New Delhi: The fossil remains of a 167-million-years-old long-necked, plant-eating dicraeosaurid dinosaur have been discovered in Jaisalmer. Scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee and the Geological Survey of India (GSI) managed to unearth the prehistoric findings. The scientists have named the dinosaur fossil ‘Tharosaurus indicus’, referring to the Thar desert and the country of origin where the remains were found, PTI reported.
According to the study published in ‘Scientific Reports’, an international journal by publishers of Nature, scientists are of the view that the fossils belong to a new species of dinosaurs, unknown to man. The fossils were collected from the Jaisalmer region in 2018 and a group of six researchers from the two institutes spent almost five years studying them.
“A systematic fossil exploration and excavation program initiated by GSI in 2018 in the Middle Jurassic (~ 167 Ma) rocks in the Jaisalmer region of Rajasthan, has led to this discovery,” said Prof Sunil Bajpai, chair professor of vertebrate paleontology in the department of earth sciences at IIT-Roorkee.
“The fossils were collected by the GSI officers Krishna Kumar, Pragya Pandey and Triparna Ghosh under the supervision of Debasis Bhattacharya and then we studied it for around five years,” he added.
The discovery of the fossils, of all the places in India, suggests that the country also played a small yet unexpected part in the dinosaur evolution cycle.
According to researchers, since the fossils were found in rocks dated to be around 167 million years old, it makes the Indian Sauropod not only the oldest known dicraeosaurid but also globally the oldest diplodocoid (a broader group that includes dicraeosaurids and other closely related sauropods).
Previously, dicraeosaurid dinosaurs fossils have been discovered in North and South America, Africa, and China but never in India.
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