A fossil unearthed in Australia by a volunteer digger has been identified as a uncommon, toothless dinosaur that roamed the nation 110 million years previously.
The elaphrosaur, whose title skill “light-footed lizard”, become related to the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor.
The five-centimetre (two-lunge) vertebrae fossil become discovered all over a dig advance Cape Otway in Victoria in 2015.
It is miles the first elaphrosaur bone ever to be present in Australia.
The fossil become discovered by volunteer Jessica Parker, who become taking piece in an annual dig led by Melbourne Museum.
At the time, it become regarded as from a flying reptile known as a pterosaur. Nonetheless when palaeontologists at Swinburne University in Melbourne studied the fossil further, they realised it become a delicately-constructed dinosaur.
“Elaphrosaurs had long necks, stumpy hands with runt hands, and comparatively flippantly-constructed our bodies,” Dr Stephen Poropat acknowledged.
The fossil indicated the animal become about two metres (6.5ft) long. Nonetheless, completely different fossils previously present in Tanzania, China and Argentina screen that they’ll even reach up to six metres in dimension.
Grownup elaphrosaurs potentially didn’t eat significant meat, Dr Poropat acknowledged.
“As dinosaurs tear, they bear been rather extraordinary. The few known skulls of elaphrosaurs screen that the kids had teeth, nonetheless that the adults lost their teeth and modified them with a enchanting beak. We do now not know if here is intellectual for the [Australian] elaphrosaur but – nonetheless we would possibly well well also discover if we ever behold a skull,” he acknowledged.
Cape Otway, the assign the fossil become located, is a well off issue for discoveries. Just a few dozen animals and five dinosaur species bear been identified there, per ABC Files. Those discovered consist of a plant-eating dinosaur present in 2018.
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