- British palaeontologists believe the
fossils are very important. Hip and leg bones unearthed in Portugal have
shown for the first time that the same species of dinosaur stalked both
continents 150 million years ago.
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- "It's a very important discovery
as it gives us some specific information about how wide the Atlantic was
at the time the dinosaur lived," Professor Mike Benton told the BBC.
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- This bone revealed that Europe and North
America were connected for much longer than thoughtProfessor Benton, of
Bristol University, said that when the dinosaurs originated 225m years
ago, all the continents were close together. But they started to drift
apart soon after that.
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- By 150m years ago, the Atlantic is thought
to have been 200 to 300 kilometres wide and far too deep for dinosaurs
to cross from one side to the other.
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- The new discovery shows that significant
land bridges between Europe and North America must have remained, even
when the new ocean was quite wide. These may have been near Greenland.
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- The fossil bones are from a dinosaur
called Allosaurus fragilis. This eight-metre-long, meat-eating creature
is similar to the better known Tyranosaurus rex.
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- Many Allosaurus fossils have been found
in North America, but the Portuegese finds are the first in Europe which
can be positively identified as the same species.
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- They were found over ten years ago in
Leiria in west central Portugal, but only studied recently. The bones were
found in rocks laid down by a meandering river, close to its estuary.
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- The find is published in the Journal
of the Geological Society.
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