95 million-year-old land bridge across Antarctica carried dinosaurs between continents

an illustration of a dinosaur's head. It has yellowish eyes; bumpy beige and yellow skin; and pointed teeth shown in its open mouth — An illustrated reconstruction of a sauropod cranium found in Australia, which paleontologists say belongs to the species *Diamantinasaurus matildae*. (Picture credit score: Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum)

An almost 100 million-year-old, exceptionally well-preserved sauropod cranium found in Australia might present that dinosaurs trudged throughout Antarctica from South America to Australia, researchers have revealed.

The near-complete sauropod cranium belongs to a species known as Diamantinasaurus matildae. Sauropods are identified for his or her extraordinarily lengthy necks, with one dinosaur’s neck stretching farther than a college bus. D. matildae was additionally a titanosaur, the one group of sauropod dinosaurs to dwell proper till the tip of the Cretaceous (145 million to 66 million years in the past) earlier than the nonavian dinosaurs went extinct.

Paleontologists excavated the specimen in 2018 from a sheep ranch northwest of Winton, in Queensland, Australia, and nicknamed it “Ann.” D. matildae was so long as a tennis court docket (78 toes or 23.77 meters) and weighed round 27.5 tons (25 metric tons), 3 times greater than Tyrannosaurus rex. The fossils look strikingly much like bones unearthed in Argentina, which prompted researchers to assume that sauropods journeyed between South America and Australia, by way of Antarctica.

“In analyzing the stays, we discovered similarities between the Ann cranium and the cranium of a titanosaur known as Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, which lived in South America at about the identical time as Diamantinasaurus lived in Queensland,” Stephen Poropat (opens in new tab), a paleontologist at Curtin College in Perth, Australia, and lead creator of a brand new examine into the fossils, mentioned in a assertion (opens in new tab). “We recommend that sauropods had been touring between Australia and South America, by way of Antarctica, throughout the mid Cretaceous.”

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The remains of the 95 million-year-old sauropod skull placed on top of black fabric

Ann’s cranium is barely the second sauropod cranium discovered so far in Australia and is exceptionally well-preserved. (Picture credit score: Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum)

Within the hothouse world of the Cretaceous, Antarctica was blanketed with lush forests and vegetation. Scientists already knew that sauropods roamed the now-frigid landmass, after the first long-necked-dinosaur fossil in Antarctica was found in 2011. Some scientists had already theorized that these behemoths used Antarctica to bridge continents. On the time, Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and South America had been joined and shaped the final remnant of the supercontinent Gondwana, based on the Australian Museum (opens in new tab).

Now, in a examine printed Wednesday (April 12) within the journal Royal Society Open Science (opens in new tab), researchers in contrast the best-preserved sauropod cranium discovered so far in Australia with others from the world over.

A photo of the site where paleontologists unearthed the skull shows several cars and a tent set up near a dig site on a vast plain

Paleontologists unearthed the 98 million to 95 million-year-old sauropod cranium throughout a dig organized by the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum close to Winton, Queensland. (Picture credit score: Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum)

Utilizing detailed scans of Ann’s stays, the staff detected exceptional similarities with a Sarmientosaurus cranium that was found within the Chubut province in southern Argentina and described in a 2016 examine within the journal PLOS One (opens in new tab). “These similarities embody particulars of the braincase, the bones forming the again finish of the cranium close to the jaw joint and the form of the tooth,” Poropat mentioned.

Researchers already suspected that these two dinosaurs had been carefully associated, however till now, they lacked the proof to again it up. “The brand new cranium shores up the concept in a giant manner,” Poropat wrote in The Dialog (opens in new tab). “Bone for bone, the skulls of Diamantinasaurus and Sarmientosaurus are extraordinarily related.”

A photo of scientists arranging the sauropod skull remains on a table set to slide into a CT scanner

The researchers made detailed scans of Ann’s cranium, which they then in comparison with sauropod skulls from the world over. (Picture credit score: Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum)

Dinosaur skulls are a particularly uncommon discover, based on the examine. Apart from a couple of tooth, Ann’s cranium is barely the second sauropod cranium present in Australia, following the discovery in 2016 of a partial skull (opens in new tab) belonging to D. matildae. That is as a result of the heads of sauropods had been small relative to their physique dimension and had been made up of tiny, delicate bones and decomposed extra quickly than sturdy limbs, Poropat wrote.

“This can be a remarkably detailed and information-packed paper,” Matthew Lamanna (opens in new tab), a paleontologist on the Carnegie Museum of Pure Historical past and co-author of the 2016 examine, advised Reside Science in an e-mail. “The resemblances between the skulls of Diamantinasaurus and the equally aged Sarmientosaurus from southern South America are fairly placing, and add additional assist for the speculation that titanosaurs moved between Australia and South America throughout the mid-Cretaceous, presumably by way of Antarctica.”

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