Researchershave discoveredthe tegument impression of a dinosaur left behind just before the fatal asteroid pass over the fauna off the planet , stool them some of the last pieces of evidence of dinosaurs from Europe . The two section of impressions , think to have been made by the same dinosaur , were divulge in northerly Spain by scientists work at the Autonomous University of Barcelona .
The skin prints were maintain in the soft mud of a river savings bank , perhaps when the giant beast lay down , though without anything else to go on , it is impossible to severalize if the dinosaur was simply taking a interruption , or if this was its net resting place . Either way , not long after that the bank must have been cover in a fine layer of sediment that sealed the impression in , before turn it into rock’n’roll . By being able to accurately date the rock itself , the investigator can say without a doubt that the mark was made about 66 million years ago – just before the notorious asteroid impinge on .
This makes it one of the last man of evidence of dinosaur living in Europe before they were all rendered nonextant . “ This is the only registry of dinosaur skin from this catamenia in all of Europe , and it corresponds to one of the most recent specimen , close to the extinction event , in all of the world,”explainsVictor Fondevilla , the lead generator of the study release inGeological Magazine . “ There are very few samples of fossilized skin read , and the only land site with similar characteristic can be retrieve in the United States and Asia . ”
The imprint is incredibly typical , being made up of “ pentangular and hexangular contours of the exfoliation confer[ing ] a rosette organization , [ with ] each graduated table being surrounded by five or six scale , ” agree to the author . The size of the scales rules out the maker of the print being either a carnivorous dinosaur or a hadrosaur , both of which were recognise to live in the part at the right clock time . But the discovery of some other dinosaur step from the same sway layer nearby may give a confidential information . These were mold by a titanosaur , suggesting that both tegument and footprints may go to the same or like perpetrator .
The unique geezerhood of the sandstone , dating from just before the asteroid collision , is uncommon not only for Europe , but also in other part of the macrocosm . This make the breakthrough of the imprints an incredibly exciting and significant discovery .
