New research reported by scientists from the University of Cambridge (UK), University College London, and Monash University in Melbourne Australia in the open access peer reviewed journal Public Library of Science, indicates that the area around Victoria Australia was teeming with meat eating dinosaurs during the Early Cretaceous Period.
The researchers found over 1500 bones and fossil fragments that indicate the presence of theropod dinosaur in and around the Flat Rocks site in Victoria.
The species included specimens as large as 30 feet in length and as small as ten feet. Tyrannosauroids, a juvenile spinosaurid, and a basal coelurosaur are included in the nine species discovered. A dinosaur fossil’s species can be determined by as small a fragment as a tooth using present paleontological technology.
Based on the elevation of the site where the fossil were discovered and previous discoveries of feathered dinosaurs in China, the researchers postulate that the abundance of meat eating dinosaurs in this region of Australia was a function of climate and tectonic plate shift. The dinosaurs may have been feathered at times to survive colder temperatures.
During the Early Cretaceous Period Australia was connected to what is now Antarctica. A moderately warm climate and the differences between dinosaur populations in and around southeastern Australia and in Africa and South America support the probability of as yet undiscovered Australian dinosaurs.
