150m-yr-old dinosaur unearthed in Argentina
Afp, Buenos Aires
Palaeontologists unearthed a flesh-eating dinosaur some 150 million years old in southern Argentina with all its joints in place, the first time such a beast has been dug up so intact, one of the finders told AFP on Friday.The seven-metre (23-foot) tall, two-legged dinosaur, dubbed the Condorraptor, was found fossilised with parts of its jaw and head showing in rock near the village of Cerro Condor in Patagonia, at a site where palaeontologists had been working for five years. "It is an unprecedented discovery. It is the first time in the world that a carnivorous dinosaur of the Middle Jurassic period has been found fully jointed," said Pablo Puerta, a palaeontologist at the Egidio Feruglio museum in the town of Trelew. Working in the southern province of Chubut, the team led by the German dinosaur specialist Oliver Rauhut uncovered the fossil using a giant crane to shift rock. Puerta said it will take about a year to fully uncover the dinosaur. It could then go on display at the Trelew museum.
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