Come and see, this guy is a herbivorous outlier in the Tyrannosaurus Rex family

In southern Chile, scientists have discovered a new type of dinosaur that does not belong to any known species of dinosaur. What is even more shocking is that as a relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex and its carnivorous family, it actually ate vegetarian.

Illustration: gabriel lÍo

Written by Michael D. Lemonick

You may not know the word "therapod," but you're no stranger to the theropod family of carnivorous dinosaurs, the Velociraptor and the dreaded Tyrannosaurus rex, the latter being the most feared carnivores ever seen on Earth. So, the recent discovery of an "outlier" has surprised scientists - although it is also a member of theropod carnivorous dinosaurs, it is not at all like other dinosaurs within the family, and it is still vegetarian!

On Monday, a team of scientists from Chile and Argentina published the new findings in the journal Nature. The dinosaur was named chilesaurus Diegosuarezi in honor of the 7-year-old son of geologist Diego Suarez. Suarez was the first to discover the remains of this dinosaur in the toqui formation in southern Chile.

Fernando Novas of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences is the lead author of the paper and a contributing contributor to National Geographic. He told us: "Initially, we thought we had found a typical Jurassic dinosaur. "The fossilized pelvic bone is 150 million years old and at first glance looks like it belonged to ornithopod dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops.

The fossil's head is small, with tiny teeth that are shovel-shaped, with slender necks and robust limbs, more like the sauropod dinosaur Thundersaurus and its close relatives. There are also perforations in the spine, which is typical of theropod carnivorous dinosaurs.

"The combination of these features in a dinosaur is both surprising and exciting. I would be really incredible if I hadn't seen the joint specimens with my own eyes," says Paul Sereno, a National Geographic explorer from the University of Chicago.

To figure out what this strange creature was, Novas and his co-authors compared these features to other types of dinosaurs to see who looked the most like them. "The most convincing inference is this: it was originally a (primitive) theropod carnivorous dinosaur, which gradually acquired characteristics similar to those of the other two dinosaurs in the process of evolving from carnivores to herbivores."

In evolutionary history, this shift is very rare, but it is not unprecedented. The giant panda we're familiar with is a case in point: the ancestors of this vegetarian animal were carnivorous, and their descendants also include polar bears and grizzly bears, and if you think about them, you can see.

In fact, paleontologists have found a small number of theropod herbivorous dinosaurs, but they were all in the late evolutionary stage and were not very common. And Sereno believes that the fossils found this time suggest that "they are actually an important part of the fauna." ”

The surprises don't stop there. Through the study of fossils, scientists have found that in other parts of the world, such as the United States and Africa today, it is the ornithopod dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops that dominate, rather than large theropod carnivorous dinosaurs such as T. rex.

Why this is the case is still inconclusive. Sereno said: "We haven't found a definitive answer yet, but that's where we're headed. Luckily for dinosaur experts, though, the answer may lie in the rock where chilesaurus is.

"What we've found is just the tip of the iceberg, and there will be more specimens in the future, not just chilesaurus," novas argues, and more meat eaters who prey on them.

Apparently, South America has become the next major frontier of dinosaur paleontology, and the terrifying lizard dinosaurs are much more complex than scientists think. "There are fundamental differences between the different categories of dinosaurs, as if they were experimental products created by the Evolution Lab," Sereno says.

They have ruled the planet for 160 million years, but how they lived and why they perished remains a mystery. Take a look at the known and unknown dinosaur eras.

(Translated by sky4)