Chinese scientists have announced their recent discovery of at least one new species of dinosaur, the "sauropoda," which roamed south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region over 100 million years ago.
Fossil remains of the six-meter-tall creature animal along with bones of another dinosaur from the period were discovered in sugarcane fields near Nanning, the capital Guangxi, said a source from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
As analysis of the bones continues, scientists do not exclude the possibility of further discoveries by the end of the excavation period, which started over four months ago, said Zhao Xijin, a CAS scientist, in an interview with Xinhua Wednesday.
Zhao, also a member of an international academy for dinosaur studies, said the discovery has provided important evidence for scientists worldwide in their research of the evolution, distribution, appearance and habitat of the dinosaurs that lived in south China over 100 million years ago.
According to Zhao, dinosaurs are classified according to the size and shape of their pelvises.
"The newly discovered dinosaur is completely different from any other genus known to paleontologists," he said.
The newly found genus, standing at six meters tall and with a length of more than 10 meters, seems to suggest that sauropoda dinosaurs were growing taller but shrinking in length during last period of their evolution, comparing with the mamenchisaurus unearthed in Sichuan Province in 1957, which was four only meters tall and 22 meters long, said Zhao.
However, the plant-eating sauropodas were giants during the dinosaur-abundant Jurassic Period some 145 million to 208 million years ago, as their smallest brothers were about the size of chickens.
Zhao and his colleagues have also found granules on the shank of the dinosaur which are believed to be signs of some bone disease. "This may provide a new clue for the scientific research on the causes of the dinosaur's extinction," he said.
"Interplanetary collision, climate changes, food poisoning, physiological defects of the animal -- none of these alone could have led to the dinosaur's extinction, which must have been a result of the interaction of a number of events," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2001)
