Fossils of 198-million-year-old large meat-eating dinosaur found in Italy

Milan : The scientists have unearthed fossils of a 198-million-year-old large meat-eating dinosaur in Italy. 

Named as Saltriovenator zanellai, the scientists describe him to be 25 feet long and over a ton in weight. With astonishing figures, the species appear to be the largest-known carnivorous dinosaur that had ever existed.

The fossils were first discovered in 1996 in a village of Saltrio, roughly 50 miles (80 km) north of Milan in Italy's Lombardy region. Since then, the extraction process is being done in the area filled with rocks.

Post-death, the Saltriovenator’s carcass somehow floated into the sea and sank to the bottom, where it was scavenged over a period of months or years by numerous marine creatures before fossilizing, the researchers said.

“This is absolutely unique,” said Milan Natural History Museum paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso, who led the research published in the scientific journal PeerJ. “In the scientific literature, there is mention of some dinosaur bones scavenged only by terrestrial animals, such as other dinosaurs, and, more rarely, insects. At least three kinds of marine animals left those traces on the bones of Saltriovenator.”

Saltriovenator, meaning “hunter from Saltrio,” walked on two legs, had a skull 2-1/2-feet long (80 cm) studded with sharp serrated teeth and had hands with four fingers, three of which possessed claws. It was about 24 years old, still not quite fully grown. It lived in a coastal, Caribbean-like environment and likely hunted plant-eating dinosaurs and maybe smaller carnivorous dinosaurs, the researchers said.