TAMPA: About 150 million years ago, a giant, long-necked dinosaur stomped on the ground in the Western US state of Wyoming and left behind what researchers said Tuesday is the largest dinosaur foot ever discovered.
The foot bones, found beneath a series of tail bones, extend about three feet (one meter) wide and are believed to belong to a brachiosaur, from a group of extinct herbivores known as sauropods, said the findings in the journal PeerJ.
This is an “exceptionally large foot, bigger than the elements of all other known sauropod foot bones,” lead author Anthony Maltese, of the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, Colorado, told AFP in an email.
“I get asked often what’s the biggest/longest/whatever superlative dinosaur that ever existed, and in this case I can actually provide an answer now,” he said.
To give a sense of the creature’s immense size, its thigh bone alone measured nearly 6.8 feet (2.07 meters).
That said, the Wyoming brachiosaur is not the largest dinosaur known to man — other excavations have turned up fossils from animals that were likely larger — but it is the biggest foot in evidence.
“There are tracks and other incomplete skeletons from Australia and Argentina that seem to be from even bigger animals, but those gigantic skeletons were found without the feet,” said co-author Emanuel Tschopp, a postdoctoral fellow in the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Paleontology.
“This beast was clearly one of the biggest that ever walked in North America.”
The discovery also extends the known northern range of brachiosaurs, showing they roamed a vast area from Utah to Wyoming, added Maltese.
“Brachiosaurs are pretty rare as far as dinosaurs go, and being able to really expand their geographical range by hundreds of kilometers is exciting and may well help us understand them much better,” he said.
Maltese and colleagues at the University of Kansas first came upon the foot — nicknamed “Bigfoot” — in 1998, when he was an undergraduate student.
Then life, and work, got in the way.
“It became very difficult to find time to keep up on the literature in order to finish the project,” he told AFP.
“Luckily by procrastination, it enabled me the opportunity to assemble an absolutely killer international research team and have the ability to 3D-scan all of the bones for the best data of any large dinosaur foot to date.”
Other researchers on the project include Femke Holwerda, a PhD-degree candidate at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany, and David Burnham, a researcher at the University of Kansas.
US claims largest dinosaur foot ever discovered
US claims largest dinosaur foot ever discovered
- The foot bones are believed to belong to a brachiosaur
- They were found beneath a series of tail bones, extend about three feet wide
In southeast Pakistan, Ramadan brings Hindus and Muslims closer
MITHI: Partab Shivani, a Hindu in Muslim-majority Pakistan, has fasted on and off during Ramadan for years, but this time is different as he practices abstinence for the entire holy month.
Every year, he and his friends in the southeastern city of Mithi arrange iftar, when Muslims break their daily fast, to foster peace and solidarity between the two religions.
“I believe we need to promote interfaith harmony. First, we are humans — religions came later,” Shivani, a 48-year-old social activist, told AFP, adding that he also reads the teachings of the Buddha.
“His message is about peace and ending war. Peace can spread through solidarity and by standing with one another. Distance only widens the gap between people,” he added.
Ninety-six percent of Pakistan’s 240 million people are Muslim. Just two percent are Hindu, most of them living in rural areas of Sindh province where Mithi is located.
In Mithi itself, most of the 60,000 inhabitants are Hindu.
Many of the city’s Hindus also observe Ramadan and iftar has become a social gathering where people from both faiths happily participate.
“This has been a wonderful tradition of ours for a very long time,” said Mir Muhammad Buledi, a 51-year-old Muslim friend who attended Shivani’s iftar gathering.
“It is a beautiful example of harmony between the two communities.”
Like brothers
Discrimination against minorities runs deep in Pakistan.
Following the end of British rule in South Asia in 1947, the subcontinent was partitioned into mainly Hindu India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
That triggered widespread religious bloodshed in which hundreds of thousands were killed and millions displaced.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, freedom of religion or belief is under constant threat, with religiously motivated violence and discrimination increasing yearly.
State authorities, often using religious unrest for political gain, have failed to address the crisis, the independent non-profit says.
But such tensions are absent in Mithi.
“I am a Hindu but I keep all the fasts during this month,” said Sushil Malani, a local politician. “I feel happy standing with my Muslim brothers.
“We celebrate Eid together as well. This tradition in the region is very old.”
Restaurants and tea stalls are closed across Pakistan during Ramadan.
Ramesh Kumar, a 52-year-old Hindu man who sells sweets and savoury items outside a Muslim shrine, keeps his push cart covered and closed until iftar.
“There is no discrimination among us if someone is Muslim or Hindu. I have been seeing this since my childhood that we all live together like brothers,” he said.
Muslim shrine, Hindu caretaker
Locals say Mithi’s peaceful religious coexistence can be traced to its remote location, emerging from the sand dunes of the Tharparkar desert, which borders the modern Indian state of Rajasthan.
Cows — considered sacred in Hinduism — roam freely in Mithi city, as they do in neighboring India.
At two Sufi Muslim shrines in the middle of the city, Hindu families arrange meals, bringing fruit, meals and juices for their Muslim neighbors to break their fasts.
“We respect Muslims,” said Mohan Lal Malhi, a Hindu caretaker of one of the shrines.
Mohan said his parents and elders taught him to respect people regardless of religion or color, and the traditions pass from one generation to the next.
Local residents said both communities consider their social relationships more important than their religious identity.
“You will see a (Sikh) gurdwara, a mosque, and a shrine standing side by side here,” Mohan said. “The atmosphere of this area teaches humanity.”
