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Palaeontology: Previously unknown dinosaur species discovered near Madrid
Researchers in Spain have discovered a previously unknown species of dinosaur: a gigantic herbivore that lived around 75 million years ago. The animal is said to have been around 20 metres long and weighed 15 tonnes. Its fossil was found at the Lo Hueco excavation site, around 200 kilometres south-east of Madrid. According to palaeontologist Francisco Ortega, it is one of the most complete sauropod skeletons ever found in Europe.
Ortega and his team, consisting of Spanish and Portuguese scientists, described this new species in the journal Communications Biology. The discovery of the titanosaur could provide valuable insights into the dinosaur period shortly before their extinction around 66 million years ago. The find in Spain suggests that Europe was an important hub for native and immigrant sauropods in the late Cretaceous period, which was not previously suspected.
‘Until now, it was assumed that almost all European titanosaurs belonged to the native genus Lirainosaurus, which existed in isolation in Europe until the end of the Cretaceous period,’ explained Ortega. However, the new discovery shows that titanosaurs with links to Asian and North American dinosaurs also migrated to Europe at the end of the Cretaceous period.
The newly discovered dinosaur species was christened Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra. The name is made up of the place of discovery, the province of Cuenca, and the word ‘Saura’, which alludes both to the Latin word for lizard and to the artist Antonio Saura. The second part of the name, pintiquiniestra, is dedicated to a giant queen from the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
The excavation site is a real treasure trove for research into the sauropods of the European Upper Cretaceous, Ortega continued. There is still a lot to discover. We already know of the remains of at least one other specimen in Cuenca. The Lo Hueco site, which was discovered in 2007 during construction work for a high-speed Spanish railway line, is one of the most important palaeontological sites in Europe from the Upper Cretaceous. More than 12,000 fossils have already been unearthed there, including the remains of sauropods, turtles and crocodiles.
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