Labels:text | font | paper | screenshot | document OCR: When strange fossil bones were discovered in the Neuquén district of Argentina in 1882, they were sent to scientist Florentino Ameghino (1854-1911), who identified them as dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period (144-65 mya). In the late 1880s, Santiago Roth (1850-1924), from the Museum of La Plata, discovered more Cretaceous fossils in Chubut province, including leg and foot bones of the large sauropod ("lizard-footed" dinosaur) Argyrosaurus. Friedrich von Huene, who in 1919 published a long work on the Cretaceous dinosaurs of Argentina, discovered two slender sauropods, Antarctosaurus and Laplatasaurus, in the 1920s. WEALTH OF FINDS Over the last few decades, more than a dozen Argentinean scientists have discovered and named many new dinosaurs. Foremost among these scientists is José Bonaparte, who has excavated bone beds from the Triassic (248-208 mya), Jurassic (208-144 mya), and Cretaceous Periods. His discoveries include the Triassic prosauropod ("early lizard-footed" dinosaur) Riojasaurus (1969), based on an almost complete skeleton from La Rioja province. New flesh-eaters from Argentina include Piatnitzkysaurus (1979), and the horned species Carnotaurus (1985). ISOLATED CONTINENT As the world's landmasses have gradually moved apart over millions of years, the South American continent has become more and more isolated. South American fossils from the Jurassic Period are very similar to finds from North America, Europe, and Asia, but Argentinean fossils from the Cretaceous Period, when the continents had completely separated, are mostly unique. Saltasaurus, named in 1980, was the first sauropod to be identified as armored: it had bony plates and studs embedded in its hide. Until then, it had been assumed that only ankylosaurs (a group of armored dinosaurs) had such protection. PATAGONIAN GIANTS In 1995, an unexpected find was made in Patagonia, Argentina, when bones of Giganotosaurus carolinii were unearthed. This flesh-eating dinosaur was less advanced yet even larger and more powerful than Tyrannosaurus, and 30 million years older.
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