Unaysaurus
| Unaysaurus | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unaysaurus on a cycad eating |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Triassic ( Norium ) | ||||||||||||
| 228 to 208.5 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Unaysaurus | ||||||||||||
| Leal , Azevedo , Kellner & da Rosa , 2004 |
Unaysaurus tolentinoi is one of the oldest known dinosaurs . The fossil remains of this herbivorous representative of the Plateosauria group were found in the sediments of the Upper Triassic ( Norium ) of Brazil. The only species described is Unaysaurus tolentinoi .
At the beginning of December 2004, paleontologists presented a replica of the approximately 228 to 208 million year old Unaysaurus tolentinoi in the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro . The very well preserved skull and other remains of the Unaysaurus tolentinoi were discovered by chance in 1998 by the pensioner Tolentino Marafiga while walking near the city of Santa Maria in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul .
The dinosaur was one of the first herbivores on earth to walk on two legs. It weighed around 70 kg, was 2.5 m long and up to 80 cm high. It was closely related to the European Plateosaurus . This relationship supports the theory of a land mass that once encompassed all continents , known as Pangea .
The name Unaysaurus is derived from the word "unay" (u-na-hie) from the Tupi language , which means "black water". Unay is the Indian name for the region in which the fossil was found, the modern Portuguese name "Agua Negra" means the same thing.
literature
- Luciano A. Leal, Sergio AK Azevedo, Alexander WA Kellner, Átila AS Da Rosa: A new early dinosaur (Sauropodomorpha) from the Caturrita Formation (Late Triassic), Paraná Basin, Brazil (= Zootaxa . 690). Magnolia Press, Auckland 2004.