Dinosaur fossils found in Argentina could belong to the largest creature ever to have walked the Earth
A team of researchers with Naturales y Museo, Universidad de Zaragoza and Universidad Nacional del Comahue has found evidence that suggests the remains of a dinosaur discovered in Argentina in 2012 may represent a creature that was the largest ever to walk the Earth.
Argentinosaurus huinculensis reconstruction at Museo Municipal Carmen Funes, Plaza Huincul, Neuquén, Argentina. Credit: William Irvin Sellers, Lee Margetts, Rodolfo Aníbal Coria, Phillip Lars Manning, PLoS ONE (2013)
In their paper published in the journal Cretaceous Research, the group describes the fossilized remains that have been found so far and what they have revealed.
The largest creature ever to live is believed to be the blue whale—the largest of which grow to 33.6 meters long.
The biggest land creatures are believed to have been the dinosaurs—of them, the titanosaur (as their name suggests) is believed to be the largest.
And of those, Argentinosaurus represents the largest that left enough evidence for it to be classified the heaviest—at approximately 36.5 meters in length and weighing in at a hundred tons, it would have dwarfed today’s land animals by a considerable amount.
Researchers studying Patagotitan fossils (another titanosaur found in Patagonia) have suggested some of them might have broken the record for the largest, but there was insufficient fossil evidence to prove it.
In either case, the researchers studying the new remains have begun to believe that they have found an even bigger titanosaur.
Thus far, the dinosaur has been dated back to 98 million years ago (putting it in the Late Jurassic to the early Cretaceous).
The fossils found include 24 vertebrae, all belonging to a giant tail, parts of a pelvis and a pectoral girdle.
The huge size of each suggests the dinosaur was a very large titanosaur—one that might be bigger than Argentinosaurus. That claim cannot be confirmed, however, until leg bones are found. Their size will allow the researchers to make estimates of the animals’ body weight.
A handout picture released on January 20, 2021, by the CTyS-UNLaM Science Outreach Agency showing a palaeontologist during an excavation in which 98 million-year-old fossils were found, at the Candeleros Formation in the Neuquen River Valley, Argentina.
Titanosaurs belong to the sauropod family, which means they were herbivores, had massive bodies and long necks and tails.
Such dinosaurs would have had few worries from meat-eating enemies if they managed to grow to full size.
Their fossils have been found on all continents except Antarctica. The researchers conclude by noting that more digging in the area will likely reveal more fossils from the same dinosaur and perhaps evidence of its true size.
A team of palaeontologists from the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture excavated four dinosaurs in northeastern Montana this summer. All fossils will be brought back to the Burke Museum where the public can watch palaeontologists remove the surrounding rock in the fossil preparation laboratory.
A team of UW students, volunteers and staff excavate the Flyby Trike in northeastern Montana.
The four dinosaur fossils are the ilium—or hip bones—of an ostrich-sized theropod, the group of meat-eating, two-legged dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and raptors; the hips and legs of a duck-billed dinosaur; a pelvis, toe claw and limbs from another theropod that could be a rare ostrich-mimic Anzu, or possibly a new species; and a Triceratops specimen consisting of its skull and other fossilized bones.
Three of the four dinosaurs were all found in close proximity on Bureau of Land Management land that is currently leased to a rancher.
In July 2021, a team of volunteers, palaeontology staff, K-12 educators who were part of the DIG Field School program and students from UW and other universities worked together to excavate these dinosaurs.
The fossils were found in the Hell Creek Formation, a geologic formation that dates from the latest portion of the Cretaceous Period, 66 to 68 million years ago. Typical paleontological digs involve excavating one known fossil.
However, the Hell Creek Project is an ongoing research collaboration of palaeontologists from around the world studying life right before, during and after the K-Pg mass extinction event that killed off all dinosaurs except birds.
The Hell Creek Project is unique in that it is sampling all plant and animal life found throughout the rock formation in an unbiased manner.
The Hell Creek geologic formation.
