A paper published today in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society announces the discovery of Garumbatitan morellensis, a previously undocumented species of somphospondylan dinosaur.
Reconstruction of Garumbatitan morellensis. Image credit: Grup Guix.
Garumbatitan morellensis lived in what is now the Iberian Peninsula during the Early Cretaceous epoch, around 122 million years ago.
This dinosaur was a type of sauropod, a large clade of huge herbivorous dinosaurs.
Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads, and four thick, pillar-like legs.
They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the clade includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land.
“Garumbatitan morellensis is one of the most primitive members of a group of sauropods called Somphospondyli, which corresponds to one of the most diverse and abundant groups during the Cretaceous and which became extinct at the end of the Mesozoic,” said Dr. Pedro Mocho, a paleontologist with the Instituto Dom Luiz at the University of Lisbon, and his colleagues.
The fossils of Garumbatitan morellensis were found at the Sant Antoni de la Vespa site of the Arcillas de Morella Formation in Morella, Spain.
“In this deposit, one of the largest concentrations of sauropod dinosaur remains from the Early Cretaceous of Europe was recognized, and in which elements of at least four individuals were identified, three of which belonged to this new species,” the paleontologists said.
“Sant Antoni de la Vespa thus constitutes one of the key locations for the study of dinosaur faunas in Spain during this period.”
“One of the individuals of Garumbatitan morellensis 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,” Dr. Mocho said.
“We found two almost complete and articulated feet in this deposit, which is particularly rare in the geological record.”
According to the team, Garumbatitan morellensis is characterized by the unique morphology of the femur (the upper bone of the leg) and the elements that form the foot.
The femur presents a morphology similar to the femora of more modern sauropods from the Late Cretaceous epoch.
“Our study highlights the enormous complexity of the evolutionary history of sauropods from the European Cretaceous — in particular, from the Iberian Peninsula, with species related to lineages present in Asia and North America, as well as some groups related to forms from the African continent,” Dr. Mocho said.
“Our results suggest the existence of periods of faunal dispersal between these continents.”
“The future restoration of all fossil materials found in this deposit will add important information to understand the initial evolution of this group of sauropods that dominated dinosaur faunas during the last million years of the Mesozoic era,” added Dr. Francisco Ortega, a paleontologist at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia.
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Pedro Mocho et al. New sauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Morella (Spain) provides new insights on the evolutionary history of Iberian somphospondylan titanosauriforms. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, published online September 28, 2023; doi: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlad124
