A team of palaeontologists uncovered bones of what they suspect to be a new species of herbivorous dinosaur buried in the middle of the Australian outback. The researchers discovered the remains on May 25 from the baked red clay of southwest Queensland’s Eromanga, Australia’s furthest town from the sea.
The palaeontologists estimate that the bones are about 95 million years old, which dates to the Cretaceous period. Robyn Mackenzie, the director and palaeontology of the Eromanga Natural History Museum told 9 News that since Australia has remained separated from Gondwana and South America for quite a long period of time, most of the remains regarding the dinosaurs found in the country are expected to be new to science.
According to Britannica, Gondwana was a supercontinent in ancient times that consisted of India, Africa, Arabia, Australia, Antarctica, Madagascar, and South America. It was fully assembled around 600 million years ago and the first stage of its break up started about 180 million years ago.
Mackenzie expects that this species is going to be the “youngest” one in the nation. However, this is going to take a long time to be established since the bones will be examined in the museum for many years.
So far, the remains primarily consist of vertebrae and the bony components of the spine. However, the researchers are optimistic about finding additional sections of the skeleton since they have only dug about 3.3-feet-deep till now. They started digging up last week only. According to 9 News, the completion of the dig could take up to five years.
Preliminary observations of the bones reveal that they are of a sauropod, which the director explained as “a large plant-eating dinosaur”.
Britannica states that the sauropod has been the largest animal in history. They had long necks, small heads and stocky legs.
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