The bisepultus Rukwatitan species, first discovered, are embedded within a cliff wall in Rukwa Rift Basin southwest of Tanzania by scientists. Using the help of professional excavators and coal miners, the team excavated the spine, ribs, legs and pelvis for two seasons on the field.
Titanosaurs are a bit like buses, you wait for ages and then two of them come along together. No sooner did we complete our synopsis on the research on the colossal Dreadnoughtus schrani, a newly described Titanosaur from south-western Patagonia, then we have the opportunity to discuss another new species, this time from Africa.
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The CT scan results from fossils combined with detailed comparisons with other sauropods reveal a unique feature that suggests the dinosaurs differed from those of a similar type found previously.
Using traditional and new computational approaches, it is able to place the new species within the sauropod dinosaur family tree and determine its uniqueness as a species and to describe other closely related species.
Bicycle fireplaces lived more or less a hundred million years ago during the middle of the Cretaceous Period. Titanosaurian sauropods, a group that includes Rukwatitan, are herbivorous dinosaurs known for large body size, long necks and widebodies.
This new Titanosaur, named Rukwatitan bisepultus may not be quite as big as the newly described Dreadnoughtus but we at an Everything Dinosaur estimate that fossils excavated from a hazardous cliff face in a steep quarry represent a dinosaur that was around ten metres long, or possibly much bigger. Comparisons with the fossil bones from the Malawisaurus indicate that this Titanosaur could have exceeded sixteen metres in length. This herbivore would have been able to survey its floodplain home from a height of approximately four metres. [2]
Although not among the largest of the titanosaurians, Rukwatitan is thought to have a front limb reaching approximately 3.5 meters and can weigh as many as a few elephants.
The new dinosaur bones have similarities with other titanosaurians, Malawisaurus dixeyi, previously found in Malawi. But two dinosaurs found in southern Africa clearly differ from one another, especially from titanosaurians found in northern Africa.
The fossils of crocodile relatives in the Middle Cretaceous period from Rukwa Rift Basin also show a distinctive feature when compared to other forms of places on the continent.
There may be certain environmental features, such as deserts, large waterways and mountains that will limit the movement of animals and encourage the evolution of different regional fauna," O'Connor said. "Only through additional data on ancient fauna and the environment of the entire continent will let us further test the hypothesis.
In addition to providing new data on species evolution in sub-Saharan Africa, this study also contributes to detailing titanosaurs globally. The researchers suspect that the diversity within the titanosaurian group arises from the decline in other sauropod populations, the diplodocoids, which include Apatosaurus dinosaurs. Scientists have discovered more than 30 fossils of titanosaurians in South America and only four in Africa.
Most of what we know about the evolutionary history of titanosaurians comes from discoveries in South America, a continent that has experienced a stable separation from Africa during the first half of the Cretaceous Period.
With the discovery of Rukwatitan and material studies in Malawi, we begin to fill a significant void of most of the world's titanosaurian.
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