The great Clint Eastwood can now boast of a dinosaur: Europatitan eastwoodi , whose fossils were unearthed at the Oterillo II site –between Salas de los Infantes and Barbadillo del Mercado (Burgos) -, has just been presented in society. While the first part of the scientific name refers to its European origin and its large size (like the titans of Greek mythology), the second part bears the filmmaker’s surname because the remains have been found in the Burgos region of Sierra de la Demanda where the movie The Good, the Ugly and the Bad (1966), starring Clint, was filmed. The age of the fossils has been dated to about 125 million years , at the beginning of the Cretaceous period.
Discovered by an international team led by the Salas de los Infantes Dinosaur Museum (Burgos) and the University of Zaragoza, the new species has been classified as a sauropod dinosaur, a large reptile with a very long neck and tail . Europatitan eastwoodi, in particular, could have reached 27 meters in length and 35 tons in weight .
Among the numerous bones that have been recovered, a rib measuring 210 centimeters in length, the two scapulae of 165 cm and an incomplete dorsal vertebra of 70 cm stand out. But what has surprised the researchers the most is the size of the vertebrae in the neck , up to 114 cm in length and 90 cm in height.
If we take into account that these creatures had up to 15 vertebrae, the sauropod’s neck would measure between 10 and 11 meters ; that is, it would double the length of the body and equal the length of the tail. Another characteristic of these bones is that they were very light, since they were full of holes, like a sponge. Thanks to these anatomical characteristics, the Burgos reptile could raise its head up to 16 meters above the ground to get food at the top of the trees. It is not surprising, if we imagine the scene, that these types of animals are colloquially nicknamed “giraffe dinosaurs” . Europatitan eastwoodi would be one of the tallest in Europe.
Regarding the reference to Clint Eastwood, paleontologists, who have published the results of their research in the journal Peer J , argue: “He is a person who has achieved success from scratch and has earned recognition for his job. Eastwood represents success in the cinema, succeeding as an actor first, as a producer and director later. In Ecology we would say that it has managed to occupy several niches – the role that a species has in the ecosystem – and it has done so effectively. Their professional versatility reminds us of the great capacity of dinosaurs to adapt to different environments and to get ahead ”.
Photo: Davide Bonadonna / Salas Archaeological-Paleontological Collective
