In 2008, a team of researchers from the Tomsk State University (UET), in Russia, located the remains of what looked like a huge sauropod in a site near the town of Shestakovo, in Siberia. At that time, they could only know that the fossils, embedded in a sandstone formation, belonged to one of those herbivorous animals, recognizable by its long neck.
The recovery and preliminary analysis of the bones have been extraordinarily complex. However, scientists from the aforementioned institution, in collaboration with experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences and Saint Petersburg State University, have advanced that they could belong to a new species related to titanosaurs . At the moment, it has been nicknamed Sibirosaurus, and although its discoverers have not yet published their conclusions, it is known that it lived a hundred million years ago, in the Upper Cretaceous, and that it had considerable dimensions: about 20 meters long and around 50 tons of weight, roughly like eight African elephants. Apparently, it could stand on its thick and short hind legs to reach the leaves of the trees located higher.
The biogeographer and paleontologist Stepan V. Ivantsov, from the UET, who participated in the study, points out that it is the first dinosaur of this type scientifically described in Russia , and believes that it could even be a new genus. Its sacral vertebrae are arranged in a star shape and converge in the center; in addition, it lacks articulation in the vertebral neural arch, a peculiarity that has not been observed in other dinosaurs. The researchers are now trying to connect all the fragments found and are working on the development of a model that will reveal their possible appearance.
Image: Esv via Wikimedia / CC
