- The remains could correspond to a sauropod dinosaur 12 meters high and 25 meters long.
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| Image of the excavation in Portugal. |
They find in Portugal the largest dinosaur found in Europe
The remains of what may be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe have been discovered in a backyard in Pombal, a city in central Portugal.
The remains, which could correspond to a sauropod dinosaur approximately 12 meters tall and 25 meters long, are now being studied by an international research team, reports EurekAlert.
It all started in 2017, when a property owner in Pombal, Portugal, noticed the presence of several fossilized bone fragments in his yard, when he was carrying out construction work, and contacted the research team, which carried out the first excavation campaign in that same place this year.
More recently, between August 1 and 10, 2022, Portuguese and Spanish paleontologists working at the site unearthed what may be the remains of the largest sauropod dinosaur found in Europe. Sauropods are herbivorous, quadrupedal dinosaurs with long necks and tails.
"It is not usual to find all the ribs of such an animal, much less in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position. This mode of preservation is relatively uncommon in the fossil record of dinosaurs, particularly sauropods, from the Portuguese Late Jurassic ", said Elisabete Malafaia, a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
So far, an important set of axial skeleton elements, including vertebrae and ribs, of a possible brachiosaurid sauropod dinosaur have been collected from the site.
The Brachiosauridae group is made up of large species that lived from the Upper Jurassic to the Lower Cretaceous, approximately 160 to 100 million years ago, and are characterized by the presence of markedly developed forelimbs.
Some of the most emblematic dinosaur species belong to this group of sauropods, such as Brachiosaurus altithorax and Giraffatitan brancai, as well as the species from the Portuguese Upper Jurassic found in the western region of Portugal, Lusotitan atalaiensis.
The conservation characteristics of the fossils and their arrangement indicate the possible presence of other parts of the skeleton of this individual, a hypothesis that will be tested in future excavation campaigns at the site.
"Research in the paleontological locality of Monte Agudo confirms that the Pombal region has an important fossil record of vertebrates from the Upper Jurassic, which has allowed in recent decades the discovery of abundant materials that are very significant for the knowledge of continental faunas. that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula some 145 million years ago", adds Elisabete Malafaia.
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