Scientists discover 'the Holy Grail of dinosaurs' in Africa

The Washington Compost ^ | January 30 at 3:32 PM | Amy B Wang

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Paleontologist Matthew Lamanna can still remember the day in 2014 when a colleague, Hesham Sallam, emailed him detailed pictures of fossils that had just been unearthed by his team in Egypt.

From one photo, depicting the remains of a large lower jaw bone, Lamanna knew right away that Sallam had found a dinosaur.

“No pun intended, my jaw did almost literally hit the floor when I saw that,” Lamanna, the principal dinosaur researcher at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, told The Washington Post. “When you stare at dinosaur bones for a lot of your life, you learn to recognize parts of dinosaur bones pretty instantaneously.”

But this wouldn't just be any dinosaur. Sallam and his team at Egypt's Mansoura University had discovered a new species from the late Cretaceous Period, between 100 million and 66 million years ago, an era sometimes referred to as the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.

Even nearly four years after the discovery, the giddiness in Lamanna's voice is evident as he talked about the importance of the initial pictures. (In fact, his excitement was so palpable that he was later asked to join the team, he added.)

[ifinnegan]

Is the brontosaurus not considered real anymore?

I always liked the brontosaurus.

[dangus]

Brontosaurus had the wrong head, but he’s real.

[Slyfox]

[rlmorel]

Hahahahahaha that’s hilarious!

[Southern Magnolia]

Brontosaurus is a better name. Apatosaurus just sounds like a really big St. Patrick’s day drink—”I’ll have a Pat O’Saurus!”

[umgud]

A previous Globull Warming prolly got him.

[Paladin2]

My view is :

If you like your Brontosaurus you can keep your Brontosaurus.

[dfwgator]

“African or European?”

“I don’t know.” AAAAAAAAAGH!

[LostInBayport]

Mansoura University had discovered a new species from the late Cretaceous Period, between 100 million and 66 million years ago

And it had a collar that said "if lost please return to Helen Thomas, who lives under the stone bridge over the old volcano next to the great water"

[BenLurkin]

Helenia Thomasauris.

[DoughtyOne]

Is it bigger than Europe’s Apostosaurus?

[DoughtyOne]

Is that in the Kennedy rebuttal tonight?

“:^)

[ClearCase_guy]

Brontosaurus had the wrong head, but he’s real.

[Two Kids' Dad]

The primitive Swallowsaurus was a migratory bird known to carry coconuts by the husks.

[KarlInOhio]

“When you stare at dinosaur bones for a lot of your life, you learn to recognize parts of dinosaur bones pretty instantaneously.”

Look at the bones!

[dfwgator]

Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

[Paul R.]

There was an interesting vid at the end of the article (it appears they skip to new ones w/ time): It was a simulation that purports that T.Rex (a large adult, I assume) “can’t run” - that it’s top speed is 12 mph. Well, yeah, ol’ Rex won’t catch most athletes. But I bet it could catch most modern day humans in the open...

[null and void]

[dr_lew]

That's very old news, a result of the dinosaur wars between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Marsh. Marsh prevailed, generally, as he gained status in the US Geological Survey, while Cope suffered financial disaster in private life. As noted in the Wiki article for Bone Wars "Marsh himself was not infallible; he put the wrong skull on a skeleton of Apatosaurus and declared it a new genus, Brontosaurus."