Scientists have discovered a fossil, which suggests that a relative of a giant fish-eating dinosaur that was even bigger than the T rex, once roamed Australia.
According to the study co-author, Dr Thomas Rich, the fossil belongs to a group known as spinosaurs and came from a specimen 2 to 3 metres long that lived about 105 million years ago in the early Cretaceous period.
The fish-eating Spinosaurs are believed to be the biggest of all the predatory dinosaurs, larger than Tyrannosaurus or Gigantasaurus that grew up to 17 metres long.
"The existence of this neck vertebra is part of an emerging story that [in the Early Cretaceous period] the dinosaurs of Australia were part of a cosmopolitan fauna," the ABC Science quoted Rich as saying.
According to scientists, the presence of a spinosaur in Australia also suggested that this group once roamed the globe and were not restricted to a particular region, as previously thought.
"The same groups of dinosaurs were widespread when the Earth was once a super continent," says Rich.
The study has been published in the Biology Letters.
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