It lived about 75 million years ago and measured between 20 and 25 meters long. The remains of its skeleton, which included numerous vertebrae, part of the pelvis and elements of the extremities, were found at the site of Lo Hueco, in Cuenca, a graveyard with more than 15,000 fossil pieces from the Upper Cretaceous found accidentally in 2007 during the works on the Madrid-Levante AVE line. And a meticulous work of examination and classification over the years has allowed a team of Spanish researchers to identify it as a new species of titanosaur, the group to which the last giants to have inhabited the Earth belonged.
The discovery is published this Wednesday in the journal Biology of communications and, according to the team led by Pedro Mocho of the University of Lisbon, it helps explain previously unknown aspects of the history of Europe’s last giant dinosaurs. They have given the species an unpronounceable scientific name: Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra («Qunka» by the toponym of the area of Cuenca in which it was found and «pintiquiniestra” of the giant “Queen Pintiquiniestra”, mentioned in Don Quixote), although among them they call the specimen “Epilogue”, because it was the last of the fossils found on the site.
“It intrigued us a lot, because it was a real Martian,” explains paleontologist Francisco Ortega, director of the group that carried out the study. The remains of these animals have appeared in a very fragmentary way in other places in Spain and the northern Pyrenees, but here they had part of the skeleton articulated and partially assembled. “We have a complete pelvis, but the most important thing is that it has a tail absolutely different from all the tails of all the European titanosaurs,” emphasizes the researcher.
Given that a loose vertebra or parts of a leg are found elsewhere, the discovery is exceptional, according to the authors, who believe it is due to the particular conditions in which these remains arrived at Lo Hueco. “We have never found anything like this anywhere,” Ortega explains. “We think there was a catastrophic event related to a river flood, which kills or picks up a series of bodies and deposits them in a mud bath,” he explains. “And once there, they do not dismember themselves.”
A “little” giant
Although it measures more than five meters and weighs more than 16 tons, this titanosaur was a miniaturized version of its Patagonian relatives. Basically, because it lived in Ibero-Armorica, an island that contained part of the territory of the current Iberian Peninsula and southern France, at a time when what would later become Europe was divided into an archipelago. “They are giants measuring 20 to 25 meters long, but within their lineage they are small, due to their insularity,” explains Ortega.
They are giants, measuring 20 to 25 meters long, but within their lineage they are small, due to their insularity.
Francisco Ortega
— Paleontologist at UNED and director of the team that signed the study
Their physiology remains a mystery, as they had an enormous body mass and a brain the size of a tennis ball. “They were herbivores, it is assumed that they could move in herds and spend the day eating,” explains the specialist. They lived in a subtropical climate, but with periods of drought, surrounded by large predators such as the abelisaursothers smaller like you velociraptorhins, giant birds like Gargantuan opinion and a wide variety of turtles and crocodiles.
“The fact that there are so many different species of titanosaurs occupying the same site attracts our attention,” Ortega explains. “Something similar must have happened to what happens in some areas of the savannah, where there are several different types of gazelles, each subtly adapted to different ecological niches in the same environment.” In this case, he points out, we have a group of gigantic animals capable of distributing themselves in the same ecosystem in a way that we do not yet know. “What we do know is that the sauropod lineage has been very diverse over time and, as we approach the moment of the extinction of all the dinosaurs [hace 66 millones de años]is limited to one group, the titanosaurs,” he says.
The study identifies Qunkasaura as a representative of a group mainly distributed in the northern hemisphere (Laurasia), without direct link with the first giant found on the same site, Lohuecotitan Pandafilandiwhich is part of a probably endemic group that includes almost all European titanosaurs. Since Lo Hueco is the only site in Europe where the coexistence of the two groups is recognized, the authors suggest that the group of titanosaurs that includes representatives of both lineages be called Lohuecosauria.
In this way, they argue, lohuecosaurs could have originated in the southern continents (Gondwana), before dispersing globally. “The recognition of isolated representatives in the European archipelago for millions of years, combined with the punctual arrival of immigrant groups, allows us to make sense of the complex European diversity of this group of titanosaurs, well known in South America,” concludes Ortega.
An evolving laboratory
For paleontologist Ignacio Canudo, a member of the Aragosaurus group at the University of Zaragoza (Unizar) who did not participate in the study, the discovery of a large dinosaur on the peninsula is always a cause for celebration. “It helps us understand that in Spain we had a great diversity of dinosaurs,” he explains to elDiario.es. Canudo belongs to one of the many groups that have been studying these titanosaurs that appear on the peninsula for years and trying to solve the mystery of their arrival here, given that we assume that they dispersed from what is now Patagonia.
For Rafael Royo Torres, a specialist in sauropod dinosaurs and professor at the University of Zaragoza, this is a magnificent work that offers a new vision of the diversity of titanosaur sauropods in the Iberian Peninsula. “And it allows us to deduce a migration of dinosaurs from Africa to Europe and how they colonized the European islands more than 75 million years ago,” he emphasizes. “This work is of great importance for dinosaur specialists and represents a great goal achieved after many years of investment and dedication, led by Francisco Ortega and José Luis Sanz.”
This work allows us to deduce a migration of dinosaurs from Africa to Europe and how they colonized the European islands more than 75 million years ago.
Rafael Royo Torres
— Specialist in sauropod dinosaurs and professor at the University of Zaragoza
Maite Suñer, doctor in paleontology and director of the Alpuente Museum, celebrates the discovery and emphasizes that titanosaurs never cease to surprise us. “When it was first defined Lirainosaurus In 1999, no one expected such diversity, in general and in our country in particular,” he says. According to this new work, he emphasizes, Lohuecosauria This would be the dominant group of sauropods at that time, or at least the most diverse. “And the Lo Hueco site presents itself as a key window to unravel everything that has to do with the systematics of the Ibero-Armorican titanosaurs of the Late Cretaceous.”
For paleontologist Alberto Cobos, director of the Teruel-Dinopolis Paleontological Complex Foundation, the scientific conclusions derived from the description of Qunkasaura They are very relevant. “We can say that this sauropod serves as a master key “This will allow us to begin to open doors to clarify the classification of the great diversity of titanosaur sauropods at the end of the Cretaceous, mainly in Europe,” he says.
“This discovery provides information about its origin and shows that it is a family that has a common ancestor and that evolved in the same place,” adds Canudo. According to him, this study and others show that this region of the planet, where we live today, was a great laboratory of evolution, just like the Galapagos Islands. “They may have evolved in what we know today as the Ibero-Armorican massif and diversified, like Darwin’s finches,” he explains. “The authors of this work propose that lohuecosaurs would be part of these groups of finches that they evolved in an area, that they were able to reach these islands and for millions of years they reproduced and evolved.
This sauropod serves as a master key that will shed light on the classification of the great diversity of titanosaur sauropods at the end of the Cretaceous.
Alberto Cobos
— Director of the Teruel-Dinopolis Paleontological Complex Foundation
What happened so that five million years later, 70 million years ago, these titanosaurs disappeared from the Earth, before the fall of the famous meteorite? By knowing more about these fossils, the expert points out, we may begin to find possible answers. “Many of them were very abundant at the time of the Lo Hueco site, there could have been up to three or four species, but then they disappeared. Maybe these dinosaurs from Lo Hueco will help us understand what was happening there and why this diversity disappeared before the end.”
