A team of paleontologists from the University of Geosciences of China and the Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum reported this Monday the discovery of the largest deinonychosaurus footprints discovered to date.
The discovery, made at the Longxiang site in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian, has led to the creation of a new distinctive species based on footprints, which they have named Fujianipus yingliangi.
Deinonicosaurs were theropod dinosaurs that lived from the Late Jurassic to the Cretaceous period, more than 150 million years ago.
This group of dinosaurs, whose name means ‘terrible claw’are known for their carnivorous or omnivorous nature and, among their members, the velociraptor or the deinonychus stand out.
The study, published in the academic journal iScience, documents a total of 248 sets of well-preserved dinosaur footprints, discovered in 2020 and of which 12 correspond to footprints of bipedal deinonicosaurs, which are divided into two types according to their size and morphology.
Xing Lida, one of the authors of the study, cited by the newspaper, noted that they found six bipedal footprints, with an average length of about 36.4 centimeters and a width of 16.9 centimeters.
These footprints, the largest found in China and almost certainly in the world, probably belong to a large theropod dinosaur, which is believed to be a large dromaeosaurid, Xing said.
The smallest footprints, about 11 centimeters long, were identified as belonging to an animal similar to the velociraptor, while some of the largest have allowed ichnologists, scientists who study the footprints or signs of activity left in sediments. or rocks by living beings, establish the aforementioned ichnospecies Fujianipus yingliangi.
Based on the size of the tracks, experts estimated that Fujianipus was at least 5 meters long with a hip height greater than 1.8 meters.
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Source: Gestion
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