Palaeontologists claim to have discovered the newest member of the dinosaurs -- Brontomerus Mcintoshi, also known as “thunder thighs” because of its huge legs and the translation of its name.
An international team which spotted the remains of the creature in the American state of Utah says it has generated a computer image of the species.
The remains date from the early Cretaceous period, which began around 145 million years ago and ended 65 million years ago.
The remains included a juvenile’s left ilium bone, which forms part of the pelvis, and also a near complete left scapula, or shoulder blade, of a larger, presumably adult, animal, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.
The team also found well preserved vertebrae from the creature as well as a complete rib bone. They then used the bones they discovered to match certain known criteria to determine what species of dinosaur they came from.
Using five variables, and particularly focused on the size and other factors within the ilium bone, they confirmed it was from the Sauropod family.
It was the eighth discovery of remains from a member of that species in North America and there are expected to be more in the future.
The team believes it will find more as the number of dinosaurs within the land mass did not decline significantly at the end of the Jurassic period.
The findings have been published in the latest edition of the ‘Acta Palaeontologica Polonica’ journal.The term "dinosaur" was coined in 1842 by the English paleontologist Richard Owen, and derives from Greek δεινός (deinos) "terrible, powerful, wondrous" + σαῦρος (sauros) "lizard". Through the first half of the twentieth century, most of the scientific community believed dinosaurs to have been sluggish, unintelligent cold-blooded animals.
Most research conducted since the 1970s, however, has indicated that dinosaurs were active animals with elevated metabolisms and numerous adaptations for social interaction.Since the first dinosaur fossils were recognized in the early nineteenth century, mounted dinosaur skeletons have been major attractions at museums around the world, and dinosaurs have become a part of world culture.
They have been featured in best-selling books and films such as Jurassic Park, and new discoveries are regularly covered by the media. In informal speech, the word "dinosaur" is used to describe things that are impractically large, slow-moving, obsolete, or bound for extinction,[7] reflecting the outdated view that dinosaurs were maladapted monsters of the ancient world.
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