New guide to Brazil dinosaurs details 54 discoveries

In his lectures, Professor Luiz Anelli, a paleontologist at the Geosciences Institute of the University of São Paulo (USP), often repeats a question: “How many of you are aware that the world’s oldest dinosaur lived here in Brazil?”

Thus arousing the curiosity of kids and adults alike, the professor begins to tell a story that stretches over more than 250 million years.

Everyone knows an asteroid caused the extinction of the dinosaurs; what few do not know is that it was also an asteroid that triggered the beginning the era of these super animals, and that it all began in a region of some 40 kilometers in diameter in present-day Mato Grosso state, Central-West Brazil.

These are some of the findings that readers of “The New Complete Guide to the Dinosaurs of Brazil”—Novo Guia Completo dos Dinossauros do Brasil, in the original Portuguese—will have access to. The book details all 54 dinosaurs already found in the country.

The illustrations by paleontologist Júlio Lacerda help readers have an ideal what the animals must have looked like. Included in addition to the names of each dinosaur, are the age, the location where their fossils were found, and their state of preservation—like the Staurikosaurus pricei, the oldest in the world, which lived approximately 233 million years ago and was discovered in the Southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Another instigating discovery is that dinosaurs are still among us, represented by their direct descendants—the birds. “Birds have a respiratory system wildly different from ours. Today there are 5 thousand species of mammals and 11 thousand species of birds, 400 billion birds. We’re still in the era of the dinosaurs,” he pointed out.

The book was published by USP’s publisher and was designed as a support material for elementary, high school, and college teachers, in addition to being a source for researchers and other aficionados.