PICTURE ABOVE: The recent discovery of Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, shown in this illustration, in Thailand adds support to the idea that warm, open, and relatively dry habitats created ideal conditions for the evolution of giant sauropods. DinoThaiThai
This article prompted me to make a dinosaurs category.
This is an astounding discovery of a true behemoth, a gigantic dinosaur.
A new species offers a clue to the boom of giant dinosaurs
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/species-offers-clue-boom-giant-090000731.htmlTitans once towered over Thailand.
A research team led by National Geographic Explorer Sita Manitkoon has discovered a new long-necked dinosaur they estimate was over 88 feet long and weighed nearly 30 tons.
“Initial measurements of the bones excavated suggested that this could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Southeast Asia,” says Manitkoon, a paleontologist at Mahasarakham University in Thailand.
The telltale bones were uncovered in 2016 by a local man named Thanom Luangnan in Chaiyaphum Province, northeastern Thailand.
“He observed what he described as strange-looking rocks on the banks of a public pond,” says Manitkoon. Luangnan reported the findings to the country’s Department of Mineral Resources. The strange rocks, it turned out, were dinosaur bones, and when Manitkoon came upon them, he knew the creature must have been enormous.
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The researchers named the new species Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis after where it was found, and the giant serpent-like Naga of Southeast Asian folklore. The discovery, which was announced Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, provides insight into how changes in ancient climate and vegetation opened the doors for gigantic dinosaurs to develop.
“This is the most complete sauropod specimen discovered from the Khok Kruat Formation,” says Pedro Mocho, a paleontologist at the Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal, who was not involved in the study. Until now, Mocho says, the big dinosaurs in Thailand were known only from bits and pieces of skeletons. The new find is substantially more complete, revealing a titanic dinosaur never seen in the country before.
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| Sita Manitkoon oversaw the recovery of Nagatitan, the largest dinosaur ever discovered in Thailand. Tanintorn Ketburana |
Colossal Cretaceous sauropods
Nagatitan left behind a smattering of vertebrae, ribs, hip bones, and limb bones entombed in 113-million-year-old rock. Its right forelimb is longer than that of other, recently uncovered giant sauropods such as Patagotitan and Dreadnoughtus, though the dinosaur itself likely was not as big as those heavy hitters, which weighed an estimated 60 and 50 tons respectively.
The largest dinosaurs of all time were not each other’s closest relatives. Sauropod dinosaurs evolved their giant body sizes more than 30 times over the course of more than a hundred million years on at least six landmasses. Nagatitan became a giant independently of other huge dinosaurs from other periods and places, but its relationships and habitat suggest it lived at the beginning of a time conducive to enormous dinosaurs.
Nagatitan belonged to a group called the somphospondyli. These dinosaurs tend to have long forelimbs compared to other sauropods, as well as a wide stance, says Paul Upchurch, a paleontologist at the University College London and a coauthor of the study. The other differences would have been difficult to spot on the living animal, but these subtle cues identify the Nagatitans as a group of immense dinosaurs that spread far and wide some 110 to 120 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous.
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| Sita Manitkoon and the Thai Paleontology Youth Network recovered a dorsal rib (about six feet long) from the site and moved it to the Sirindhorn Dinosaur Museum. Tanintorn Ketburana |
How titans thrived
Environmental conditions in Cretaceous Thailand might explain why Nagatitan was so large.
During the time the dinosaur lived, Thailand was closer to the equator than it is today. Clues found in the same formation in which Nagatitan was buried indicate that the region was covered by relatively open, slightly dry shrublands. Earth was in a hothouse state, and recent research has suggested that big sauropod dinosaurs thrived under such conditions. Humongous herbivores could easily and efficiently travel through the woodlands, browsing on trees and nibbling plants like horsetails and ferns down low. Their feeding and trampling of the soils also kept such habitats more open and savanna-like rather than thickly forested.
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| The fossils were prepared and cleaned using specialized tools at the Sirindhorn Dinosaur Museum lab in Kalasin Province. Tanintorn Ketburana |
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| Two local women from the Sirindhorn Dinosaur Museum area helped prepare the fossils, which involved using specialized pens, air compressors, scalpels, brushes, and glue to release them from the rock Tanintorn Ketburana |
“Sauropods such as Ruyangosaurus, nearly 60 tons, are among the largest from Asia during the Cretaceous,” Manitkoon says. They add support to the idea that warm, open, and relatively dry habitats created ideal conditions for sauropods to evolve to giant sizes.
The overall picture is complex, says Mocho. Sauropod dinosaurs both expanded and shrank in size at different times and places.
(Scientists find a new titanosaur dinosaur species in Patagonia)
“Savannah-like ecosystems are known to favor the development of megaherbivore faunas, and it would not be surprising if environmental factors were related to sauropod gigantism,” he says.
The interplay between large herbivores like elephants and their habitats today could help researchers better perceive similar patterns in the fossil record.
“It seems a little odd that sauropods were able to cope with higher temperature conditions,” says Upchurch, as large bodies are harder to cool down and retain heat more readily.
But sauropod anatomy likely allowed the dinosaurs to work against expectations.
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| Sita Manitkoon is pictured standing next to the complete replica of Nagatitan's left femur. The specimen is the largest dinosaur limb ever found in Southeast Asia. Tanintorn Ketburana |
The long necks of the dinosaurs, Upchurch says, increased the surface area from which they could shed heat. Their complex air sac system would also have helped them dump body heat as they exhaled. When habitats shifted to warm woodlands, full of vegetation at browsing height, the evolutionary gifts that sauropod dinosaurs already had allowed them to balloon in size, as they were well equipped to handle the heat.
“The discovery of Nagatitan and its giant relatives in Asia indicates that these dinosaurs had evolved to such enormous sizes since the early Cretaceous, a successful survival mechanism,” Manitkoon says.
The fossil record shows that from the time of Nagatian until the asteroid strike, dinosaur titans repeatedly evolved and grew large when conditions were just right.
The nonprofit National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funded Explorer Sita Manitkoon's work. Learn more about the Society’s support of Explorers.
Riley Black is a freelance science writer based in the U.S. She regularly reports on science, paleontology, and natural history for National Geographic and is also the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.
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- Days ago: MOM = 3971 days ago & DAD = 625 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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