2012-04-12 10:39:05
On April 5, a group of paleontologists from China and Canada published the description of a new species of dinosaur, Yutyrannus huali (“beautiful feathered tyrant”). It is a bipedal predator measuring nine meters in length and weighing one and a half tons, related to the Tyrannosaurus. But its most striking characteristic is that, as its name indicates, it was covered with filamentous feathers between six and eight inches in length. It is the largest feathered dinosaur discovered to date, by far; so far, the largest was Beipiaosaurus, only 2.2 meters in length.
Generally, the fossil remains of dinosaurs, like those of other vertebrates, are limited to bones and teeth; soft tissues, such as skin, disappear, either eaten by predators or due to putrefaction. Only in very few paleontological sites in the world have the conditions been met so that, as in the case of Yutyrannus, traces of the feathers that covered the animal in life are preserved. Yutyrannus comes from the Yixian deposits, in the Chinese province of Liaoning. These deposits were formed at the beginning of the Cretaceous period, between 125 and 121 million years ago. At that time, it was a volcanic region covered in lakes and forests, and eruptions, periodic forest fires, and the emission of toxic gases from the bottom of the lakes repeatedly caused the destruction of the ecosystem, which has allowed many specimens to have been found. preserved in extraordinary conditions to this day.
The Yixian deposits have been known at least since the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s, but it was not until the mid-1990s that feathered dinosaurs began to appear, such as Yutyrannus, Beipiaosaurus and the synornithosaurus, of which We have spoken at the Fossils Zoo, which have revolutionized paleontology
The sinornitosaurus, a poisonous dinosaur
Tyrannosaurus rex, the most popular dinosaur
Xu, X. et al. 2012. A gigantic feathered dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China. Nature.
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