A study published in late September detailed the discovery of a new type of dinosaur, discovered in Spain.
The enormous beast belongs to the sauropod family, and received the nickname “titanosaur,” according to LiveScience. In the academic study, its given name was Garumbatitan morellensis. Researchers believe the sauropod walked the Earth roughly 122 million years ago, in a region that would one day go on to become Spain.
The beast has unusually shaped bones and was quite primitive compared to its other long-necked relatives. Other examples of sauropods include Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, which many will probably remember from that scene in Jurassic Park where Sam Neil and the kids get sneezed on.
Paleontologists Discover New Species of Sauropod Dinosaur in Spain
Garumbatitan morellensis lived in what is now the Iberian Peninsula during the Early Cretaceous epoch, around 122 million years ago. pic.twitter.com/MlcTtqofPV
— RVIN (@Vinodrviv) September 30, 2023
It lived during the early Cretaceous period, which lasted from 1245 million to 66 million years ago, LiveScience continued. But oddly enough, this particular sauropod belongs to a family that is the only lineage known to survive right up until that massive asteroid turned most known dinosaurs into glorified chickens. (RELATED: Our Earliest Ancestors Walked Amongst The Dinosaurs, Study Claims)
“One of the individuals we found stands out for its large size, with vertebrae more than one meter wide, and a femur that could reach two meters in length. We found two almost complete and articulated feet in this deposit, which is particularly rare in the geological record,” study lead Pedo Mocho said in a statement. Due to the limited amount of fossil evidence, researchers are still trying to establish exactly how big titanosaurs could grow.