were therefore careful not to draw hasty conclusions.

According to Andrea Oettl, confirmation of this find was delayed, because other discoveries have been favored. For example, Marion Zahner, doctoral student at the University of Zurich, turned to the description of the theropode “Notessetheraeraptor frickensis”. This has since been described in detail. with a Wikipedia input and information on its last meal: a clevosaurus, a small lizard. The discovery of this small carnivorous dinosaur. exhumed to Frick in 2006 and 2009, was not made public until 2019, after the scientific publication.

Torsten Scheyer, new kind dinosaur been discovered from the University of Zurich, is a co -author of the study on the new massopod. He explains that formal preparation and identification always take a long time.

The skull is the first step. specifies Andrea Oettl, but it will still be necessary to study the skeleton, which will depend on future financing.

Translated and adapted from German by Léa Krejci

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