A new study recently revealed alvarez dinosaurs, unusual species of dinosaur that were reduced in size about 100 million years ago when they became specialized ant-eaters.
This new work, according to a report from Phys.org, is being led by PhD student Zichuan Qin of Bristol University and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing.
As such, Qin measured the height of dozens of specimens and found that for the majority of their existence they ranged from 20 to 70 kilograms, similar in size to a large turkey to a small ostrich, and then quickly fell on chicken-sized animals at the same time they were adopting an unusual new diet that is ant-eater.
Also stated in the said report, the alvarez dinosaurs lived in various parts of the world, including Mongolia, China, and South America, from the late Jurassic to the late Cretaceous, about 160 to 70 million years ago.
Said dinosaurs were slender, bipedal predators for most of their time on this planet who hunted lizards, early mammals, and baby dinosaurs as part of their diet.
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(Photo: Kumiko from Tokyo, Japan on Wikimedia Commons)
A new study recently revealed alvarez dinosaurs, unusual species of dinosaur that were reduced in size about 100 million years ago when they became specialized ant-eaters.
The Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution
According to one of Zichuan’s superiors, Professor Michael Benton of the Bristol School of Earth Sciences, competition with other dinosaurs likely increased through the Cretaceous.
The Cretaceous Period, he added, was a time of rapidly evolving ecosystems and the biggest change was slow takeover by flowering plants.
Flowering plants completely changed the nature of the landscape, and yet dinosaurs mostly did not feed on these new plants. However, they led to an explosion of new species of insects, including termites and ants.
The restructuring of the ecosystem has been dubbed the “Cretaceous Earth Revolution” and marks the time when forests and forests emerged in the modern style with a variety of animals and plants, including insects that specialized in pollinating the new flowers in order to keep theirs To feed on petals, leaves and nectar.
Alvarezsaur species
A similar ScienceDaily report stated that the main problem with many specimens of alvar dinosaurs, especially the chicken-sized ones, was ensuring that they were all fully grown.
Study co-author, Dr. Qi Zhao, also an expert on bone histology, said that “some of the skeletons are clearly from adolescents.”
In addition, the study showed the age of the dinosaurs when they died depending on the number of growth rings in the bone.
As for her findings from the study “Growth and Miniaturization of Alvarez Dinosaurs,” published in Current Biology, Dr. Zhao that they were able to determine that some samples were from babies and teenagers and therefore excluded them from the estimates.
Ant-eaters could be a notable diet for dinosaurs. This, according to Professor James Clark of Washington, DC and co-author of the study, was suggested years ago when the Mononykus arms were reported from Mongolia.
Clark, also one of the tiny alvarez dinosaur discoverers from Mongolia, added that Mononykus, as National Geographic describes, was one of the tiny alvarez dinosaurs, only about three feet long, although it may weigh four to five kilograms, a decent Christmas turkey.
The species’s arm was short and strong. Moreover, it had only lost one of its fingers, which had been changed as a short thorn. Also, the alvarez dinosaur looked like a punchy little arm that wasn’t good for grasping, but ideal for pounding a hole in the side of a termite mound.
A similar report on alvarez dinosaurs is shown in the Budget Museum’s YouTube video below:
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