“Each fossil that we collect helps us sharpen our views of the last dinosaur-dominated ecosystems and the first mammal-dominated ecosystems,” said Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a UW professor of biology and curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Burke Museum. “With these, we can better understand the processes involved in the loss and origination of biodiversity and the fragility, collapse and assembly of ecosystems.”
All of the dinosaurs except the Triceratops will be prepared in the Burke Museum’s fossil preparation laboratory this fall and winter.
The Triceratops fossil remains on the site because the dig team continued to find more and more bones while excavating and needs an additional field season to excavate any further bones that may be connected to the surrounding rock. The team plans to finish excavation in the summer of 2022.
Called the “Flyby Trike” in honour of the rancher who first identified the dinosaur while he was flying his aeroplane over his ranch, the team has uncovered this dinosaur’s frill, horn bones, individual rib bones, lower jaw, teeth and occipital condyle bone—nicknamed the “trailer hitch,” which is the ball on the back of the skull that connects to the neck vertebrae.
The team estimates approximately 30% of this individual’s skull bones have been found to date, with more potential bones to be excavated next year.
A close-up view of the Flyby Trike’s occipital condyle bone—nicknamed the “trailer hitch”—the ball on the back of the skull that connects to neck vertebrae.
The Flyby Trike was found in hardened mud, with the bones scattered on top of each other in ways that are different from the way the bones would be laid out in a living animal.
These clues indicate the dinosaur likely died on a flood plain and then got mixed together after its death by being moved around by a flood or river system, or possibly moved around by a scavenger like a T. rex, before fossilizing. In addition, the Flyby Trike is one of the last Triceratops living before the K-Pg mass extinction. Burke palaeontologists estimate it lived less than 300,000 years before the event.
“Previous to this year’s excavations, a portion of the Flyby Trike frill and a brow horn were collected and subsequently prepared by volunteer preparators in the fossil preparation lab.
The frill was collected in many pieces and puzzled together fantastically by volunteers. Upon puzzling the frill portion together, it was discovered that the specimen is likely an older ‘grandparent’ triceratops,” said Kelsie Abrams, the Burke Museum’s palaeontology preparation laboratory manager who also led this summer’s fieldwork.
“The triangular bones along the frill, called ‘epi occipitals,’ are completely fused and almost unrecognizable on the specimen, as compared to the sharp, noticeable triangular shape seen in younger individuals. In addition, the brow horn curves downwards as opposed to upwards, and this feature has been reported to be seen in older animals as well.”
Amber and seed pods were also found with the Flyby Trike. These finds allow paleobotanists to determine what plants were living alongside Triceratops, what the dinosaurs may have eaten, and what the overall ecosystem was like in Hell Creek leading up to the mass extinction event.
Kelsie Abrams, the Burke Museum’s palaeontology preparation laboratory manager, opens the field jacket of a theropod ilium.
“Plant fossil remains from this time period are crucial for our understanding of the wider ecosystem. Not only can plant material tell us what these dinosaurs were perhaps eating, but plants can more broadly tell us what their environment looked like,” said Paige Wilson, a UW graduate student in Earth and space sciences. “Plants are the base of the food chain and a crucial part of the fossil record. It’s exciting to see this new material found so close to vertebrate fossils!”
Museum visitors can now see palaeontologists remove rock from the first of the four dinosaurs—the theropod hips—in Burke’s palaeontology preparation laboratory. Additional fossils will be prepared in the upcoming weeks. All four dinosaurs will be held in trust for the public on behalf of the Bureau of Land Management and become a part of the Burke Museum’s collections.
Possible Grave of Medieval Christian Hermit Excavated in Spain
This summer, a tomb embedded in the rock by the main entrance to the San Tirso and San Bernabé Hermitage situated in the karst complex of Ojo Guareña (Merindad de Sotoscueva, Burgos) was excavated; its structure of slabs holds the skeleton of an adult individual in the supine position, with its head to the west, set between two small limestone blocks.
One of the dates obtained in 2020 evinces a Hispano-Visigothic period chronology related to the transition between the end of the seventh century and the start of the eighth, while the human remains from the lower level are associated with a transition phase between the end of the eighth century and the start of the ninth, in the High Middle Ages.
