A new dinosaur species was recently unearthed at a construction site near Ganzhou in Southern China while workers were clearing the area with dynamite. Fortunately, the fossils were noticed immediately before any further damage took place, and the blasts were located far enough from the remains not to destroy it.
Named Tongtianlong limosus (which translates to “muddy dragon on the road to heaven”), the bird-like creature died after getting stuck in the mud around 66-72 million years ago. Its final resting spot has earned it the nickname, “Mud Dragon.” The fossil is well-preserved and almost complete, Fox News reports.
Dr. Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh and co-author on the study, says,
I wasn’t there when it was found, but they must have realized right away that they had found something important, and it’s great that the fossil was conserved by a museum rather than sold off or auctioned away, where it would have been lost to science forever.
The dinosaur is a two-legged, winged species and was found lying on its back, its neck arched and wings outstretched. The Mud Dragon also had a crest on its head, which paleontologists believe might have been for mating purposes, or to ward off enemies. It was flightless, despite its wings, and had to use its feet to run from predators. It also didn’t have teeth, so scientists believe it likely consumed small mammals and lizards, along with plants, nuts, seeds and such. Being an omnivore meant the dinosaur could eat anything and survive.
Tongtianlong is only the sixth species of the oviraptorosaur dinosaurs – feathered animals with sharp beaks without teeth, and short heads. They lived 15 million years ago.
Brusatte thinks that the most important aspect of this find is gaining some insight into the last dinosaurs that roamed the planet. “They were still diversifying during those last few million years of the Cretaceous, so they are a sign that dinosaurs were still doing really well right up towards the end,” he says. “It was these dinosaurs that were undergoing the final wave of diversification before everything changed that day the asteroid hit.”
China has been yielding more and more fossils recently, and Brusatte says things won’t be slowing down soon. “Many of these discoveries are not found by professors or academic scientists with PhDs, but by farmers and workmen. This new discovery is a prime example of that.”
The study was published in Scientific Reports.
