By Miguel Lo Bianco
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Paleontologists in Argentina announced the discovery of a new medium-sized, fast-running herbivorous dinosaur that lived about 90 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period, in present-day Patagonia.
The animal, called Chakisaurus nekul, was found in the Pueblo Blanco Nature Reserve, in the southern province of Río Negro, an area rich in fossils where many mammals, turtles and fish were found along with other species of dinosaurs.
The largest Chakisaurus is estimated to have reached 2.5 or 3 meters in length and 70 centimeters in height (8 to 10 feet in length and 27 inches in height).
Studies of Chakisaurus have produced new discoveries indicating that it ran fast and had an unusually downward-curved tail.
“This new species, Chakisaurus nekul, was a bipedal herbivore that among its most important characteristics had a tail that, unlike other dinosaurs, which was horizontal, had a downward curvature,” said Rodrigo Álvarez, author of the study.
“It’s super new for these animals. Furthermore, it is known that he was a good runner, which he needed because he lived with a large number of predators and his only defense was to be faster than them.”
The dinosaur’s name derives from Chaki, which is a word from the Aonikenk language, of the indigenous Tehuelche people, which means “old guanaco”, a reference to a medium-sized herbivorous mammal found in the region. Nekul means “fast” or “agile” in the Mapudungún language of the local Mapuche people.
“He had very strong hind limbs and a tail with an anatomy that allowed him to maneuver it side to side and thus be able to balance himself during races,” explained Sebastián Rozadilla, co-author of the publication, to Reuters.
A team of Argentine paleontologists, with support from the National Geographic Society, initially made the discovery in 2018, but recently revealed their discovery in the respected journal Cretaceous Research.
(Reporting by Miguel Lo Bianco; text by Lucila Sigal; editing by Nicolás Misculin and Aurora Ellis)
