{"id":311319,"date":"2025-10-17T17:58:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/311319\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T17:58:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T17:58:12","slug":"paleontologists-discover-new-species-of-triassic-long-necked-dinosaur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/311319\/","title":{"rendered":"Paleontologists Discover New Species of Triassic Long-Necked Dinosaur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paleontologists have unearthed a new assemblage of Triassic fossils at the Quebrada Santo Domingo site of the Northern Precordillera Basin in northwestern Argentina. Their discoveries include a nearly complete skeleton of a previously unknown sauropodomorph dinosaur species as well as several cynodonts, rhynchosaurs, and aetosaurs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Huayracursor<\/a><\/p>\n

Huayracursor jaguensis. Image credit: Jorge Blanco.<\/p>\n

The newly-discovered species lived in what is now Argentina during the Carnian age of the Late Triassic epoch, about 230 million years ago.<\/p>\n

Named Huayracursor jaguensis, this dinosaur was an early and primitive member of the clade Sauropodomorpha<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The ancient animal had a considerably longer neck and was larger than most of its contemporaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Carnian age (237 to 227\u2009million years ago) marks a crucial interval in tetrapod evolution, preserving the earliest records of several major clades, including dinosaurs,\u201d said Dr. Martin Hechenleitner, a paleontologist at the Centro Regional de Investigaciones Cient\u00edficas y Transferencia Tecnol\u00f3gica de La Rioja and CONICET, and colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing the Carnian pluvial episode, dinosaurs experienced significant radiation, rapidly establishing their dominance for the remainder of the Mesozoic Era.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost early records come from a small number of well-studied localities in South America, in the Ischigualasto-Villa Uni\u00f3n Basin in western Argentina and the Paran\u00e1 Basin in southern Brazil.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese sites have yielded diverse early dinosaurs, including ornithischians, herrerasaurids, theropods and sauropodomorphs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the sauropodomorphs are the most taxonomically diverse, almost all were (with fragmentary exceptions) small, short-necked, bipedal forms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite advances in our understanding of Carnian tetrapod faunas, no dinosaur-bearing assemblages have emerged outside traditional units.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Selected<\/a><\/p>\n

Selected bones of the Huayracursor jaguensis holotype. Image credit: Hechenleitner et al., doi: 10.1038\/s41586-025-09634-3.<\/p>\n

Dr. Hechenleitner and co-authors discovered the fossilized remains of Huayracursor jaguensis and several other Triassic animals in the Santo Domingo Formation<\/a> at Quebrada Santo Domingo, a remote locality in the Andes of La Rioja province, northwestern Argentina.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis new fauna is the first to be recovered from the newly identified Northern Precordillera Basin,\u201d the paleontologists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrent findings include hyperodapedontine rhynchosaurs, traversodontid and probainognathian cynodonts, aetosaurs, and at least two sauropodomorph dinosaurs, indicating a Carnian age.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong sauropodomorphs, Huayracursor jaguensis provides the earliest evidence of synchronous body mass increase and neck elongation in Sauropodomorpha, suggesting that these key traits emerged at the dawn of dinosaurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis finding expands the known diversity and geographic range of early dinosaur faunas and expands our understanding of sauropodomorph evolution in the Carnian age.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discovery of Huayracursor jaguensis is described in a paper<\/a> in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

E.M. Hechenleitner et al. A long-necked early dinosaur from a newly discovered Upper Triassic basin in the Andes. Nature, published online October 15, 2025; doi: 10.1038\/s41586-025-09634-3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paleontologists have unearthed a new assemblage of Triassic fossils at the Quebrada Santo Domingo site of the Northern…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":311320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[157142,2841,157143,157144,43603,43606,157145,157146,157147,157148,157149,157150,159,4217,157151,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-311319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-andes","9":"tag-argentina","10":"tag-carnian","11":"tag-carnian-pluvial-episode","12":"tag-dinosaur","13":"tag-fossil","14":"tag-huayracursor","15":"tag-huayracursor-jaguensis","16":"tag-northern-precordillera-basin","17":"tag-quebrada-santo-domingo","18":"tag-santo-domingo-formation","19":"tag-sauropodomorpha","20":"tag-science","21":"tag-south-america","22":"tag-triassic","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115390809022836946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}