Fossilized bones of new sauropod dinosaur species have been discovered in Argentina, the BBC reports. One, in fact, unearthed by a team of paleontologists from the Museum of Palaeontology Egidio Feruglio, led by Dr Jose Luis Carballido and Dr Diego Pol, may be the bones of the largest creature ever to walk the Earth, weighing about 77 tons and measuring about 40 meters from snout to tail.
As Tyrannosaurus rex is for theropods, Diplodocus and Apatosaurus are by far the most emblematic sauropod dinosaurs. They’re known from nearly complete skeletons found during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in North America. Features include large bodies, capped by extremely long necks and tails. Both genera bear elongated and biconvex distal caudal vertebrae and skulls that are extended from front to back, with narrow teeth restricted to the end of the snout.
These taxa are members of the Diplodocidae, a family of dinosaurs that existed during the Late Jurassic in North America, Europe, and Africa. Diplodocids were not recorded from any other southern land mass besides Africa, although their occurrence in South America was potentially expected (think Pangaea).
Until now, the lack of reliable evidence for the survival of Diplodocidae after the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary led authors to propose an extinction event for the group at that time. However, this absence has also been potentially attributed to biases driven by a worldwide change in sea level during the early Lower Cretaceous.
This new report, published in the free access journal PLOS, details the discovery of a new sauropod dinosaur from the early Lower Cretaceous of Neuquén Province, Patagonia, Argentina. This discovery represents the first record of a diplodocid for South America and the youngest record of Diplodocidae in the world.
