Paleontology
|
|
|
Ten metre long dinosaur skeleton discovered! The sensational discovery of an entire fossilised dinosaur skeleton, ten metres in length, was uncovered at the Beram Quarry located in the Pazin area. It was discovered last Friday following the mining of a section of the quarry, which has been exploited for the last forty years. Following an explosion which was to cut away a section of the quarry, mining technician Zeljko Margotic observed that that part of the quarry, which was 300 metres long and 50 metres high, was a different kind of grey-green colour from the rest of the mine site. When he distanced himself from this freshly mined section of the quarry he was able to make what seemed to correspond to the outline of an entire fossilised dinosaur skeleton. The fossilised deposit was located at a depth of 40 metres. Although an intact outline of its head, neck, and body could be seen with the naked eye, only its tail seemed broken. Appropriate County authorities were immediately notified of this discovery, including geologists and Palaeontologists from Rijeka and Zagreb. Its is only their expertise which will assist in answering questions regarding the genus and age of this specimen. It could prove to be one of Croatia’s most unique discoveries of a fossilised dinosaur specimen. Very rare in the world, because it is very rare to find an entire dinosaur that has been fossilised in these kind of deposits. Pange present in the Istrian hinterland? We visited the site of Beram Quarry with Bruno Poropat, chairperson of the Bale Parks Project. He is generally very interested that any findings that may be uncovered throughout the Istria region be housed in the Palaeontological Museum in Bale. During his first visit to the quarry, Poropat said that it was possible that the fossilised portion of the mined quarry where the Beram dinosaur was uncovered was very similar to the remains of dinosaur bones found at the Bale excavation site. He also added that the remnants he had found amongst the rubble and stone that was scattered on the floor of the quarry following the explosion, were very similar to remnants of dinosaur bones discovered at the Bale excavation site. Poropat claims that apart from the site itself being a true discovery, the fact that an entire dinosaur skeleton was uncovered is truly a sensational scientific event. "At first hand my assumption is that what we have in fact is an animal that maybe more than 75 million years old, that is, younger than the dinosaurs found in Bale. The location is unusual. Beram is located centrally in Istria. We had assumed that this part of dry land had not existed during the period when dinosaurs had roomed the world. Maybe some kind of ecological catastrophe had swept the body of the dinosaur down a river to this location, where it became fossilised in this cliff edifice." This could also prove to be a very interesting discovery for geologists as well. According to some geologists, Istria was a part of a unique land mass formation, the first of its kind which was called the Pange. Today this area encompasses territory in Africa, Dinarida, and southern Istria. Some scientists believe that only southern Istria and Cervar was a part of the Pange, which is why this region has such rich Palaeolithic findings. However this discovery in Beram could change these hypotheses, while simultaneously widening the territory of the Pange all the way to inland Istria, more precisely, all the way to Beram. This region of Istria already has a very extensive range of fossilised animals from the sea and sea shells. One contention that had been advocated was that a sea had been located in this area some 100 million years ago. However, every and any new finding, whether Palaeolithic or geological, can influence and change any of these scientific assumptions. Scientists and tourists Not everyone was pleased by the publicity generated by the sensational discovery at the Beram Quarry. For instance, geologist Vittorio Matosovic said that it wasn’t commendable that journalists write about these findings, at least not until they had been properly analysed. He also expressed the fear that making a sensation of the issue would attract undesirable visitors to the site, who could very easily remove remnants of the evidence and other findings in the quarry which would be integral to any investigation. He mentioned that some foreigners would even go as far as removing some of these stones from the site and then selling them off. In contrast to this, Bruno Poropat believes that the public should be informed about these kinds of discoveries, which amongst other things will attract scientists and tourists. He mentioned to us the case of the Sandalja Cave in Valtar, not far from Pula, were some forty years ago quarry workers discovered the outline to a cave. It proved in fact to be a cave covered up with various materials. A well known palaeontologist from Zagreb uncovered, underneath all these materials in this cave, bone remnants of a cave man who was at least a million years old. This became a sensational world wide discovery. However the cave was never investigated any further. That story, and the latest one in connection with the Beram finding, indicates that Istrian quarries could be custodial grounds to parts of the Earth’s history that have not yet been investigated. Entire fossil discovered in Bale (Valle) Following a scientific investigation which should confirm details about the discovery at the Beram Quarry, Bruno Poropat hopes that the entire fossilised dinosaur will be exhibited in the Istrian Palaeontological Museum in Bale. If it becomes too complicated a feat to exhibit the entire specimen, he believes it would be more than wonderful if at least a portion of the fossil could be exhibited, and then according to it, they would be able to reconstruct the entire animal. For the time being, Poropat is unable to confirm whether the creature was a herbivore or a carnivore. Smaller dinosaur specimen discovered in Trieste It is possible that the dinosaur uncovered in Beram comes from the immediate period before the dinosaurs became an extinct species, some 70 to 75 million years ago, during a time when land masses were developing in northern regions of today’s Istria. A fossilised dinosaur skeleton from this similar period, just before they became extinct, was also discovered in the vicinity of Trieste. However this fossilised skeleton is significantly smaller than the one found in Beram. See article on the Trieste findings. Source:
|
|
This page compliments Gordon Bevanda and Marisa Ciceran Created: Saturday, August
14, 1999; Last updated: Sunday, January 27, 2008
|