An article published in the journal “PeerJ” reports the identification of a new species of feathered dinosaur dating back to about 150 million years ago, in the Late Jurassic period, in today’s Wyoming, USA. A team of paleontologists named it Hesperornithoides miessleri and classified it in the troodontid family, dinosaurs with various characteristics similar to birds. This species seems to be a primitive member of that group, an unusual discovery that raises new questions about the timeline of the evolution of birds and of flight in other dinosaurs belonging to groups that got extinct.

An article published in the journal “Acta Palaeontologica Polonica” reports the identification of two new species of dinosaurs that lived in present-day Thailand, in the Sao Khua Formation, in the Lower Cretaceous period, about 125 million years ago. A team of researchers named the two species Phuwiangvenator yaemniyomi and Vayuraptor nongbualamphuensis, classified in the group of coelurosaurs, distant relatives of the T.rex even if with more primitive physical structures but good enough to make them efficient predators too.

An article published in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B” describes the study of the most massive titanosaurus discovered so far. Called Patagotitan mayorum, it was about 37 meters long (122 feet), about 6 meters (20 feet) tall and its weight was estimated at 69 tons, which make it the largest animal that ever lived on the mainland. It lived in the late Cretaceous, between 95 and 100 million years ago, in today’s Patagonia, Argentina.