A team of scientists has found something amazing in India – the bones of a meat-eating dinosaur that lived 220 million years ago! According to MoneyControl, this special dinosaur is called Maleriraptor kuttyi. It’s one of the oldest dinosaurs ever found in India and tells us new things about how dinosaurs spread around the world.
The lead scientist who studied these old bones is Dr. Martín Ezcurra. He works at the Bernardino Rivadavia Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences. He also works at the University of Birmingham and Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council. These dinosaur bones were actually collected back in the 1980s from a place called the Pranhita-Godavari Valley near a village named Annaram in south-central India.
What makes this dinosaur super special is that it belonged to a group called Herrerasauria. These were some of the first meat-eating dinosaurs on Earth. Before this discovery, scientists only knew about four other herrerasaur dinosaurs, and they were all found in South America – in countries called Argentina and Brazil.
When and Where This Dinosaur Lived
This dinosaur lived during a time called the Triassic period, in a part called the Norian age. That was about 220 million years ago – more than a thousand times longer than humans have been on Earth! Back then, India wasn’t where it is today. It was part of a giant piece of land called Gondwana, which also included South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica.
Scientists who studied the rocks where the bones were found, called the Upper Maleri Formation, say the climate in India back then was very similar to what southern North America was like. This helps scientists understand why certain dinosaurs could live in different parts of the world.
| What Scientists Learned | Why It’s Important |
|---|---|
| Maleriraptor survived a big extinction event | Shows some dinosaurs could survive while others disappeared |
| Herrerasaurs lived in more places than we thought | Helps us understand how dinosaurs spread around the world |
| This dinosaur was different from South American ones | Shows how dinosaurs changed as they moved to new places |
| It lived after many plant-eaters died out | Tells us meat-eaters might have been tougher survivors |
A Tough Survivor
According to the Times of India, this dinosaur lived right after a time when many animals disappeared forever. This big dying-off is called an extinction event. The animals that died included plant-eaters called rhynchosaurs. But somehow, our meat-eating dinosaur survived! DinoAnimals.com noted that finding this dinosaur in India fills a big gap in what we know about where and when these early dinosaurs lived.
The Royal Society Open Science journal confirmed that Maleriraptor kuttyi was a member of the Herrerasauria group by looking closely at its bone shapes. Scientists studied many tiny details in the fossil bones to figure out what kind of dinosaur it was and how it was related to other dinosaurs.
What Did Maleriraptor Look Like?
DinoAnimals tells us this dinosaur had special features in its hip bones. Its ilium (a hip bone) had a very short part called a “postacetabular process.” Its pubis bone pointed strongly downward and didn’t have the wide end that other dinosaurs had. Scientists call this a “pubic boot.”
The backbone of this dinosaur also had unique features. The Royal Society Open Science reported that one of its sacral vertebrae (back bones near the hip) was longer than the ones in front of it. This is a special trait only this dinosaur had. Its tail bones had low spines on top and joints that sat at about 45-degree angles.
- Age: This dinosaur lived 220 million years ago, when dinosaurs were just starting out
- First of its kind: It’s the first herrerasaur found that survived a big extinction in the Gondwana region
- Family tree: Scientists found it’s related to but different from South American dinosaurs
- Size: It was a small meat-eater, not huge like T. rex that came much later
- Importance: Shows dinosaurs could adapt and survive tough times
ResearchGate, citing the Royal Society Open Science journal, explained that when scientists made a dinosaur family tree, they found Maleriraptor kuttyi belongs in the Herrerasauria group but is outside the South American Herrerasauridae group. This tells us it was an early branch of the dinosaur family tree that went its own way.
This amazing discovery helps scientists understand how dinosaurs first spread around our planet and how they changed over time. It shows that even when times were tough and many animals died out, some clever dinosaurs found ways to survive and thrive!
