KING OF THE SWAMP
American professor discovers massive new long-necked dinosaur that lived 210MILLION-years-ago while battling crocodiles
The intrepid academic dodged perilous conditions to make the incredible find
A PROFESSOR has discovered a new dinosaur species dating back 210 million years.
Kimi Chapelle, from Long Island, made the historic discovery in Zimbabwe - marking the fourth discovery ever made in the southern African nation.
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The whizz, who lectures at Stony Brook University, unearthed prehistoric fossils of the lengthy-necked herbivore known as the sauropodomorph dino.
Known as being one of the largest dinosaurs to walk the earth, the species would weigh in at an average 850 pounds and would be typically found in swampy areas.
The species inhabited the area 210 million years ago in the Late Triassic period and marks the first dinosaur to be named in over half a century.
Kimi, 33, made the trip between 2017 and 2018, but analyses made on the dino’s thigh, shin and ankle bones only recently confirmed the species' identity.
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“We could only work from but during very daytime hours because, if you go walk around at dusk and dawn, that’s when the crocodiles and the hippos come out of the water,” Kimi told the New York Post.
“Even during the day, you weren’t allowed to walk by the water because crocs tend to grab people from the shores.”
Chapelle added that “extremely aggressive” hippopotamuses would pop up while she and her team were poring the fossils.
The intrepid academic now hopes the discovery will galvanize further excursions across Zimbabwe.
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“We have more fossils from the area that we’re still prepping and working on," she continued.
"I think this has given us more of a boost to try and get that done soon.
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“Naming a new dinosaur species is always a big career moment, and it’s something that will stay in the literature forever, no matter what happens.”
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It comes after researchers uncovered 265-million-year-old dinosaur fossils in South America last year.
The findings were shared in a new study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
An international team of researchers is credited with the discovery, which was made in a rural area of São Gabriel, Southern Brazil.
The 265-million-year-old preserved fossils belonged to a species known as Pampaphoneus biccai.
The stunning fossil includes a complete skull, some ribs, and arm bones.
Why did the dinosaurs die out?
Here's what you need to know...
- The dinosaur wipe-out was a sudden mass extinction event on Earth
- It wiped out roughly three-quarters of our planet’s plant and animal species around 66million years ago
- This event marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and opened the Cenozoic Era, which we’re still in today
- Scientists generally believe that a massive comet or asteroid around 9 miles wide crashed into Earth, devastating the planet
- This impact is said to have sparked a lingering “impact winter”, severely harming plant life and the food chain that relied on it
- More recent research suggests that this impact “ignited” major volcanic activity, which also led to the wiping-out of life
- Some research has suggested that dinosaur numbers were already declining due to climate changes at the time
- But a study published in March 2019 claims that dinosaurs were likely “thriving” before the extinction event
"The fossil was found in middle Permian rocks, in an area where bones are not so common, but always hold pleasant surprises," said lead author Mateus A. Costa Santos, a graduate student in the Paleontology Laboratory at the Federal University of Pampa (UNIPAMPA).
"Finding a new Pampaphoneus skull after so long was extremely important for increasing our knowledge about the animal, which was previously difficult to differentiate from its Russian relatives."
Pampaphoneus is an extinct genus of carnivorous dinocephalian therapsid, which belonged to the family Anteosauridae.
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The species lived until the dinosaurs went extinct around 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
It's unusual for the species' fossils to be uncovered in Brazil as they've mostly been spotted throughout Russia and South Africa.