New fossils suggest dinosaurs may have survived beyond Jurassic period

Argentine palaeontologists who have discovered new fossils suggest that dinosaurs may have survived beyond the Jurassic period.

The remains found in Patagonia, South America, apparently showed diplodocid sauropods lived long after they were thought to have died out, Metro.co.uk reported.

A report published in the PLOS ONE scientific journal said that Diplodocids were never certainly recognized from the Cretaceous or in any other southern land mass besides Africa.

The new discovery represents the first record of a diplodocid for South America and the stratigraphically youngest record of this clade anywhere, the report said.

Paleobiologist Paul Upchurch at University College London, a sauropod expert who was not involved in the study, said the fossils suggested not all diplodocids were killed at the end of the Jurassic period around 140 million years ago.