2023-10-05 06:00:05
A prehistoric titan has just made its appearance in the annals of paleontology. Discovered in Spain, this colossal sauropod, named Garumbatitan morellensis, might revolutionize our understanding of the evolution of these gigantic creatures.
Artistic representation of Garumbatitan morellensis.
Credit: Grup Gix
Excavations carried out between 2005 and 2008 near the town of Morella brought to light the remains of this sauropod. The researchers found massive vertebrae, elongated leg bones and two nearly complete sets of foot bones, a rarity for sauropods. These fossils date from the beginning of the Cretaceous period, approximately 122 million years ago.
The study, published September 28 in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, was led by Pedro Mocho, a paleontologist at the University of Lisbon. According to him, one of the individuals stands out for its impressive size, with vertebrae of more than a meter (The meter (symbol m, from the Greek metron, measurement) is the basic unit of length of…) wide and a femur (The femur is the thigh bone. It is the longest bone in the human body.) which can reach two meters in length (The length of an object is the distance between its two extremes…).
Garumbatitan morellensis belongs to a subgroup of sauropods called titanosaurs. These four-legged, herbivorous dinosaurs with elongated necks and tails were the most massive of their kind. They survived until the asteroid impact (An asteroid is a celestial object whose dimensions vary by a few dozen…) which caused extinction (Generally speaking, the word extinction designates an action consisting of extinct some…) dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.
A researcher next to the massive bones of G. morellensis.
Credit: GBE-UNED
The shape of its leg and foot bones suggests that Garumbatitan morellensis was one of the most primitive sauropods in the Somphospondyli subgroup, which also includes more elongated sauropods like Brachiosaurus. This finding might indicate that Europe is the birthplace of this subgroup, although more evidence is needed to confirm this.
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