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A groundbreaking discovery was made by Brazil’s geological service as they unveiled a new species of dinosaur. This swift creature is believed to have roamed the desert during the early Cretaceous period.
Known as Farlowichnus rapidus, the newly identified species was a diminutive carnivorous animal, akin to the size of a modern-day seriema bird, standing about 2-3 feet tall, as per the findings of researchers. This remarkable revelation has been documented in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research.
In a statement released by the geological service, it was noted, “From the large distance between the footprints found, it is possible to deduce that it was a very fast reptile that ran across the ancient dunes.”
The early Cretaceous period spanned from 100 to 145 million years ago, signifying the remarkable antiquity of this prehistoric creature.
The fossilized dinosaur “trackways,” a term employed by scientists for such discoveries, were initially unearthed in the 1980s by the Italian priest and paleontologist Giuseppe Leonardi in what is now the city of Araraquara, in the state of Sao Paulo. In 1984, Leonardi generously donated one of the footprint samples to Brazil’s Museum of Earth Sciences, which was sourced from the so-called Botucatu formation, a collection of rocks formed by an ancient dune desert.
Museum paleontologist Rafael Costa commented that the footprints are distinct from all other known dinosaur footprints, underscoring the uniqueness of this finding.
