An exciting discovery made by a specialized Egyptian team from Mansoura University, Egypt has been nominated to become an open museum of ancient animal fossils, in addition to being a huge museum of the great and diverse Egyptian civilization.
The beginning was in 2013, when a specialized team headed by Hisham Salam, head of the Center for Vertebrate Paleontology at Mansoura University, found a new type of dinosaur belonging to the “titanosaur” family in the Western Desert in Egypt, which was named, by the way, “Mansourasaurus Shahinai.”
Egyptian specialists carefully studied the fossilized remains of this dinosaur, and it was not announced until January 29, 2018, when the head of the discovery team, Dr. Hesham Salam, along with four Egyptian and five American experts, published an article in this regard in the journal “Environmental Nature and Evolution.”
The head of the Egyptian scientific team, Dr. Hisham Salam, said in an account of the incident that he was heading with a group of doctoral and master’s students to give a lecture at a local university when the members of the group found suitable geological outcrops on a desert road, which had not been observed before. The next morning, the team returned to survey the vast site extending for several kilometers, and it was not long before a student called him by phone to inform him that he had to come and see a number of the fossilized bones that had been found.
When he took a look at some of the fossilized bones discovered, Dr. Hisham Salam addressed the group of researchers, saying: “If it turns out as I expect, your names will go down in history.”
This huge dinosaur, the size of a bus, lived in Africa about 80 million years ago, in the last period of the dinosaur era, before it became extinct as a result of a giant meteorite colliding with what is now known as the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America.
The unique find is several parts of the skull, humerus, ribs, vertebrae and scapula. Experts say that the discovered fossilized skeleton is among the rare remains of late Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived in Africa, and is the most complete.
During the two historical eras, the Triassic and Jurassic, a process took place in which all the continents joined together, but in the Cretaceous period, the continents began to separate.
Until now, it is still unknown how Africa was connected to other continents, but scientists hope that this discovery will help shed light on this matter.
Analysis of the bones showed that Mansourasaurus was more closely related to dinosaurs that lived in Europe and Asia than to dinosaurs of Africa or South America.
This new type of dinosaur from the Titanosaur family is considered the largest land animal that ever lived on Earth. Some of its species, which lived in South America about 100 million years ago, weighed 70 tons and were 37 meters long.
It is worth noting that this discovery was not the only one. In the past, the remains of dinosaurs were found in various regions of Egypt, but the largest number is concentrated in the Western Desert and in the vicinity of Lake Morris, and in the Fayoum region, whose climatic conditions are characterized by their ability to preserve the remains of various animals, including dinosaurs. .
German paleontologist Ernst Stromer discovered, in 1911 in the Egyptian Western Desert, four types of dinosaurs, including a predatory type known as "Spinosaurus." They all date back to the Cretaceous period. However, the Allied bombing of the Munich Museum during World War II eliminated them. This discovery.
Revealing a new benefit to education
Scientists at the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology have revealed the benefit of education in preventing shortening of life expectancy regardless of gender, age, location and marital status.
The Lancet Public Health magazine indicates that it has previously become clear to researchers that people who have achieved higher levels of education live longer than others, but until now they have not determined to what extent. They found that the risk of premature death, regardless of cause, decreased by two percent with each additional year of education. Those who completed primary school (six years) had an average lower risk of early death by 13 percent. After graduating from high school, the risk decreased by approximately 25 percent, and 18 years of education reduced the risk by 34 percent. Compared to the impact of unhealthy habits, skipping school is almost as harmful as drinking five or more alcoholic drinks a day or smoking ten cigarettes a day for 10 years.
Although young people derive more benefits from education, people over 50 and even 70 years of age also benefit from the protective effect of education. The researchers did not find a significant difference in the impact of education between countries that have reached different stages of economic development.