Hokay, so National Geographic has announced a 2m tall oviraptor like “a giant, flightless turkey” (well, IMESHO, it looks like a drunken goobledygook — not that a real/modern turkey is any icon of decorative extravagance to start with) which “could probably run as fast as [...] 48 kilometers an hour” (notable quotes: “could you please have a little chat with my very large turkey while I run this way like a rabid emu?”). To add to the glory, it apparently didn’t sport any detectable feathers. That’s kind of like winning a lottery — nice in theory but practically never happens to real people.
Then they report a Tyrannosaurus-Rex replacement(ish) from the Argentinan (that’s a seriously busy community) scientist Rodolfo Coria, named Mapusaurus Roseae; the name is hyperphonic with my youngest daughter’s, but HP might mature at over 12m long (thankfully, Small Miss has a less majestic target to reach — imagine the difficulties with things like cars, jeans or stockings), with teeth “thinner and sharper [than Rex’s] — they are just like knives” or to put it in a more familial way, very much like Small Miss’s with (for example) a slice of mango under her smaller but highly fanged and determined seige. Mind you, HP’s head alone is at least 4 times as large as the entire daughter. The find is described as “The previously unknown dinosaurs were found together in a prehistoric riverbed [...] 24 kilometers south of Plaza Huincul. ¶ The skeletons showed no signs of disease, Coria says, so the animals were apparently victims of some sudden catastrophic event.” which also sounds more than vaguely familiar.
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