Reuters news report on old dino bones discovery

[Don Lamson <dlamson@iea.com>]

12:26 PM ET 03/18/98

Brazil unearths one of world's oldest dinosaurs


            SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Paleontologists in southern Brazil
said Wednesday they had discovered three bones from one of the
world's oldest dinosaurs dating back some 200 million years.
            ``The bones belong to a dinosaur in the prosauropod suborder

which lived in the Triassic age, making it one of the oldest
existing specimens registered in the world,'' said Max Langer, a
paleontologist at the Catholic University in Rio Grande do Sul
state.
            The dinosaur was a plant-eating, lizard-like animal about
the size of a large dog, he said.
            Researchers working in Santa Maria, 833 miles south of Sao
Paulo, found the three bones during a dig that began at the end
of January, Langer said.
            It was the second discovery in southern Brazil of dinosaur
bones from the Triassic age. The first specimens were unearthed
in Santa Maria in 1936, Langer said.
            The original specimens and three others from the same age
unearthed in neighboring Argentina belonged to the theropods
suborder, which were meat-eating cousins of the prosauropods, he
said.
            Brazilian paleontologists have discovered dinosaur bones,
mostly dating back to the Cretaceous ages, some 100 million
years ago, in the west of Sao Paulo and in the country's
northeastern coasts.
         ^REUTERS@