Re: Mystery theropod from Argentina

[Tim Donovan <uwrk2@yahoo.com>]

--- bh480@scn.org wrote:
> 
> "We thought it was related to the tyrannosaurus just
> 
> because there were a lot of features in the
> vertebrae as 
> we were taking it out," said paleontologist Philip
> Currie, 
> who was involved in the dig, from the Royal Tyrrell
> Museum 
> in Drumheller, Alta.
> "But when we compared it to the specimens in Alberta


  Might it compare more favorably to Mexican
tyrannosaur material from the Campanian? Some
tyrannosaurs lived much closer to South America than
those in Alberta.




> -- we 
> compared it to the giganotosaurus the carnotaurus
> and 
> their relatives -- it doesn't add up."
> There are two main types of meat-eating dinosaurs in
> South 
> America. Both were two-legged carnivores that lived
> about 
> 80 million years ago.
> The fossil includes much of the skull and about 30
> teeth, 
> part of the vertebral column, hip and leg bones. One
> of 
> the most interesting aspects is the brain case which
> is 
> being studied at the Tyrrell.
> "This is the part that envelops the brain and you
> first of 
> all can see how big the brain was and you can
> actually see 
> the various components of the brain preserved as 
> impressions in the bones," he said.
> It was Currie and Rodolfo Coria, director of the
> Carmen 
> Funes Museum in Neuquen, Argentina, who removed the
> fossil 
> in 2001 from the northern Patagonia region of
> Argentina.
> The data from the discovery is being fed into a
> computer 
> to see if it matches any other dinosaur finds, said
> Coria.
> "We are dealing with two possible hypotheses. One is
> it's 
> a new kind of dinosaur, a large size of meat-eating 
> dinosaur that was not recorded before," Coria said.
 
> The similarities between the Argentinian fossil and
> that 
> of fossils of Albertosaurus, a type of tyrannosaur
> found 
> in southern Alberta's Badlands, raise questions of
> how 
> dinosaurs living in isolation from each other
> developed 
> remarkably similar characteristics. 

  Can we be sure North and South America were really
isolated in the Campanian? By then titanosaurs of
presumed South American origin had appeared in North
America. Some hadrosaurs (kritosaurs) are thought to
have entered South America from the north.
Tyrannosaurs might have migrated too, although those
most likely to have done so were Mexican types which
may be less familiar.



> "What we're thinking now is these animals developed 
> independently but they were responding to the
> environment 
> the same way," said Currie. "It's possible that
> because 
> they both were quite large, they had a similar
> response 
> and ended up looking quite similar without actually
> being 
> related."
> There were also similarities to the climate and
> landscape 
> in northern Patagonia and the Alberta of 80 million
> years 
> ago, Coria pointed out.
> "The weather was very arid. It wasn't a jungle or a
> place 
> with a lot of wet and heat. It was very similar to 
> Alberta . . . with a lot of streams and rivers and
> room 
> enough for all these gigantic forms of dinosaurs."
> 
> 
> 



                
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