By Sergio Queiroz
SAO PAULO, March 13 (Reuters) – Brazilian scientists have identified a new species of giant dinosaur with ties to a similar animal found in Spain, reinforcing knowledge that land routes once connected parts of South America, Africa and Europe about 120 million years ago.
Named Dasosaurus tocantinensis, the species is one of the biggest found in the South American country and was described this month in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
The fossils were uncovered in 2021 at a site hosting infrastructure works near Davinopolis, in Brazil’s northeastern state of Maranhao, and the research was led by Elver Mayer of the Federal University of the Sao Francisco Valley.
The remains include a femur measuring about 1.5 meters (59 inches), which helped researchers estimate the animal stretched roughly 20 meters long.
“As the excavation progressed over the days, we began to see the evidence of that huge bone, which is the femur,” said Leonardo Kerber, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM) who contributed to the research.
“This indicates it was a very large dinosaur. Today we know Dasosaurus is among the biggest dinosaurs ever found in Brazil,” he noted.
According to UFSM, analysis indicated the species is the closest known relative of Garumbatitan morellensis, a dinosaur described in Spain.
Their lineage was European and may have dispersed into what is now South America roughly 130 million years ago, likely via northern Africa, before the Atlantic fully opened, the university said.
Dasosaurus tocantinensis’s name combines references to the region where the dinosaur was found, including the Tocantins River, a major waterway whose eastern margins lie near the fossil site.
(Reporting by Sergio Queiroz; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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