Juan Canale has been a fan of dinosaurs since his childhood. He studied paleontology at the National University of La Plata. He did his doctoral thesis on the family of carcharodontosaurids, a group of dinosaurs that inhabited different regions of the world. But he found his place in Northern Patagonia to investigate them. He is a CONICET researcher and directs the Laboratory and Research Area of the “Ernesto Bachmann” Museum in Villa El Chocón, in Neuquén..
Two years following his thesis, Canale, together with a team of researchers from Argentina, the United States and Canada, discovered a representative of the carcharodontosaurids, which was broadcast by the media in different countries. They called it Meraxes gigas.
It was a discovery of a new species of carnivorous dinosaur of global importance because the fossil remains that were found were very well preserved and allow us to account in more detail regarding the biodiversity of the fauna from more than 93 million years ago. Canale felt that he was “lucky” to make the discovery and to be able to study it with a team that last Thursday published the study in the specialized journal Current Biology.
Canale, who moved to Patagonia to live and develop his passion for dinosaurs, had the idea for the name of the new species. He is a reader of the fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire that gave rise to the series. Game of Thrones (Game of Thrones). she called him Meraxes in honor of one of the fantastic creations of the American writer George RR Martin. It is the character of a female dragon.
In dialogue with BLACK RIVER, Canale recounted that during his childhood, “I was a child who already knew all the names of the dinosaurs. I loved visiting museums, and reading regarding those subjects. That curiosity never got past me.” In addition, he recalled that the movie Jurassic Park in 1994 “blew his mind”. At that time, she already loved learning regarding dinosaurs, but the film and the paleontology characters shown there made her think that he wanted to dedicate himself to exploration..
Now, following ten years of studies, Canale combined his learning with the team of researchers and discovered a new species of enormous carnivorous dinosaur, 11 meters long, with small arms, a large skull and an estimated weight of 4,200 kg. It lived between 96 and 93 million years ago.
Long-lived el dino
The copy of Meraxes gigas found in Neuquén was an individual dinosaur that died when it was 45 years old. A fact that -according to Canale- allows us to affirm that it is one of the longest-lived dinosaur specimens that have been found in the world.
“Surely Meraxes predated long-necked dinosaurs that at that time also inhabited the current territory of Neuquén,” said Dr. Canale.
The new dinosaur -then- belongs to the family of carcharodontosaurids. In were the greatest land hunters that ever existed, including the popular Tyrannosaurus rex, which inhabited the northern hemisphere between 68 and 66 million years ago.
Members of that family included species such as the Giganotosaurus and the Mapusaurus (also discovered in Neuquén), Carcharodontosaurus (found in Africa), Tyrannotitan (in Chubut), and Taurovenator (found in Rio Negro). In that family he joined Meraxes gigas. It was a group that was very successful and suddenly disappeared in the Upper Cretaceous. Scientists have not yet been able to clarify the causes of the extinction of this family.
Participating in the discovery were Sebastián Apesteguía and Pablo Gallina from the Paleontology Area of the Félix de Azara Natural History Foundation and researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago, United States. They received funding from The National Geographic Society, the Municipality of Villa El Chocón, the Azara Foundation, The Field Museum, the Argentine R&D Agency -which depends on the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the National Foundation for Sciences of the United States.
The discovery was made in a field located a short distance from the north coast of the Ezequiel Ramos Mexía reservoir, in the province of Neuquén. Fossil remains confirm that carcharodontosaurids had very short arms, despite the fact that they were huge animals.
It is possible that the short arms helped the males to stay on top of the females during copulation. There are even experts who proposed that the tiny but muscular arms of T. rex were used to tear apart prey. It has also been proposed that they were used as an aid to get up from the ground when lying down. “Actually, we don’t know for sure,” Canale said.
The Minister of Science, Daniel Filmus, congratulated the scientists led by Canale last Thursday. He highlighted the discovery: “This finding allows us to know what beings inhabited our soils millions of years ago, and provides key information regarding their morphology, which makes it possible to reconstruct a species and even increase knowledge regarding its diversity.”
Villa El Chocón: a history of reported finds since 1884
Juan Canale moved to Patagonia and has not stopped finding dinosaurs with other researchers. Today he is a researcher at Conicet and works at the Ernesto Bachmann Museum, in Villa El Chocón, Neuquén, which was created in 1995.
In the area of El Chocón, he had already participated in the discovery of the dinosaurs Skorpiovenatorreleased in 2009, and the Bajadasaurus, who lived 140 million years ago. During the Conference on Paleontology of the Neuquén Basin, Canale said that the Chocón area, located on the banks of the Limay River/Ezequiel Ramos Mexía Reservoir, has large exposures of rocks belonging to the Candeleros and Huincul formations (Upper Cretaceous, Cenomanian Turonian) of the Neuquén Group.
The first fossil remains reported from the El Chocón area correspond to a sauropod dinosaur vertebra, found in 1884 and published in 1902..
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