Chubby dinosaurs survived chilly Gondwana

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

Chubby dinosaurs survived chilly Gondwana
Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters 

Large, carnivorous dinosaurs roamed southern Australia 115 million years 
ago, when the continent was joined to Antarctica, say scientists who have 
found three footprints as evidence. 

These hardy dinosaurs were padded with body fat to survive temperatures as 
low as minus 30ÂC and would have inhabited the area close to the south pole 
for at least 10 million years during the Cretaceous period, an expert says. 

Palaeontologists from Australia and the US came by their findings after 
uncovering three separate fossil footprints measuring about 36 centimetres 
long, each with at least two or three partial toes. 

They presented their research at a recent meeting of the US Society of 
Vertebrate Paleontology in Texas... 

...From the size of their feet, the experts figured they were up to 1.5 
metres high at the hip. 

"You are talking about an animal that's about 3.7 metres tall, or about the 
size of a small adult tyrannosaurus," Rich says... 


Read more at:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/2068963.htm 

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Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist              geo cities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia             heretichides.soffiles.com
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