The find sheds light on the evolution of vertebrates in Africa.
Scientists from the Egyptian University of Mansour have discovered the skeleton of a giant dinosaur from the titanosaur group in the Dakhla oasis in the Sahara desert. The article was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
When it comes to the last periods of dinosaur life on the planet, Africa is like a blank page. Fossils found in the Black Continent and dating from 100 to 66 million years ago are few in number. This means that the evolution of dinosaurs in Africa remained a mystery to scientists. But in the Sahara, scientists have discovered a new species of dinosaur that is helping fill those gaps.
After detailed examination, it became clear that the size of the find was larger than the "size of a standard school bus." Scientists have assigned it to the group of titanosaurs Mansourasaurus shahinae. The dinosaur was ten meters long and weighs more than five and a half tons. It is also known that the found specimen ate plants.
The discovered dinosaur remains will help scientists fill in the gaps in the species' evolutionary chain.
“Mansourasaurus shahinae is an important discovery for Egyptian and African paleontology. Africa remains a giant question mark regarding the age of the dinosaurs. The find will help us solve the longstanding questions of this story,”said Dr. Eric Gorskak, one of the authors of the study.
Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils are hard to find in Africa. Disappointing to paleontologists is the lack of a clear chronological record of the evolution of dinosaurs in the studied continent.
For earlier years, dinosaurs lived in the same area - the supercontinent Pangea. However, during the Cretaceous period, the continents began to split and move to the configuration we see today. Scientists still did not know how well Africa was connected to the southern hemispheres of Europe at the time - how African animals could be cut off from their neighbors and evolved in their own directions.
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Mansourasaurus shahinae, as one of the few African dinosaurs known from this time period, helps answer this question. Analyzing the features of the animal's bones, the team of scientists determined that the find is more closely associated with dinosaurs from Europe and Asia than with those who were in southern Africa or South America. This, in turn, shows that at least some dinosaurs may have moved between Africa and Europe at the end of the reign of these animals. “The last dinosaurs in Africa were not completely isolated, contrary to what some scientists have previously stated,” Gorskak said.
GRIGORY PUSHKAREV