PALEONEWS

New Predatory Dinosaur Identified in Portugal

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A team of paleontologists from Portugal and Spain have found fossil fragments from a new genus and species of carcharodontosaurian dinosaur. The new dinosaur, scientifically named Lusovenator santosi, lived in what is now Portugal between 153 and 145 million years ago (Jurassic period). The ancient predator was about 3.5 m (11.5 feet) long and 1m tall (3.3 feet), and walked on two hind limbs. It belongs to Carcharodontosauria, a large group of carnivorous theropod dinosaurs from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods in the clade Allosauria.

“Lusovenator santosi as an early branching carcharodontosaurian allosauroid,” said team leader Dr. Elisabete Malafaia from the Universidade de Lisboa and the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia and her colleagues, “It represents the oldest member of Carcharodontosauria defined in the Upper Jurassic of the ancient supercontinent Laurasia and extends the record of this group, which was already represented in the Lower Cretaceous of Europe.”

The paleontologists described Lusovenator santosi from two specimens found in Portugal’s Lusitanian Basin. One of the specimens is a 153-millionyear-old partial skeleton of a juvenile individual from Praia de Valmitão, the locality of Ribamar and municipality of Lourinhã. The second specimen is 8 million years younger, and belongs to a large-sized individual of Lusovenator santosi. It was collected at Praia de Cambelas, in the locality of São Pedro da Cadeira and municipality of Torres Vedras.