Researchers said Monday that the fossils represent a dinosaur species called Ninjatitan zapatai that lived 140 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. They identified Ninjatitan as a titanosaurus, a group of long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs that walked on four pillar-like legs.
Incomplete skeletal remains of the dinosaur were discovered in the desert of Argentine Patagonia, south of the city of Neuquén. The researchers said Ninjatitan showed that titanosaurs as a group first appeared longer than previously known.
“It is the oldest known record, not only in Argentina, but in the whole world,” the study’s lead author, Pablo Gallina, a researcher at Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, told Reuters. (CONICET).
“Titanosaurs are recorded in various parts of the world, but the oldest known records were more modern than this finding.”
At about 20 meters long, Ninjatitan was a large dinosaur, but much smaller than later titanosaurs, such as the Argentinosaurus, which reached a length of about 35 meters. The researchers also said that the presence of such an early titanosaurus in Patagonia supports the idea that titanosaurs originated in the southern hemisphere.
The Titanosaurs are part of a larger group of dinosaurs called sauropods that includes others with similar body designs, such as the Brontosaurus and the Diplodocus, who lived in North America during the Jurassic period, which preceded the Cretaceous period.
Some of the titanosaurs that inhabited Patagonia reached gigantic proportions such as the Argentinosaurus, the Patagonian and the Dreadnoughtus.
José Luis Carbadillo, another CONICET researcher, told a local university publication that the time of the remains of Ninjatitan could have led to the assumption that the bones belonged to a group of dinosaurs that predated the titanosaurs.
“In Patagonia, only titanosaurs from less than 120 million years ago are known,” he said.