“In both cases, these push the evidence known to date for the start of Christian worship at this emblematic site back several centuries,” says Ana Isabel Ortega, an archaeologist attached to the Fundación Atapuerca and the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH).
The anthropological studies, especially the analyses of stable isotopes of hydrogen, carbon and strontium, together with the dating for the remains, offer us a glimpse into the life of this person, who could have been associated with the first hermits who sought a retreat in this idyllic setting where they could live in isolation, during centuries of great turbulence linked to the arrival of the Moors, just as was the case elsewhere close to the upper course of the River Ebro and its tributaries in the south of the province of Cantabria, the north of Burgos, Álava and La Rioja.
Apart from Ortega, the excavation team was made up of Pilar Fernández, Sofía de León and Raquel Lorenzo, restorers at the CENIEH, and Miguel Ángel Martín.
The other collaborators were Aitor Fernández, an employee of the Ayuntamiento de Merindad de Sotoscueva, as well as Clara López, Alberto Gómez and Eduardo Sainz Maza, who are guides to the San Bernabé Cave. Josu Riezu and Txus Riezu also furnished their support.
Once the excavation has concluded and the human remains have been recovered, these will be consolidated and restored at the CENIEH.
They will subsequently be subjected to dating, morphometric and paleopathological studies, while Ana Belén Marín and Borja González, researchers from the EvoAdapta R+D+i Group at the Universidad de Cantabria, will participate in isotopic studies.
Hub of Christianity
San Bernabé Cave became a hub of Christianity during the High Middle Ages as a centre for religion and pilgrimage, with the foundation of a church devoted to San Tirso and San Bernabé in a process that appropriated the former pagan sanctuary in the Ojo Guareña karst enclave caves, intimately bound up with the process that gave rise to the Kingdom of Castile.
Burned Layer at Jamestown Linked to Bacon’s Rebellion
While placing lights at the front of Historic Jamestowne’s memorial church ahead of its 2019 reopening, Jamestown Rediscovery’s Senior Staff Archaeologist Sean Romo made an interesting discovery: burn deposits buried just below the surface.
The artefacts, including window leads, collected on top of the burn deposits, date to just after the 1676 fire.
With several recorded accounts of open fires at the settlement, Romo said there were three possible causes. It could be evidence of the January 1608 fort burning, the result of Confederate troops’ 1862 retreat or it could be evidence of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676.
But the team could not definitively decide until they opened up the ground. But Romo had his doubts. While Confederate forces occupied the site, several spots around the island were disturbed in order to fortify the wall.
But, what the team uncovered was something of wonder: a square, 15-by-15 feet, filled with intact burn deposits along with several artefacts on the surface.
“We expected this space to be disturbed in some way, but once we took off the modern deposits, we were shocked. The fact that this site is really intact is incredible,” Romo said.
While historians have well-documented accounts of Nathaniel Bacon’s 1676 siege of Jamestown, there had never been any evidence identified as the burning of the island’s parish church.
But, nearly 345 years after the recorded event, the Jamestown Rediscovery’s team has definitively confirmed evidence of “one of the most unusual and complicated chapters in Jamestown’s history,” according to the National Park Service’s article.
While the team had several causes to consider, Romo said the artefacts, including window leads, collected on top of the burn deposits, date to just after the 1676 fire, proving that what they were looking at were from a wooden structure predating the rebellion.
On Sept. 19, 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a siege on Jamestown, burning the site to the ground after several skirmishes with Gov. Sir William Berkeley over Native relations.
The rebellion is known as the first of its kind in the American colonies as Bacon, a wealthy landowner, gained the support of poor farmers.
Additionally, in a second dig site along the church’s eastern wall, there is definitive evidence of the construction of the existing brick church tower following its burning.
According to Director of Archaeology Dave Givens, this discovery is crucial in telling the complete story of Jamestown’s history and the team plans to continue their efforts to understand other artefacts at the site.
