South African PhD student describes new dinosaur
20 August 2015
A student at the University of the Witwatersrand has described a new species
of South African dinosaur,
Pulanesaurus eocollum, or rain lizard, in a
paper published in the journal
Scientific Reports yesterday.
Blair McPhee, the PhD student, said the dinosaur was relatively small – for a
sauropod – at about eight metres in length‚ two metres wide at the hips‚ and 5 tons
in body mass. The rain lizard lived in the Early Jurassic period, between 200- and
180 million years ago, from which there were only a handful of good
sauropod specimens.
"This dinosaur showcases the unexpected diversity of locomotion and feeding
strategies present in South Africa 200 million years ago. This has serious
implications for how dinosaurs were carving up their ecosystems," said McPhee.
The fossils of Pulanesaura were found at Heelbo‚ a farm in the eastern Free
State; two other recently described South African dinosaur
species also come from
the region – Aardonyx and Arcusaurus. Both are primitive members of the same
lineage.
The late Naude Bremer‚ former owner of Heelbo‚ was a strong supporter of
palaeontology on his farm. "Pulane" was the childhood Sesotho nickname of
Bremer's daughter‚ Panie. Roughly translated‚ "Pulane" means "comes with rain" and
Pulanesaura was excavated on the property during a particularly rainy period.
These species‚ along with limb bones of a small predatory dinosaur‚ the teeth of
a huge predatory dinosaur and other bones of as-yet-unknown dinosaurs make
Heelbo one of the richest dinosaur localities in southern Africa.
According to the authors of the paper – McPhee‚ Dr Matthew Bonnan (Stockton
University)‚ Dr Jonah Choiniere (Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits)‚ Dr Adam
Yates (scientist at the Museum of Central Australia) and Dr Johann Neveling
(geologist from the Council of Geoscience, South Africa)‚ Pulanesaura was an early
member
of the long-necked sauropod lineage of dinosaurs‚ famously represented by
Brontosaurus.
Source: RDM
News Wire
A PhD student at Wits University described the latest dinosaur discovery, called the rain lizard, in a report published on 19 August 2015. This dinosaur fossil was found on a Free State farm. (Image: Wikipedia)
