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Earliest T Rex discovered
• Remains found in Polish brickyard
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By
The Minx, Contributing editor
Wednesday,
6 August, 2008
Ancestor of T-Rex dinosaur unearthed in Poland
A breakthrough discovery has been reported by a team of Polish scientists.
Paleontologists digging in a brickyard in southern Poland have discovered the remains of a dinosaur they say is a previously unknown ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and a dicynodont, a mammal-like reptile, in the village of Lisowice in southern Poland.
Both species have not been known to scientists before. The remains were excavated not far f rom the surface in a brickyard in Lisowice village about 200 km (125 miles) from Warsaw.
The first bones were found by an amateur minerals collector Robert Borzecki searching for pyrites in the summer of 2005. They were at first thought to be cow bones but fortunately the palaentologists were called in.
Eventually, experts from the Polish Academy of Sciences and Warsaw University, reconstructed the whole dicynodont, which lived about 205 million years ago. It is the youngest such mammal-like reptile found so far.
Paleobiologist Tomasz Sulej says the discovery may abolish one of the theories explaining the extinction of pre-historic reptiles. The dicynodont was about 2 meters high and resembled the hippo.
Its main enemy, the teropod dinosaur, was also found in Lisowice. It was about four to five meters high, had huge arms and feet armed with sharp claws. It is the earliest ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
“We did not expect a discovery of such rank”, said Martyna Wojciechowska, Chief Editor of the Polish edition of National Geographic, which is sponsoring the excavations.
The predator dinosaur, given the working name "the Dragon," lived around 200 million years ago, team member Doctor Tomasz Sulej of the Polish Science Academy, told Reuters.
"This is a completely new type of dinosaur that was so far unknown," Sulej said on Friday. "Nobody even expected that members of this group lived in that time, so this gives us new knowledge about the whole evolution of the T-Rex group."
At the same site the group also found a dicynodon -- a reptile which was a direct predecessor of mammals.
"We are almost certain that "Dragon" hunted animals like this herbivorous dicynodon, which looked like hippopotamus but was much bigger," Sulej said.
The paleontologists will continue examining the bones and fully document the discovery before they decide what name to give to the new dinosaur. They will exhibit the findings in Lisowice on August 7 2008, Sulej said.
The intervening period since their discovery has been spent secretly building a museum to cover the remains.
The Naked Reader 2008
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