Madagascar dinosaur found - "little bandit" - TVNZ

Dahalokely found a new species in Madagascar. Its name translates from the Malagasy language as a “little bandit” because these dinosaurs were predators and thus not large. Their length is from 2.8 to 4.3 meters.

Found

form filled an important gap in the history of dinosaurs in the region. To date, the age of the finds were either older than 165 million years old, or younger than 70 million Naydenov same species suggest that approximately 95 million years. Thus, unexplored gap has narrowed.

new species of dinosaur. Photo: AFP

Age findings support the hypothesis that during the life of this type of Madagascar and India were a single continent, divided only about 88 million years ago.

BTW

When dinosaurs became extinct?

Today, two popular theories. One side believes that they began to die out on how some 65 million years ago in the land – an area of ??the present Gulf of Mexico – a giant asteroid crashed about 10 kilometers. He made the lives of most reptiles, including the marine reptiles unbearable.

Others believe that the Earth’s climate have spoiled numerous volcanoes at once awakened, the catastrophic eruption which gradually brought up to the death of the inhabitants of the Mesozoic era. Proponents of this hypothesis point to the fact that since the fall of an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs about 300 thousand years. Like, suspiciously long time to hold a kick out of space the main cause of death.

Professor Paul Rennes University of California has every chance to reconcile the two warring sides in a dispute over what and when killed the dinosaurs.

According to the hypothesis, the same asteroid that left a crater with a diameter of about 200 kilometers in the Gulf of Mexico, fell to Earth 180,000 years earlier than previously assumed. The exact date of the cataclysm – not “about 65 million years ago,” and 6.63 million years old. By this time, the climate on the planet really spoiled – including as a result of eruptions. We have a strong and long lasting cold. And in these circumstances, the dinosaurs were already on the verge of extinction. Rennes believes that the impact of space finished off dinosaurs, highly aggravating their situation. And after the fall of an asteroid to the extinction of dinosaurs was not 300,000 years, and only 30,000.

– In geological terms, these events are practically the same, – professor – and we have proved that. Asteroid was the “last straw” as a result of which the Earth has moved from the Mesozoic era to the present – the Cenozoic. This cataclysm, of course, was the main cause of extinction of the dinosaurs, but not the only one.