Brazil 2019 "Prehistoric animals of Parana region"
| Issue Date | 12.12.2019 |
| ID | Michel: Stanley Gibbons: UPU: Category: pR |
| Author | Luciano Vidal |
| Stamps in set | 2 |
| Value | 1o Porte Carta Comercial (1,95r) - Vespersaurus paranaensis 1o Porte Carta Comercial (1,95r) - Caiuajara debruskii |
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| Layout | Two mini sheets of 12 stamps each |
| Products | None |
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| Issuing Authority | Correios Brazil |
On December 12, 2019 Brazilian Post issued a set of two personalized stamps "Prehistoric animals of Parana region", that printed in two mini-sheets of 12 stamps each with increased image on the top. Both stamps designed by young Brazilian paleoartist Luciano Vidal. One of the stamps depicting dinosaur Vespersaurus paranaensis , another one shows pterosaur Caiuajara debruskii whose fossils were found in Paraná region.
A small, carnivorous dinosaur with short arms and a biped - whose body
weight is supported on the central toe. This is Vespersaurus
paranaensis (on the left) , an unprecedented specimen in
the world, found in the
Cruzeiro do Oeste region, a municipality of 21 thousand inhabitants in
the Northwest of Paraná. The discovery of the fossil was announced at a
news conference in June this year (2019), as a result of research done
by the
State University of Maringá (UEM), University of São Paulo (USP) and
the Paleontological Museum of Cruzeiro do Oeste. The study on the first
dinosaur “100% Paraná” was published in the scientific journal
Scientific Reports.The name came from the junction of vesper (west, in Latin; homage to the city in which it was found) and saurus (lizard, also in Latin).
The new dinosaur, which would have lived 90 million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, was found in the same paleontological site where numerous individuals of the pterosaur Caiuajara debruskii (on the right) had already been discovered .
Among the main anatomical characteristics that made them deserve a new classification, differentiating them from the known species of pterosaur, is the fact that they have the “beak”, that is, the final part of the mandible, more inclined downwards than the others.
In addition, the animals have concavities in the roof of the mouth and in the lower arch, the latter being more pronounced, and whose usefulness the researchers have not yet discovered. Researchers estimate that the animal lived in the Upper Cretaceous period, some 80 million years ago.
The importance of this discovery, in addition to being a new species, lies in the accumulation of fossils at the site. This is the first accumulation of pterosaurs found in the country, and the third worldwide. The first occurred in Argentina, in the 1990s, and the second in China, in 2014. Among the three, Paraná accumulation is the one with the highest number of individuals identified so far.
A possible explanation for this concentration is the fact that the Cruzeiro do Oeste region was a desert at the time when these animals inhabited the place. For this reason, pterosaurs probably concentrated around some type of oasis, which would explain the conditions in which the bones were found (dismantled and mixed).
| Mini Sheets | Used letters |
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| Artwork of Luciano Vidal (paleoartist and the stamps designer) | |
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References: http://blog.correios.com.br/ Veja Luciano Vidal
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