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Scientists in Argentina have found fossilised dinosaur bones in the Andes Mountains. The bones belong to one of the world’s oldest dinosaur species.
A team of palaeontologists found the skeleton at an altitude of 3,000 metres in the northwest of Argentina. The almost complete skeleton belonged to a small long-necked reptile called Huayracursor jaguensis.
It roamed the earth between 230 and 225 million years ago, making it one of the world’s oldest dinosaurs. The species lived at the end of the Triassic period. The researchers said the first dinosaurs and ancestors of mammals started to appear in this period.
The discovery was published in the Nature science journal.
They noted that an adult Huayracursor jaguensis only measured about two metres in length. It weighed about 18kg.
