The 20-meter lizard, discovered in Argentina in 2014, hovered around what is now Patagonia about 140 million years ago.
A colossal dinosaur excavated in Argentina could be the oldest titanosaur ever found, as it traversed what is now Patagonia about 140 million years ago at the beginning of the Cretaceous period, scientists said Sunday.
The 20-meter Ninjatitan zapatai lizard was discovered in 2014 in the southwestern Argentine province of Neuquén, La Matanza University reported in the analysis.
“The main importance of this fossil, apart from being a new species of titanosaur, is that it is the oldest recorded for this group in the world,” said a researcher quoted by Pablo Gallina, of the scientific council of Conicet .
The Titanosaurs were part of the group of sauropods: giant lizards that eat plants with long necks and tails that could have been the largest animals to have walked the Earth.
The new discovery, according to the statement, meant that the titanosaurs had lived much longer than previously thought, at the beginning of the Cretaceous period that ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.
Fossils from 140 million years ago are “really very scarce,” said Gallina, lead author of a study published in the Argentine scientific journal Ameghiniana.
The creature was named after the Argentine paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia, nicknamed “The Ninja”, and the technician Rogelio Zapata.