{"id":17465,"date":"2023-09-21T17:37:31","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T12:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/current_affairs\/?p=17465"},"modified":"2023-09-21T17:37:34","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T12:07:34","slug":"tharosaurus-indicus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/current-affairs\/21-09-2023\/tharosaurus-indicus","title":{"rendered":"Tharosaurus Indicus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Syllabus:GS3\/ Science and Technology<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">News<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Oldest fossils of a plant-eating dinosaur have been found in the Thar desert near the Jaisalmer Basin, Rajasthan by the Geological Survey of India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Background<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The scientists discovered the remains of a <strong>Sauropod dinosaur<\/strong>, which is the same clade as the<strong> long-necked herbivores in Jurassic Park <\/strong>\u2013 these happened to be the oldest known fossils of this particular kind of sauropod.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The fossils belong to the family <strong>Dicraeosauridae<\/strong> and from the superfamily <strong>Diplodocoidea.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>These are the first Dicraeosaurid sauropods to have been found in India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Tharosaurus Indicus<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The scientists named the dinosaur Tharosaurus indicus, with Tharo deriving from the <strong>Thar desert<\/strong>; saurus from the Greek \u2018sauros\u2019, or lizard; and indicus from its Indian origin.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>At <strong>167 million years old<\/strong>, they are the oldest known Diplodocoid fossils in the world.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>However, members of the Dicraeosauridae family of sauropods \u2013 to which Tharasaurus belongs \u2013 were not nearly as large. This family was unique: its <strong>members were smaller and had shorter necks and tails<\/strong> compared to the other long-necked sauropods.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">History of Sauropods<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Sauropods first appeared on the earth during the <strong>Jurassic period,<\/strong> about <strong>200 million years<\/strong> ago. They were one of the most dominant clades of dinosaurs, surviving until the <strong>late Cretaceous period 65 million years ago<\/strong>, when dinosaurs went extinct.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>However in India, sauropod fossils from the <strong>Early Jurassic and the Late Cretaceous period<\/strong> have been found, very few have from the Middle or Late Jurassic period, which would be about <strong>160-180 million <\/strong>years ago.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>India has also been home to a few early, more primitive sauropods, like <strong>Kotasaurus and Barapasaurus. <\/strong>They were both discovered in the Kota Formation, a geological rock unit in <strong>Telangana,<\/strong> from the Early Jurassic period.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In 2006, another middle Jurassic sauropod dinosaur fossil was found in the <strong>Kutch basin of Gujarat,<\/strong> named <strong>Camarasaurus supremus<\/strong>, which was also the oldest fossil of that group found at the time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">India: The Site of Radiation of Diplodocoid Dinosaurs\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Some <strong>167 million <\/strong>years ago when Tharosaurus lived, India was part of a group of continents in the southern hemisphere with Africa, South America, Madagascar, and Antarctica, together called <strong>Gondwanaland<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>With the discovery of the oldest diplodocoid, it is highly likely that these <strong>diplodocoid sauropods could have originated in India <\/strong>during the Middle Jurassic period and used the land connections at the time to migrate to <strong>Madagascar,<\/strong> <strong>Africa<\/strong>, and <strong>South America.<\/strong> After that they could have made their way to <strong>North<\/strong> <strong>America<\/strong> and the rest of the world.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Another piece of evidence that supports their theory was that diplodocoid fossils in other continents like <strong>Africa, the Americas, and Asia come from a younger geological interval<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Also <strong>Archaic sauropod fossils<\/strong> from during the start of the Jurassic period \u2013like of Kotasaurus and Barapasaurus \u2013 were also found in India.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Together, the record from India suggests that the Indian landmass was one of the most important places for the early evolutionary history of sauropod dinosaurs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh5.googleusercontent.com\/xXkMp5f4uUyq20cilwQoQo6oSufMdiQf0McO2U7vb3Upzga9SLOWsFgXfMTY0Zz5MdmigG7hSkGUPp6SrtSzDCAoTUoi0ais6lHJhVQVyN3Jlz4xbCCgocFBDDjVAF7Nc5-if4ve6xVYTw46gw5CXu4\" alt=\"\" style=\"width:636px;height:358px\" width=\"636\" height=\"358\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Sauropoda<\/span><\/strong><br>&#8211; Sauropoda, whose members are known as sauropods, is a clade of <strong>saurischian dinosaurs.\u00a0<\/strong><br>&#8211; Sauropods were <strong>herbivorous<\/strong> and had very long necks, long tails, small heads, and four thick, pillar-like legs.\u00a0<br>&#8211; They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.thehindu.com\/ccidist-ws\/th\/th_delhi\/issues\/52554\/OPS\/G3FBPBCQ5.1+GAFBPBDKA.1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>TH<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Syllabus:GS3\/ Science and Technology News Background Tharosaurus Indicus History of Sauropods India: The Site of Radiation of Diplodocoid Dinosaurs\u00a0 Sauropoda&#8211; Sauropoda, whose members are known as sauropods, is a clade of saurischian dinosaurs.\u00a0&#8211; Sauropods were herbivorous and had very long necks, long tails, small heads, and four thick, pillar-like legs.\u00a0&#8211; They are notable for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17467,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17465\/revisions\/17467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}