“We have positive evidence of Bacon’s Rebellion and the burning that took place,” Givens said. “The nice thing about this dig is that, as it evolves, it will help us understand more about the layers and what we’re seeing every day.”
Rare 6,000-year-old mussel shell reveals insights into First Nations technology
New research by archaeologists has described rare shell artefacts discovered at Calperum Station and Murrawong (Glen Lossie) on the Murray River in South Australia.
The artefacts were found in sites known to archaeologists as shell middens during field trips by Flinders and Griffith University scientists, in collaboration with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation and the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Corporation.
Two of the modified freshwater mussel shells are perforated, with the other is serrated. The authors say the finely serrated shell is a very rare artefact with few close Australian examples known to exist.
A perforated shell was found at Calperum Station.
The discoveries range in age from around 6000 to 600 years old and more than double the known examples of such artefacts from this region.
Professor Amy Roberts at Flinders University, the lead author of the paper, says that whilst midden sites are a common type in many parts of the country, shell artefacts are rarely identified within them.
Archaeologist Amy Roberts working at a Riverland site.
“These artefacts remind us that middens are not only the remnants of meals eaten long ago but that they also provide insights into Aboriginal technologies and cultural activities. It’s a remarkable object to look at, but also highly enigmatic.”
Serrated shell artefact from Calperum Station in South Australia’s Riverland region. Perforated shell artefact from Calperum Station in South Australia’s Riverland region.
In over 25 years of recording archaeological sites in the Riverland, including many hundreds of shell middens, co-author Craig Westell says he has never come across an object like the serrated artefact.
Potential uses for the perforated shells include ornamentation, tool stringing and fibre scraping while the serrated artefact may have been used for ornamentation, idle tinkering, or as a food utensil.
Dr Chris Wilson, a Ngarrindjeri archaeologist, says accounts about the use of shells recorded from Aboriginal Elders who lived along the Murray River opened space for the team to think about the functional, symbolic, and aesthetic importance of these objects.
“This recent shell finds confirm that our Ancestors not only made utensils and tools for everyday use but they were also gifted with making artistic pieces using any materials that were readily available.”
“The research that Amy and her team do in partnership with the First Peoples of the River Murray and Mallee has been much appreciated, their research gives us more accurate details of our Ancestral history within the Riverland,” says River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation spokesperson Fiona Giles.”
The paper, “Aboriginal Serrated and Perforated Shell Artifacts from the Murray River, South Australia,” (2021) by A.L. Roberts, C. Westell, C. Wilson, M. Langley, River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation and the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Corporation has been published in Archaeology in Oceania.
Three Phases of Wooden Wagon Way Uncovered in Scotland
BBC News reports that three layers of wooden tracks constructed for the horse-drawn Tranent Waggonway have been uncovered in East Lothian by researchers from the 1722 Waggonway Project.
The 1722 Waggonway Project said the early railway was unique in archaeology
The Tranent Waggonway in East Lothian was first constructed in 1722.
It was initially built for hauling coal from a pit at Tranent to Cockenzie and Port Seton for use as fuel in a process for making salt.
New archaeological excavations have revealed three wooden railways, each one laid immediately on top of the last.
The 1722 Waggonway Project said it appeared to have been an attempt to upgrade the railway with “crudely cut timbers” over a short period of time.
The gauge – the distance between the two rails – was also changed from an initial 3ft 3in (about one metre) in the first phase to 4ft (1.2m) in the second and third phases.
The project team said there was no other site like it in railway archaeology.
Its research has identified the three phases of upgrades happening between 1722-25, 1728-30 and 1743-44.
The second phase was described as “extremely well constructed”, with cobbles laid to form a track between the rails for the horses that pulled the waggons.
The new excavations were done this year
Railway historian Anthony Leslie Dawson said: “Whilst we know these railways had a limited lifespan due to their method of construction, to see this process of continual replacement and upgrade – including a change of gauge – in the archaeological record is outstanding.
“The waggonway excavation has shown that these waggonways are far more complex than the single-phase structures previously excavated, and the survival of timber on-site including joints helps us further understand the construction of these early railways.”
