Meet Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia – the newly discovered species of dinosaur. It is a member of the mighty titanosaurs, and the new fossil provides evidence of how the sauropods of Africa and South America converged and diverged.
The results, published in the journal PLOS ONE , reveal more about a mysterious part of our planet’s past: Africa in the Mesozoic era, specifically the Cretaceous, the last age of the dinosaurs.
“With these and other discoveries, we are beginning to see that the African fauna was probably as diverse as what we can find in South America and elsewhere,” says Eric Gorscak, a researcher at the University of the Midwest. ) and lead author of the study. ” There is still a long way to go because there have been a lot of paleontological endeavors in many parts of the world in the last few decades compared to Africa, although lately it is improving a lot.”
Understanding the Mnyamawamtuka era is particularly important because this is the time when the supercontinent Pangea began to split into the continents that we know today. South America and Africa became two separate entities, bringing with them related dinosaur species that would be genetically separated.
Not the biggest
Mnyamawamtuka is not the largest titanosaur we have ever encountered. That honor belongs to Argentinosaurus huinculensis , a 40-meter-long cousin of the new species. In fact, Mnyamawamtuka may have been on the side of the smallest of the family, at least when it comes to giant dinosaurs.
The discovered specimen probably weighed a ton and was as tall as a person from foot to hip, according to Gorscak. However, this particular specimen could have been young. “We’re not sure how big it would have been when fully developed, but it definitely had a long way to go, ” says the expert.
One of the most distinctive features of the dinosaur was a tail vertebra shaped like half a heart. This feature is quite unique to Mnyamawamtuka, as there are hardly two other species with anything remotely similar.
At the time this titanosaur lived, 100 million years ago , it would likely have traversed floodplains and river deltas, searching for whatever plant matter it could pick up. Based on the age and shape of its (incomplete) skeleton, the researchers place it at an evolutionary point just before titanosaurs became too diversified; that is, it fits close to the origin of a clade called Lithostrotia, which includes most of the Upper Cretaceous titanosaur species. Thus, we are facing an early stage in the evolution of titanosaurs.
“Since we have a good part of the skeleton, we see a unique combination of traits from both early titanosaurs and some features that we think were present in titanosaurs later in their evolution,” Gorscak clarifies.
So it may not be the most titanic of all, but the ‘beast of Mtuka’ is quite an important find for understanding how some of the largest dinosaurs of all time grew and changed over time.
Citation: Gorscak E, O’Connor PM (2019) A new African Titanosaurian Sauropod Dinosaur from the middle Cretaceous Galula Formation (Mtuka Member), Rukwa Rift Basin, Southwestern Tanzania. PLoS ONE 14 (2): e0211412. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211412
