In the Egyptian desert, a new species of dinosaur’s spinal fossil dating back 98 million years has been discovered.
Paleontologists from Mansoura University discovered a fossil of a new species of dinosaur that lived nearly 80 million years ago in the Dakhla oasis in central Egypt. Scientists describe the discovery as a “incredible discovery” that is critical to science.
The dinosaur’s remains indicate that it was a plant-eating Cretaceous Period creature known as Mansourasaurus Shahinae by paleontologists.
The dinosaur was about 10 meters long and weighed 5,000 kg, and it belonged to a group called titanosaurs, which included the Earth’s largest-ever land animals.
“Its remains […] are the most complete of any mainland African land vertebrate during an even larger time span, the roughly 30 million years before the dinosaur mass extinction 66 million years ago,” said paleontologist Hesham Sallam of Egypt’s Mansoura University, who led the study, according to Reuters.
“Uncovering bone after bone was thrilling for my students, as each new element we recovered helped to reveal who this giant dinosaur was,” Sallam continued.
The African continent has yet to be explored in terms of dinasour fossils, and the new discovery in Egypt sheds light on the continent’s fossil record.
According to the BBC, “Africa remains a giant question mark in terms of land-dwelling animals at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs,” said Eric Gorscak of The Field Museum, who worked on the research, which was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
“Mansourasaurus helps us answer long-standing questions about Africa’s fossil record and palaeobiology – what animals lived there, and how closely related were these animals to other species?”
The evolution of dinosaurs in Africa has remained a mystery for the last 30 million years.
Dr. Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, a study co-researcher, said his jaw “hit the floor” when he saw the fossil images.
“It was the Holy Grail,” he explained. “A well-preserved dinosaur from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in Africa that we palaeontologists had been looking for for a long, long time,” said one researcher.
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