Paleontologists finally found variety a dinosaur adapted to water conditions, that is, able to swim and dive. An animal about a meter long lived in Mongolia prehistoric about 71 million years ago and was very different from its relative, Velociraptor. The swimmer’s jaw is long and full of tiny teeth.
This feature has earned the dinosaur the name Natovenator polydontus, “multi-toothed swimming hunter”. The bones of this new species were found in the Gobi Desert, a site well known for the preservation of several species of dinosaurs and other forms of ancient life.
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Seongjin Lee, a paleontologist at Seoul National University, said: “We knew it was something special because [a ossada] it is perfectly preserved with a beautiful skull and a very long neck.” When experts analyzed the fossil, it turned out that the structure shares some characteristics with another species, Halszkaraptor, which was originally interpreted as a swimming dinosaur.
This similarity further increased caution when studying natovenator. So the researchers determined that it was a swimming dinosaur. The next step is to understand what the appearance and behavior of the animal was in these conditions. According to Federico Agnolin, a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural Sciences of Argentina, who was not involved in the study, “despite the evidence that is not entirely conclusive, I think some of the anatomical details of the natovenator are good indicators that the animal was probably aquatic.”
Image: Elasmosaurus swimming underwater. Credits: Daniel Eskridge / Shutterstock
The long jaw and many tiny teeth may have been adapted for eating small, slithering or writhing prey out of the water, and the surviving ribs of the natovenator are oriented backwards, like those of penguins and birds, which probably enabled it to swim better. This configuration was not found in any other dinosaur.
Some dinosaurs, such as the large Spinosaurus, eventually became swimmers. Spinosaurus had dense bones, and its jaws were similar to those of crocodilians, which may indicate a search for food in the water. However, the natovenator appears to have special adaptations for moving through water.
Researchers believe that the natovenator swam with its forelimbs, which is a primitive version of what animals like penguins do. Future biomechanical research will certainly address this issue. It remains to wait for new results on the topic and, who knows, the emergence of new species.
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