New Delhi:
Dinosaurs are not alive, we all know, and we only see them in animated movies today. The flightless dinosaurs went extinct 65-million-years ago. But body of a mysterious creature that looks exactly like a dinosaur has been discovered and has left the scientists puzzled.
The story doesn’t end here. Surprisingly, flesh can still be seen on its bones. An electrician found the partially-preserved corpse in Jaspur, a small city in Uttarakhand, India. He discovered the creature while cleaning out a sub-station which was abandoned for 35 years.
Scientists are struggling to identify the creature which looks like a small dinosaur. It has now been sent for analysis. Carbon dating will reveal its age.
Until the completion of scientific analysis, the creature would remain a mystery, Dr Parag Madhukar Dhakate, a Conservator with the Indian Forest Service said.
“It looks like a dinosaur, but we can't say anything until all the tests are done,” he was quoted as saying by the Dailymail.
It was not possible for a dinosaur skeleton to be so well preserved after so long, Aaryan Kumar, who is pursuing a PhD in Paleontology from Delhi University, told local media.
“Non-avian dinosaurs have been extinct for the past 65 million years but it does resemble theropods, a suborder of dinosaurs which included bipedal carnivores,” he said.
“But a dinosaur skeleton could not have been found in such a well-preserved condition after millions of years without it being in a fossilized state,” he added.
“The only even slightly possible way is it was chemically preserved to store it in a museum. But if that was the case, how did it end up here?”
The 28cm-long creature resembles some of these dinosaurs – the Deinonychus, the Coelophysis and the Dromaeosaurus.
There all belong to theropods family, a suborder of dinosaurs that ranges in size from the giant T Rex to the little Anchiornis.
The skeleton has been sent to Dr Bahadur Kotlia, a paleontologist at Kumaun University, Dr Dhakate said. A historical analysis will be carried out on the creature, he added.
According to one initial suggestion, it could actually be a genetically distorted animal foetus from within the goat family, however, it remains an unsolved mystery as of now.
