Australian dinosaur fossil called big find

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MELBOURNE, May 7 (UPI) -- A fossil find on the Australian coast is the first evidence a major group of dinosaurs called that part of the world home, paleontologists say.

Until now, scientists thought the ceratosaur group of dinosaurs was limited to western parts of the ancient Gondwana supercontinent -- present day South America, Africa, India and Madagascar.

However, a fossil find in the southern Australian sate of Victoria in 2006 shows the eastern part of the supercontinent, which included present-day Australia, was rich in dinosaur diversity.

"Until now there had been no record [of the ceratosaur group] from Australia, so this discovery really plugs one of the biggest gaps in our dinosaur record," Museum Victoria paleontologist Erich Fitzgerald told the Sydney Morning Herald.

A fossilized left ankle bone found in sandstone 55 miles southeast of Melbourne belonged to a member of the ceratosaur group, three-toed dinosaurs which would have stood between 1 and 2 meters (3 to 6 feet) tall.

Ceratosarus join a "surprisingly varied" list of predatory dinosaurs found in Australia compared to other southern continents, Fitzgerald said.

"That diversity can perhaps only be explained, given our geographic isolation, by the probability that these predatory dinosaur groups made it to Australia early on in their history before the continents started to split apart."