MOSCOW, October 5 -. RIA Novosti Paleontologist of the Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, and his colleague from the US Smithsonian Institution found that the largest dinosaurs in the territory of modern Central Asia were titanosaurs - gigantic 100-ton plant-eating dinosaurs, as they wrote in an article in the journal Cretaceous Research.
"We made one step in the ordering of knowledge about the biota of the Cretaceous Central Asian previously identified taxa turtles, carnivorous dinosaurs, amphibians, mammals and other animals on the stage to explore other dinosaur groups -.. Ornithopods, ankylosaur, horned dinosaurs - and many other groups of vertebrates ", - says Alexander Averyanov from Zoological Institute in St. Petersburg, whose words the press service Rossiykogo Science Foundation.
As a Russian paleontologist explains, in recent years, his colleagues have found many fossils of large dinosaurs in the countries of Central Asia, but these findings have not been systematically studied, and in the general population. This gave rise to disputes about what species, genera and families of sauropods - long-necked and large four-legged lizards - were the largest creatures in the region as "the era of the dinosaurs."
The situation is complicated by the fact that most of the remains of sauropod found in the territory of the former Soviet Union, are extremely fragmented bones and teeth, which is quite difficult to determine their size and species.
Of particular interest to scientists called teeth, found in 90 years Averyanov and American paleontologists in the Kyzylkum desert, in the tract Dzharakuduk reminiscent in structure teeth titanosaurs - gigantic sauropod weighing 100 tons and a length of 25-30 meters, whose remains are often found in the south Argentina, in Patagonia, and north China.
Averyanov and his colleague Hans-Dieter Süss (Hans-Dieter Sues) of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC (USA) studied the teeth and other putative remains of titanosaurs from Central Asia and to check whether these lizards are widespread in the region, and whether they were the largest its inhabitants in the middle of the Cretaceous period.
This analysis showed that the remains titanosaurs or similar to them large sauropod, whose teeth and vertebrae are very similar to teeth titanosaurs from China have been found in dozens of different points on the territory of the Kyzyl-Kum and other natural regions of Central Asia. It is said Süss and Averyanov, said that these dinosaurs were widespread in the region, and were the largest dinosaurs of their time.
On the other hand, the extreme rarity of their remains in the rocks of the Cretaceous period in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, said that they are unlikely to dominate among herbivorous dinosaurs of the time, and is quite rare in ecosystems.
In the near future Averyanov and his colleagues have promised that they will conduct similar studies in other groups of dinosaurs and other vertebrates. In total, current estimates Russian paleontologists, about 200 new species of ancient animals have been found in Central Asia and their systematization as expressed by a scientist, will help us to look into the "window to the past, to see nature the way it was 90 million years ago in its entirety.
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