Argentina has been a hotbed of discoveries in paleontology over the past several years and they’ve just had another one. The diggers have just unearthed what they say is a new species of prehistoric creature, one that went extinct some 90 million years ago.
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00:00Argentina has been a hotbed of discoveries in paleontology over the past several years,
00:09and they've just had another one.
00:10These diggers have unearthed what they say is a new species of prehistoric creature,
00:14one that went extinct some 90 million years ago.
00:17The paleontologists started excavating the area way back in 2012, finding at the time
00:22fossil material, leading them on the chase.
00:25However, they've only just found the fossilized skeleton of what they are calling Cytosaura
00:29marae, or star lizard in Latin.
00:31It was a long-necked dinosaur which stretched 65 feet long, with the archaeologists estimating
00:36it likely weighed around 32,000 pounds.
00:39They add it's probably part of the sauropod family, once known for their large bodies
00:43and long necks, and were herbivores.
00:46That group of dinosaurs originated in the early Jurassic period, but lasted through
00:50the late Triassic.
00:51This star lizard, however, died in the late Cretaceous epoch, likely doing so around 25
00:57million years before the asteroid that killed most living things on Earth struck our planet.
01:01This is just the latest discovery, revealing what a hotbed of prehistoric dinosaur activity
01:06was going on in Patagonia.