A team of Argentine scientists found fossils of an ancient reptile in Antarctica

2024-04-22 17:19:06

A team of scientists of the CONICET found, in the Antarctica Argentinaseveral Fossil remains who, they claimed, belonged to a ancient and gigantic species of reptile until now unknown.

As explained by the authors of this finding recently published in the specialized journal Journal of Systematic Palaeontologythe event took place within the framework of a campaign they were carrying out in the vicinity of the Marambio Base where the team led by the CONICET researcher José O´Gorman tripped over a bulto semienterrado that called her powerfully found her more than 80 vertebrae of the spine of an elasmosaurida marine reptile that coexisted in the last stage of the dinosaursthat is, approximately a few 67 million years.

The new specimen was named Marambionectes molinai in honor, on the one hand, to the Marambio base and, on the other, to Omar Jose Molinaa deceased member of the La Plata Museum who was the first technician in Argentine paleontology to work in Antarctica in the 1970s.

Among the skeletal remains found are the trunk and part of the tailof the extremities, neck and skullas well also some stomach stones called gastroliths, which, according to scientists, were used to carry out the mechanical digestion of food.

“We started digging down the neck line, against the clock and with great expectation at the idea of ​​reaching the skull, a part that is rarely preserved,” commented the researcher from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Museum of the National University of La Plata (FCNyM, UNLP).

“He general state of preservation is exceptionaleven from cranial material, although it is not completeeither. And it is about articulated remains, which is also not common. And if that was not enough, We were able to confirm not only that it is a new species, but that it has particular characteristics that allow us to place it as a transitional form between two groups that inhabited the southern hemisphere, shedding light on the evolutionary process and the connection between other genera found in Chile, New Zealand and West Antarctica”concluded the main author of the study.