Jurassic Park will have taught us at least one thing, and that is that dinosaurs, it is class. That they look like giant lizards or small chickens doesn’t change anything. But new fossil discovered in China could well… combine the two, since it is the largest velociraptor ever discovered.
Dinosaur: the largest raptor on earth
“You take your first look at this big turkey as you emerge into a clearing. She moves forward like a bird, nodding her head. And you don’t move anymore, because you tell yourself that, perhaps, his visual acuity is based on movement.” Unfortunately for Alan Grant, he may have been right. The velociraptors in the film are presented as powerful hunters at least our size, but reality has proven us otherwise, with much smaller fossils found in the world But. this time, in China, a new velociraptor fossil defies all known proportions. This study, published in the journal cell shows footprints of aberrant size for a raptor. According to the paleontologists who carried out the investigation, it belonged to a new monstrous species called fujianipus yingliangi. Finally, it could be that the raptors in the film were not oversized. They just weren’t the right species.
According to the study, this new species fujianipus yingliangi could easily reach 1.8 meters high and 5 meters long. To reach this conclusion, the researchers studied footprints found in Longyan prefecture, China. This is a place known for preserving dinosaur traces remarkably well. Here, scientists estimate that the traces observed measure around 35 centimeters and date from the end of the Cretaceous period, between 80 and 105 million years ago. This XXL and monstrous raptor is part of the lineage of gigantic dinosaurs. Bones discovered in Alaska had already indicated that gigantism was fashionable at the time, near the Arctic Circle, but not limited to it. It is therefore not surprising to find an immense raptor further down, in China. Worse, surprisingly close, in South Korea, researchers discovered a few years ago the footprints of the smallest dinosaurs in the world, and there too it was a velociraptor. This incredible variety of size invites specialists, including Anthony Romilio, to wonder whether this advantage has allowed the raptors to obtain a great capacity for adaptation, growing over the years depending on the quantity of prey available and their size. They would thus have developed on the Earth, to the point of dominating it?
