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The
new species, called Farlowichnus rapidus, was a small
carnivorous animal about the size of a modern-day seriema bird,
or about 60-90 cm (2-3 feet) tall, according to researchers. The
discovery was published in scientific journal Cretaceous
Research.
"From the large distance between the footprints found, it is
possible to deduce that it was a very fast reptile that ran
across the ancient dunes," the geological service said in a
statement.
The early Cretaceous period stretched from 100 to 145 million
years ago.
The fossilized dinosaur "trackways," as scientists call them,
were first found in the 1980s by Italian priest and
paleontologist Giuseppe Leonardi in what today is the city of
Araraquara, in Sao Paulo state.
Leonardi donated one of the footprint samples, found in the
so-called Botucatu formation, a group of rocks formed by an
ancient dune desert, to Brazil's Museum of Earth Sciences (MCTer)
in 1984.
The footprints are different from all other known dinosaur
footprints, said MCTer paleontologist Rafael Costa.
(Reporting by Jake Spring and Eduardo Simoes; Editing by Brendan
O'Boyle and Jonathan Oatis)
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