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Heavy rains in southern Brazil revealed the remains of a carnivorous dinosaur belonging to the Herrerasauridae family, which roamed Pangea during the Triassic 233 million years ago.
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This would make the fossil the oldest dino fossil in the world, though there are other unconfirmed specimens that date back 240 million years.
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Paleontologists are now racing against time to protect the specimen as heavy rains continue eroding the soil and damaging other fossils at the Quarta Colônia Geopark.
When it comes to dinosaurs, the most famous of these gargantuan reptiles roamed the Earth during the Jurassic or the Cretaceous—your stegosauruses, your T. Rexes, and your velociraptors (thanks, Spielberg). But the story of the dinosaur dates back before these two geologic periods, and well into the Triassic, a 50.5-million-year stretch that picked up the pieces following the Permian extinction (a.k.a. The Great Dying) and saw the beginnings of the dinosaur age—only to be cut down to size by another extinction event, known as the end-Triassic.
The Triassic is also the era of Pangea, when all continents formed one, big supercontinent, and living on a particular stretch of Pangea some 233 million years ago was a member of the Herrerasauridae family of carnivorous dinosaurs. This bi-pedal, eight-foot-long Herrerasaurid (though other members of this group could be upwards of 20 feet long) at some point perished in what is now a state in southern Brazil that its present-day human occupants call “Rio Grande do Sul.”
Although this sudden bout of mortality was bad news for this particular specimen, thankfully for paleontologists, its bones were preserved for nearly a quarter of a billion years in a state that a local news agency, Agência Brasil, reports is “almost fully preserved.”
“It’s among the oldest in the world,” Federal University of Santa Maria’s (UFSM) Rodrigo Müller told Agência Brasil. “It’s already important because of the role it’s likely to play in helping us understand the origin of the dinosaurs. Besides, it’s almost fully preserved. The material will provide a lot of anatomical information.”
The oldest confirmed fossils of a dinosaur are 231 million years old and feature a collection of different species (including members of Herrerasauridae). However, more disputed fossils date back as far as 240 million years. The addition of this specimen could provide valuable context surrounding the first millions of years when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Although the conditions for preserving this Herrerasaurid in death might’ve been fortuitous for paleontologists, the context of its discovery in southern Brazil is less than ideal. The area was already well-known for heavy rains, but as the world warms, high pressure systems off the southern Brazilian coast are lingering longer, meaning more and more rain. In early June, The New York Times reported that the region received three months of rain in just two weeks, causing devastating floods and killing at least 182 people.
While this deluge initially revealed Herrerasaurid fossil at the UNESCO-recognized Quarta Colônia Geopark by quickening soil erosion in the area, the team is now in a race against time as continued rains could also destroy remaining fossils if left in these rain-soaked conditions too long—in fact, Muller told the Associated Press that “a leg bone and a pelvis bone in the pelvic region…were already being destroyed due to the rain.”
Dinosaurs of the Triassic are used to extinction—two of the worst extinction events in human history bookended their geologic time on Earth. Now, hundreds of millions of years later, these fossilized wonders are coming face-to-face with yet another one.
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Source Agencies
