First Hump-Backed Dinosaur Could Eat Several Humans for Brunch [Science]

Here is the Concavenator corcovatus , a new species of dinosaur discovered in Cuenca, Spain. Described as the first ever hump-backed dinosaur, this weird 20-feet-long predator would be the predecessor of the meat-eating titans that dominated the Cretaceous.

Scientists believe that this dinosaur-which was unearthed almost complete-is the earliest member of the Carcharodontosauria, the titanic flesh-eating monsters that ruled our planet 145 million years ago. This family included gigantic beasts like the Giganotosaurus, which can measure up to 47 feet.

According to the study, published in Nature, the recent dinosaur shows some peculiar bumps on one of its arms’ bones. That is another very surprising feature: This bumps served as anchors to massive feathers in small dinosaurs that were more in the direction of birds than others. However, the Concavenator corcovatus belongs to a miles earlier period, and it was larger than those. The discovery could show that feathers appeared in these animals sooner than was expected.

But its most surprising and apparent feature is its back, says the UNED’s Fernando Escaso, main author of the paper:

It is the first time we’ve ever seen a structure like this on the spine of a dinosaur, although it’s common on some animals today, together with cows. At this time, the function of this structure is unclear. We believe that the animal was not diseased because the spine shows no sign of being cracked or broken, we predict this is a feature of this species. One hypothesis is that it was a reservoir of fat.

Another ” crazy” hypothesis-completely baseless at the time-is that it may serve as a counterweight to keep its equilibirum. [ Las Hoyas via AFP and El Mundo ]

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This post is tagged: counterweight, cuenca spain, giganotosaurus, gigantic beasts, million-years-