New Dinosaur Species Uncovered In Southern France

Copyright © 1998 Nando Media
Copyright © 1998 AFP

PARIS (December 17, 1998 10:58 a.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - A new dinosaur species has been discovered in France, a relatively small biped carnivore believed to have inhabited the southern Riviera region some 70 million years ago.

Dubbed the Variraptor after the southern Var department where the dinosaur's first remains were located in 1992, the flesh-eating dinosaur that both scavenged and killed is the seventh dinosaur species to be located in France.

Its existence and characteristics are outlined by paleontologists Jean Le Loeuff and Eric Buffetaut in the new European Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Le Loeuff and Buffetaut examined teeth and bones dug out by amateur paleontologists Patrick and Annie Mechin between 1992 and 1995 from parts of the Var. Because of the initial work of the Mechin couple, the full name given to the new species is Variraptor mechinorum.

The remains of raptor-class dinosaurs, which featured in Steven Spielberg's epic "Jurassic Park," have already been found in Asia and America.

"A lover of carrion, Variraptor, which weighed around (110 lbs.) and was around (9 feet) tall, was also a predator," Le Loeuff told AFP. "It caught its prey, generally lizards, birds, small mammals or baby dinosaurs of other species, with its powerful forearms and tore them apart with one of the claws in its feet."

French paleontologists so far have found a spine, two feet and pie the separation of the two continents. The species from then on evolved differently on each land mass.