Meet Banjo, Matilda and Clancy: Three New Dinosaurs From Australia
From top to bottom: Australovenator, Wintonotitan, and Diamantinasaurus. From the PLoS One paper.
Australia has always been a tough place for dinosaur paleontologists to work. Aside from the harsh conditions, dinosaur skeletons found “down under” are often extremely fragmentary. A bit of leg, a claw, a rib, a toe bone; often there is not much more to be found of dinosaurs that once roamed the southern continent. A new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, however, describes three new dinosaurs represented by much more than just scraps.
Studied by a team of Australian paleontologists, the new specimens consist of two sauropod dinosaurs and an Allosaurus-like predator from the middle of the Cretaceous, about 112 to 99 million years ago. The sauropods, named Wintonotitan wattsi (”Clancy”) and Diamantinasaurus matildae (”Matilda”), are known from parts of the hips, leg bones, and (in the case of Wintonotitan) much of the tail. The predatory dinosaur, called Australovenator (”Banjo”), is represented by the hands, forearms, legs, a few ribs and part of the lower jaw. It might not sound like much at first, but it is pretty exceptional!
The researchers described each of these new dinosaurs in exquisite detail, but at a more general level the new beasts have greatly expand our understanding of what the Middle Cretaceous of Australia was like. There were at least two large sauropods related to the titanosaurs and a predatory dinosaur that was closely related to the big-headed terrors known as carcharadontosaurids. Furthermore, these dinosaurs show that Australia probably had a very interesting mix of dinosaur types during the Early Cretaceous. There were dinosaurs that were more evolutionarily specialized living alongside others that more closely resembled the ancestral stock that the other dinosaurs evolved from. More discoveries will be needed to help fill in the big-picture, but the announcement of these three dinosaurs is a stunning victory for Australian paleontologists.
For more information about these dinosaurs, I recommend you check out A Blog Around the Clock, The Open Source Paleontologist and SV-POW!
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According to a comment by the paper’s lead author on SV-POW!, there’s actually more material of these species, or at least of Diamantinasaurus, still being prepped. They apparently decided they had enough material to publish now, and weren’t going to wait several more years for the preparators to finish — a reasonable compromise between the pressure to publicise one’s work and the inevitably excruciatingly slow process of preparation. I suppose that if they find more pieces they believe belong to the same individual as the type specimen, those will be referred as paratypes.
Comment by Vasha — July 6, 2009 @ 11:22 pm
[...] Dinosaur Tracking – Meet Banjo, Matilda and Clancy: Three New Dinosaurs From Australia [...]
Pingback by Waltzing with Dinosaurs « everyONE – the PLoS ONE community blog — July 7, 2009 @ 6:47 am
There is a whole lot more of Banjo and Matilda both waiting to be uncovered and waiting to be prepped. The preservation of the material and the countryside in which it is found makes it difficlt for excavation to happen for any longer than two weeks or so at a time. Given the richness of the site there will be at least another year or two of digging before the rest of both animals comes out. Not to mention a few years after that before all the material is prepped.
Comment by KAP — July 21, 2009 @ 10:25 am
why doesn’t it say the size of banjo and the others?, there really cool but i want to know more REAL detail, including size
Comment by john — September 15, 2009 @ 5:27 am