• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

New Species Of Titanosaur Found In Spain Dates Back 72 Million Years

September 4, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

It’s a good day for palaeontology fans as a team of scientists have announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur. The fossils retrieved in Spain belonged to a titanosaur, the long-necked giants, and is between 70 to 75 million years old.

The prehistoric giant’s partial skeleton was found at the Lo Hueco fossil site in Cuenca, Spain. Its discovery inspired its name, Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra, which refers to Cuenca, the Spanish painter Antonio Saura, and Queen Pintiquiniestra who was a character from the 16th century book Amadis of Greece that features in the 17th century novel Don Quixote.

“Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra is a sauropod dinosaur, which corresponds to a group of herbivorous and quadrupedal dinosaurs,” explained lead author Pedro Mocho of the University of Lisbon, Portugal, to IFLScience.

“Sauropods are characterized by their long necks and tails, columnar limbs, and small head relative to their body size. In particular, Qunkasaura belongs to a group of sauropods named Titanosauria, and some members of these groups are featured by the presence of osteoderms, which partially covered their skin.”

The excavation of Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra at Lo Hueco.

The excavation of Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra at Lo Hueco.

Image credit: GBE-UNED

Titanosaurs are the only sauropods to have this dermal armor, and while they’re a relatively rare find, several have come from the Lo Hueco fossil site.   

From the fossilized skeleton, the authors were also able to identify some skeletal features that are unique to Qunkasaura. These included bony projections on its neck bones and a hook-shaped thing sticking off the base of its spine.

This is the first time we discovered two distinct lineages of saltasauroids in the same fossil locality.

Pedro Mocho

Curiously, its tail shares a characteristic seen in a group of titanosaurs known as the aeolosaurines, which wouldn’t be so strange if it wasn’t that these dinosaurs are found way over in South America. The evolutionary relationships between Qunkasaura and aeolosaurines don’t show any relation, so it could be that this is a kind of convergent evolution where a shared skeletal feature has evolved independently in different lineages.

More locally, Qunkasaura joins the opisthocoelicaudine saltasaurids, a group of dinosaurs found on Laurasia, which is the ancient supercontinent that eventually split up to create North America, Europe, and Asia. Their close proximity to other dinosaurs like the lirainosaurines is reflected in the fossil diversity at Lo Hueco, and provides further insight into the evolution of European titanosaurs.

Size comparison for Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra with some colorful characters.

Size comparison for Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra with some colorful characters.

Image credit: GBE-UNED

“This is the first time we discovered two distinct lineages of saltasauroids in the same fossil locality,” added Mocho. “One of these groups named Lirainosaurinae is relatively well-known in the Iberian region, and they are characterized by species of small and medium size, which evolved in an insular ecosystem, i.e., Europe was a huge archipelago composed by several islands during the Late Cretaceous.”

“However, Qunkasaura belongs to another group of sauropods, which is represented in the Iberian Peninsula by medium-large sized species 73 million years ago. This suggests to us that they reached the Iberian Peninsula much later than other groups of dinosaurs.”

Advertisement

The study is published in Communications Biology.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  2. Five Seasons Ventures pulls in €180M fund to tackle human health and climate via FoodTech
  3. Humanity’s Journey To A Metal-Rich Asteroid Launches Today. Here’s How To Watch
  4. Ancient DNA Reveals People Caught Leprosy From Adorable Woodland Critters In Medieval England

Source Link: New Species Of Titanosaur Found In Spain Dates Back 72 Million Years

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • The Aztec Origins Of The Day Of The Dead (And The Celtic Roots Of Halloween)
  • Large, Bright, And Gold: Get Ready For The Biggest Supermoon Of The Year
  • For Just Two Days A Year, These Male Toads Turn A Jazzy Bright Yellow. Now We Know Why
  • Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Back From Behind The Sun – Still Not An Alien Spacecraft, Though
  • Bowhead Whales Can Live For 200 Years – This May Explain Their Extraordinary Longevity
  • Trump Orders First Nuclear Weapons Test In The US Since 1992 – Here’s What You Need To Know
  • Tiny Triceratops-Tackling Tyrannosaur Was Its Own Species, Not A Baby T. Rex
  • What Makes Ammolite Gemstones, A Rare Kind Of Fossilized Ammonite, So Vibrant? It’s All In The Nacre
  • Something Melted This Tesla’s Windscreen. Could It Have Been A World-First Meteorite Collision?
  • Carnivorous “Death-Ball” Sponge Among 30 New Deep-Sea Weirdos Discovered In The Southern Ocean
  • Chimps Can Revise Beliefs When Confronted With Conflicting Evidence. Can You?
  • Explosive Airbursts, Like Tunguska, Might Be Hiding Among “Halloween Fireballs” Meteor Shower
  • One Of The World’s Rarest Penguins Is Actually Three Subspecies In A Trench Coat
  • “I Am The Allergen”: The Super-Rare Condition That Makes Everyone Else Allergic To You
  • 42,000-Year-Old Yellow Crayon Suggests Neanderthals Created Art – And It’s Still Sharp Too
  • IFLScience Investigates The Loch Ness Monster: A Round-Up Of Our Spooky Season Nessie Deep Dive
  • Why An Eastern Pacific Tear In Earth’s Crust Could Spare The Pacific Northwest… Eventually
  • JWST Reveals Never-Before-Seen Details Of The Red Spider Nebula And It’s Spectacular
  • “Breaking Records By Extraordinary Margins”: 22 Of Earth’s 34 Vital Signs At Record Levels
  • “The Most Important Unsolved Problem In Pure Math”: Where Is Humanity At With Prime Numbers?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version