The project’s archaeologists also excavated a salt pan building in Cockenzie, and discovered evidence of use of the site in the production of salt lasted from 1630 to about 1780.
They rebuild the faces of Egyptian mummies from their 2,000-year-old DNA
Three ancient Egyptians’ faces have been brought to life using 2,000-year-old DNA. Scientists have used DNA dating back over 2,000 years to bring the faces of three ancient Egyptian males to life.
The trio of samples, estimated to be between 2,023 and 2,797 years old, is thought to be the first time contemporary procedures have been employed on the human DNA of this antiquity.
JK2134, who lived between 776 and 569 BC, JK2888, who lived around 97-2 BC, and JK2911, who lived between 769 and 560 BC, were the names given to the three.
A research team from Germany has collaborated with a US-based DNA technology company to generate a visual reconstruction of the faces of three ancient Egyptian mummies.
Parabon NanoLabs employed cutting-edge technology and a forensic artist to forecast the men’s appearance around the age of 25 to reveal the features of the ancient Egyptian mummies.
The mummies come from the Abusir el-Meleq, an ancient Nile hamlet. The researchers discovered that their origin was more similar to the modern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern people than Egyptians.
They were described as having light brown complexions, dark hair and eyes, and no freckles.
“These results are highly consistent with Schuenemann et al’s conclusions that ‘ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than modern-day Egyptians, who received additional sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times and that they had an allele for lighter skin,” according to a press release from Parabon.
Before they were sequenced and “matched to the human reference genome,” raw data from three ancient Egyptian mummies was received from the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA). Each sample was subjected to enzymatic damage repair.
It was argued that the work was only possible because of biometric developments in the field of low-coverage imputation.
“Parabon has been the leader in forensic microarray analysis for years, and with the advent of this new imputation method, we can now handle even the most complex samples, ancient or forensic,” said Dr. Janet Cady, a Parabon bioinformaticist and WGS analyst who spearheaded the work.
Parabon used their “Snapshot DNA Phenotyping pipeline” on the three ancient mummy samples after the “imputation” stage. Snapshot, which was created to deal with missing data in difficult forensic cases, “predicted each mummy’s ancestry, colour, and face morphology,” according to the researchers. The men’s front and side profiles, as well as a facial heat map, were revealed by the three-dimensional “face morphology.”
“It’s fantastic to see,” said Dr. Ellen Greytak, Parabon’s director of bioinformatics. This is a condensed version of the information.
Gold mask among 3,000-year-old relics unearthed in southwest China
Earlier this year, archaeologists were awed when they discovered the partial remains of a 3,000-year-old gold mask at the Sanxingdui dig in China’s Sichuan province.
A bronze mask was discovered in one of the eight sacrificial pits discovered at the Sanxingdui ruins site
Weighing in at half a pound, the mask was considered unprecedented. But, this month, experts’ expectations were bested once again when another gold-mask was found at the same site—this one far more complete.
Last Thursday, the mask was excavated in the sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui, which have yielded numerous artefacts since they were initially found in 1929.
An archaeologist at work in one of the sacrificial pits.
According to the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua, the mask is more than one foot long and was crafted by ancient people. While many objects found at Sanxingdui are known to be thousands of years old, archaeologists have not yet said when the mask was made.
“The new discoveries demonstrate once again that imagination and creativity of the ancient Chinese far surpassed what people today had expected,” Tang Fei, chief of the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, told Xinhua.
The mask was discovered this month as part of a cache of more than 500 pieces that also includes a jade knife, a bronze head, and a zun, or an urn that would have held wine used in rituals in ancient China.
An artefact found at Sanxingdui.
There are also some bronze objects that have not yet been identified because they are “so unique that even we don’t know how to name them,” Zhao Hao, an associate professor at Peking University, told Xinhua.
The new trove brings the total number of objects found at Sanxingdui to around 2,000.
Some experts within China have regarded the sacrificial pits there as being of extreme archaeological importance—even more significant, perhaps, than the Terracotta Army, which was buried Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, sometime around 210 B.C.E. in Shaanxi.
