A team of paleontologists from CONICET, the main agency that fosters science and technology in Argentina, discovered an exceptionally complete fossils of a small carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 95 million years ago.
The discovery took place in the La Buitrera Paleontological Area (LBPA), located in northern Río Negro Province, a globally significant, 826 km² fossil site within the Cenomanian Candeleros Formation in Argentine Patagonia.
The specimen belongs to the species Alnashetri cerropoliciensis, a small, non - avian theropod from the Late Cretaceous of Argentina. Known for its slender thights and long legs, this dinosaur featured long arms, numerous sharp teeth, and unique, small notches at the base of its toe bones, indicating a fast - running, insectivorous lifestyle.
This primitive Alvarezsaurus had a small, delicate skeleton, with aa body often described as rooster - sized with a long tail, and was built for speed on its long, slender hind limbs.
The fossil, nicknamed “Alna”, is the most complete Alvarezsaurus found so far in South America and allowed unprecedented information about its anatomy, growth and evolution to be obtained.
The researchers argue that this finding changes theories about the evolution of the group, as it shows that these dinosaurs were already small before they developed adaptations to feed on insects.
The analysis also revealed that Alvarezsaurs dispersed across the supercontinent Pangaea before the continents separated, helping to explain their presence in distant regions such as Argentina, South America, Mongolia, Asia, and the United Kingdom in Europe.
A
researcher at CONICET and one of the authors of the study, Sebastián Apesteguía
said that this shows us that these dinosaurs did not small due to the changes
in diet, but that they always a small size.
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