Paleontologists have identified the first confirmed remains of Diplodocus — "Dippy," for short — outside the western U.S., revealing that the iconic long-necked dinosaur reached what is now Spain roughly 150 million years ago.
The findings show that the enormous sauropod didn't live only in North America, as was long thought. Instead, it may have rambled across a land bridge all the way to Europe, the new study suggests.
The discovery, made at the La Tejería site near the small village of El Castellar in eastern Spain, provides some of the strongest fossil evidence yet that dinosaurs could move between North America and Europe during the Late Jurassic, when the Atlantic Ocean was still in its early stages of opening after the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. The researchers published their findings Tuesday (Sept. 15) in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
"Paleontological studies like this one help us better understand the history of life on Earth, reconstruct ancient ecosystems, and understand how they changed through time," study first author Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, a doctoral student who studies biodiversity and evolutionary biology at the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis (Dinópolis Foundation), a paleontological research institution, told Live Science via email.
Dippy is one of the best-known dinosaurs. After its fossils made their grand debut at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh in the early 1900s, life-size fossil replicas of the towering herbivore were sent around the world, including to England, France, Spain, Argentina and Russia.
But until now, Diplodocus' Late Jurassic fossils were known only from the Morrison Formation in the western United States — and the latest discovery shows that Dippy wasn't a homebody.
The newly unearthed Diplodocus specimen consists of 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevrons — bones that helped support blood vessels and muscles within the dinosaur's tail.
Study co-author and managing director of the Dinópolis Foundation, Alberto Cobos, said it was a friend who "thought he had spotted some bones on a mountainside," Cobos told Live Science via email. "That very day, I went to the site near El Castellar (a village in the province of Teruel). Sure enough, we saw a couple of sauropod vertebral centers."
Although only part of the skeleton has been recovered, the bones show a series of characteristics associated with Diplodocus, including large cavities corresponding to where air sacs would have been, along with deep grooves running alongside the underside of the tailbones.
"It was an exciting and continuous process of seeing the pieces of the puzzle gradually fall into place," Sánchez Fenollosa said in a statement. "From the early stages of the osteological study, we noticed strong similarities with several diplodocine sauropods … With each new result, the picture became clearer: we were looking at a Diplodocus."
It's unclear which species of Diplodocus the new specimen is, but like others of its genus, it was a huge dinosaur with an extremely long neck and whip-like tail.
"The Diplodocus from El Castellar was approximately 25 meters [82 feet] long (comparable in size to its North American relatives), making it another of the giant sauropods of the Spanish Jurassic," Cobos said in the statement.
Between 195 million and 170 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart as the Atlantic Ocean opened. But the ocean was much narrower than it is today, and the continents were not necessarily as isolated as their modern geography is now.
Evidence indicates that temporary land bridges may have allowed some animals to move between the two regions. The most famous prehistoric land bridge is the Bering Land Bridge that humans used to move between Asia and what is now Alaska. Previous research showed the Bering Land Bridge also existed around 68 million years ago, and it may have allowed an Asian ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex to trek into North America.
One possible route for Diplodocus into Spain may have been a land bridge that connected what is now Newfoundland with the Iberian Peninsula.
Geological conditions may have allowed dinosaurs like Diplodocus to move between continents, Sánchez Fenollosa told Live Science in an email. "This interpretation is supported not only by the fossil record but also by geological evidence," he said.
The newfound Diplodocus fossils also suggest that the distribution of giant sauropods was more complicated than the fossil record previously indicated.
"More complete specimens will be essential to understand this story in greater detail, particularly to determine which Diplodocus species inhabited Europe: whether it was one already known from North America or a previously unknown species," Sánchez Fenollosa said. "This discovery reminds us that even for such iconic dinosaurs, there are still many unanswered questions about their evolutionary history and biogeography."
Diplodocus is a famous genus of giant sauropod dinosaurs with small heads and long, whip-like tails that lived in the Late Jurassic period (155 to 145 million years ago). Since its discovery in 1878, all confirmed Diplodocus remains have been unearthed from the Morrison Formation fossil hotspot in the western United States. Now, however, paleontologists have identified Diplodocus remains in Spain.
The remains came to light in the El Castellar municipality of the Spanish city of Teruel, and represent the first evidence of Diplodocus beyond the borders of North America. They consist of 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevron bones (bony arches in the tail). Through traditional anatomical comparisons and advanced phylogenetic analyses, the researchers confidently categorized them as Diplodocus and a close cousin of Diplodocus hallorum.
“As we looked more closely at the anatomy, we began to identify a combination of features characteristic of Diplodocus species. Then, as we carried out different evolutionary analyses, they kept pointing in the same direction,” Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, lead author of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology study and a graduate student in biodiversity and evolutionary biology at the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis research foundation, said in a statement. “With each new result, the picture became clearer: we were looking at a Diplodocus.” Dinópolis is a huge paleontological museum and theme park in Teruel, about 200 miles east of Madrid.
This particular individual dates back to around 150 million years ago. Its place of death indicates that during the Late Jurassic, dinosaurs could migrate from between North America and Europe, probably making use of temporary land bridges that sometimes emerged in the proto-North Atlantic Ocean. During the Jurassic (201.4 to 145 million years ago), the ancient supercontinent Pangea started pulling apart into the Laurasia and Gondwana landmasses, and the Atlantic Ocean also started forming.
Diplodocus are a subgroup of sauropods, which were among the longest land animals to ever walk the Earth. The recent finding sheds light on Iberian Mesozoic (252 to 66 million years ago) ecosystems and sauropod dinosaur diversity in the European Jurassic, Fenollosa explained.
“The Diplodocus from El Castellar was approximately 25 meters long [82 feet] (comparable in size to its North American relatives), making it another of the giant sauropods of the Spanish Jurassic,” said Alberto Cobos, co-author of the study and managing director of the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis. Its remains are now on display at the Aragones Museum of Paleontology at Dinópolis.
The post First Diplodocus fossils found outside of United States appeared first on Popular Science.
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