World’s oldest large meat-eating dinosaur identified by scientists

Scientists who have spent 20 YEARS studying remains of a 198 million-year- old fossil finally identify it as world’s oldest meat-eating dinosaur weighing more than a TONNE

  • Paleontologists identify Saltriovenator zanellai was found in Italy in 1996 
  • Researchers reassembled its bones to find that marine wildlife had fed on them
  • This indicates that the carcass floated in a marine basin for a long time  
  • The mammal was still a growing sub-adult individual, making its large size even more remarkable
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Paleontologists have identified the oldest large meat-eating dinosaur after accidentally discovering the 198 million-year-old fossils fragments in 1996, research reveals.

The fossil has bee named Saltriovenator zanellai and scientists claim the animal would have weighed more than a tonne.

It is believed the dinosaur is the oldest and largest known predatory ceratosaurian from the Lower Jurassic period.

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Paleontologists have identified the oldest meat-eating dinosaur after accidentally discovering the fossils in Italy in 1996, a study reveals. Saltriovenator zanellai was found to weigh more than a tonne and is now the oldest and largest known predatory dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic period

Analysis indicates that the Saltriovenator was still a growing sub-adult individual, therefore its estimated size is all the more remarkable.  

Early Jurassic predatory dinosaurs, who lived between 245 and 66 million years ago, are rare to find and mostly small in size.  

The authors also noted that the discovery was the first Jurassic dinosaur fossil find from the country. 

The studies lead author Dr Cristiano Dal Sasso, reassembled and studied the fossil for over twenty years before publishing his findings in the peer-reviewed journal the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences. 

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The dinosaur was given the name Saltriosaur, after the quarry where the fossils were found.

The ceratosaurian was unusual in having three rather than four fingers which it would have used to grasp its prey. 

The meat-eater has a number of other distinctive features including sharpened, serrated teeth. 

Saltriovenator was likely covered with filamentous protoplumage, or feathers and had horns on the lacrymal near the eyes and nasal bones. 


Skeletal reconstruction of Saltriovenator zanellai, made by comparing the shape and proportions of the known elements (in orange) with those of more complete skeletons of related species 


Simplified evolutionary tree of predatory dinosaurs or theropods (pictured) Saltriovenator predates the massive meat-eating dinosaurs by over 25 million years: it is the oldest known ceratosaurian, and the world’s largest predatory dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic

The specimen was found in the Italian Alps by a fossil amateur in a quarry near Saltrio, around 50 miles north east of Milan. 

The bones of Saltriovenator show feeding marks by marine wildlife, indicating that the carcass floated in a marine basin and then sunk to the bottom.

The mammal is likely to have remained on the sea bed for a ‘long time’ before burial. 

Dr Dal Sasso, of the Natural History Museum of Milan, said: ‘Saltriovenator shows a mosaic of ancestral and advanced anatomical features, respectively seen in the four-fingered dilophosaurids and ceratosaurians, and the three-fingered tetanuran theropods, such as allosaurids.’


Saltriovenator was likely covered with filamentous protoplumage, or feathers. The presence of horns on the lacrymal near the eyes and nasal bones is inferred from its close kinship with dinosaurs which possess those cranial ornamentation (artists impression)

Co-author Simone Maganuco said: ‘Analysis indicates that Saltriovenator was a still growing sub-adult individual, therefore its estimated size is all the more remarkable, in the context of the Early Jurassic period.

‘The evolutionary ”arms race” between stockier predatory and giant herbivorous dinosaurs, involving progressively larger species, had already begun 200 million years ago.’  

The Saltriovenator was likely to be a fierce predator. Its huge teeth and clawed fingers would have made it a ferocious killing machine. 


The bones of Saltriovenator bear bites (green arrows) and other feeding marks (red arrows) produced by fishes and marine invertebrates. These traces, the first ones ever detected on dinosaur remains, indicate that the carcass of the animal floated in a marine basin and then sunk, remaining on the sea bottom for quite a long time before burial 


At the Natural History Museum of Milan, paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso (left) and co-authors Andrea Cau and Simone Maganuco (center and right) examine the bones of Saltriovenator, deposited in the Museum collections

WHY DID THE DINOSAURS GO EXTINCT?

Dinosaurs ruled and dominated Earth around 66 million years ago, before they suddenly went extinct. 

The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event is the name given to this mass extinction.

It was believed for many years that the changing climate destroyed the food chain of the huge reptiles. 

In the 1980s, archaeologists discovered a layer of iridium.

This is an element that is rare on Earth but is found  in vast quantities in space.  

When this was dated, it coincided precisely with when the dinosaurs disappeared from the fossil record. 

A decade later, scientists uncovered the massive Chicxulub Crater at the tip of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which dates to the period in question. 

Scientific consensus now says that these two factors are linked and they were both probably caused by an enormous asteroid crashing to Earth.

With the projected size and impact velocity, the collision would have caused an enormous shock-wave and likely triggered seismic activity. 

The fallout would have created plumes of ash that likely covered all of the planet and made it impossible for dinosaurs to survive. 

Other animals and plant species had a shorter time-span between generations which allowed them to survive.

There are several other theories as to what caused the demise of the famous animals. 

One early theory was that small mammals ate dinosaur eggs and another proposes that toxic angiosperms (flowering plants) killed them off.  

 

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