It has been named as Riojavenatrix lacustris and it is a new dinosaur species, unique in the world of paleontology. The fossil, found in Igea (La Rioja), corresponds to a specimen of the spinosaurid family between 7 and 8 meters in length, 2.5 meters in height and around 1,500 kilograms in weight, which walked on its hind limbs. in the Lower Cretaceous, approximately 120 million years ago. His portrait is completed with other characteristics typical of theropods (a group that includes large carnivorous dinosaurs): a head with a low and elongated skull, prominent jaws with sharp teeth and arms with powerful claws with three functional fingers, with which he could easily remove the heads of his prey.
Their main diet was fish. “It is possible that he fished on the shores of the lake, hence his name, Riojaventrix lacustriswhich refers to the hunter of Lake La Rioja, although it is not ruled out that it could feed on terrestrial prey,” explains Francisco Sáez Benito, honorary director of the Paleontological Interpretation Center of La Rioja.
This research, whose first fossil remains were found in 1983 in one of the existing sites in Igea (a Rioja town of barely 650 inhabitants), has been published in the British magazine Zoological Journal of the Linneal Society and confirms “the existence of a new genus and species of spinosaurid,” according to those responsible for the work.
“It is the first dinosaur described in La Rioja,” add the authors of the study, and the fifth spinosaurid recorded in this period of prehistory in the Iberian Peninsula. It thus joins a list in which the Camarillasaurus, in Aragon; he Vallibonavenatrix and the Protathlitisin the Valencian Community, and the Iberospinusin Portugal.
This finding is included in the doctoral thesis by the researcher of the University of the Basque Country, Erik Isasmendi. “The new genus and species, which we colloquially call Britney“, is the result of the discovery of a partial skeleton, which consists of hind limbs (femur, tibia, fibula, ankle bones and phalanges of the foot) and the pelvis (pubis and ischium), as well as a vertebral rest,” Isasmendi clarifies about the findings of the Garras research team, which works at the ichnites (fossil remains) site in the small town of Igea in Rioja.
The paleontologist also highlights that the new dinosaur “presents a combination of anatomical characters that make it unique and allows it to be differentiated from other spinosaurids, including the Baryonyx“, in reference to the iconic skeleton of that dinosaur which is exhibited in the Natural History Museum in London.
He Riojavenatrix It is not the only great discovery at that paleontological site. Other fossil remains had also been found there, such as one of the “most complete skeletons known in Europe and the world” of a spinosaurid dinosaur, which was baptized as Villar.
“The fossils discovered are of great paleontological interest and allow us to put La Rioja on the world map of spinosaurids and carnivorous dinosaurs,” says Xabier Pereda, one of the directors of the doctoral thesis and director of excavation at Igea.
“These discoveries raise many new questions about the ecology of these animals, that is, about how these species coexisted with each other. And that leads us to rethink future more detailed studies on spinosaurids from which, surely, important results will be obtained,” reflects Elena Cuesta, co-author of the study and researcher at the Egidio Feruglio Paleontological Museum (Argentina) and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany).
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