Scientists have unearthed a new dinosaur species in Tanzania that apparently lived 100 million years ago and belonged to the titanosaurian family.
According to CBS News, Rukwatitan bisepultus was a massive sauropod that lived toward the end of the dinosaur age, but many titanosaurs have been discovered in South America and other regions. The researchers, whose study is published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, found the fossil in a cliff wall of the Rukwa Rift Basin of southwestern Tanzania.
"Using both traditional and new computational approaches, we were able to place the new species within the family tree of sauropod dinosaurs and determine both its uniqueness as a species and to delineate others species with which it is most closely related," study lead author Eric Gorscak, an Ohio University (OU) doctoral student in biological sciences, said in a press release. "Much of what we know regarding titanosaurian evolutionary history stems from numerous discoveries in South America-a continent that underwent a steady separation from Africa during the first half of the Cretaceous Period.
"With the discovery of Rukwatitan and study of the material in nearby Malawi, we are beginning to fill a significant gap from a large part of the world."
Like its fellow titanosaurian sauropods, the R. bisepultus had a long neck and while it would have outweighed many of the Earth's largest modern animals, it was not the largest of its kind.
"There may have been certain environmental features, such as deserts, large waterways and/or mountain ranges, that would have limited the movement of animals and promoted the evolution of regionally distinct faunas," study co-author Patrick O'Connor, a professor of anatomy in the OU Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in the release. "Only additional data on the faunas and paleo environments from around the continent will let us further test such hypotheses."
