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The Turiasaurus riodevensis , a giant 38 meters long and 47 tons in weight, found in 2003 in the Teruel town of Riodeva, is considered the largest dinosaur discovered in Europe. It lived almost 150 million years ago and gave rise to a new group of dinosaurs.
The latest excavations carried out at the Riodeva site have found the remains of another giant dinosaur , a close relative of the Turiasaurus , brother or cousin, whose study is being completed by the Joint Paleontological Foundation of Teruel-Dinópolis.
We found two teeth, vertebrae of the neck, back and tail and limb bones, among other fossils, whose study has allowed experts to propose that they all belong to the same individual.
Among the recovered remains stands out a very complete dorsal vertebra that "demonstrates the complexity of these dinosaurs, with dimensions that exceeded 20 meters in length ".
The specialists assure that the remains will allow to know new characteristics of the sauropod dinosaurs of the Turiasauria group, to which the fossils belong, according to the identification made after the preliminary analysis of the teeth, which have the typical heart shape that characterizes this group. of dinosaurs.
An exhaustive scientific study will determine the species of Turiasaurus to which these new fossils belong . Three candidate species are known for the classification of the specimen, found in the RD-58 site: Turiasaurus riodevensis , Losillasaurus giganteus and Zby atlanticus .
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION
The specialists of the Dinópolis Foundation are studying the evolution of all the representatives attributed to the group and are trying to determine where it originated, as well as its subsequent geographical dispersion.
To do this, they collaborate with researchers from other countries, such as Portugal, France, the United Kingdom and the USA . After the definition of Turiasauria in 2006, dinosaurs from Europe, Africa and North America, both Jurassic and Cretaceous, have already been included in the group.
The fossiliferous wealth of Riodeva stands out for the presence of large specimens of different species. This is what the director of the Teruel-Dinópolis Joint Paleontological Foundation, Luis Alcalá, defines as "gigantism".
He explains that, in the transition between the Jurassic and the Cretaceous , about 140 million years ago, this place "met environmental conditions that facilitated the large size of animals."
Riodeva is internationally known after the definition in the scientific journal Science of the largest dinosaur in Europe, the Turiasaurus riodevensis , and of a new group of dinosaurs, the Turiasaurus .
This and other research by the Dinópolis Foundation in Riodeva on dinosaurs from the Late Jurassic, about 150-145 million years old, were the scientific trigger that promoted a new Dinópolis facility in that town, inaugurated in 2012.
According to the mayor, Alfredo Soriano, Riodeva " is the town of dinosaurs ", something that its neighbors are proud of. Their presence has generated jobs and numerous tourist visits.
In 2012, paleontologists in Dinópolis discovered the RD-58 site by finding several bone fragments on the surface during a survey, but it had not been excavated until now .
According to the Foundation, the excavation was very complex "due to the great hardness of the sandstone layer that contained the fossils." The paleontological performance in RD-58, in addition to the fossils themselves, continued during the first months of 2020 in the Foundation's laboratory, when the preparation of the extracted material was undertaken.
The fossils were quite fragmented because, as it has been possible to detect, "some dinosaur bones were already broken before their fossilization" , in addition to "certain geological faults affected some bones and interrupted the continuity of the site".
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