New Dinosaur from Angola

Projecto PaleoAngola ^ | March 2011 | unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

Angolatitan adamastor, a new sauropod dinosaur, is the first dinosaur discovered in Angola. It is the only occurrence of these long-necked dinosaurs in sub-Saharan Africa of its geological age. An international team of paleontologists unveiled the newly discovered dinosaur fossil today.

The large plant-eating dinosaur was 13 meters long and lived 90 million years ago (Late Cretaceous Period). "To us, finding such a dinosaur in rocks of this age in Africa is extremely surprising" says paleontologist Octávio Mateus, who discovered the skeleton...

The new dinosaur is known only from a forelimb, discovered in 2005 about 70 km north of Luanda by Mateus... a dinosaur specialist and one of the members of Projecto PaleoAngola...

The dinosaur bones were found in marine sediments, indicating that its carcass had been washed into the sea and scavenged by sharks and possibly by giant marine lizards called mosasaurs. The bones of the forelimbs allowed the researchers to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of the dinosaur in detail. Surprisingly, given its age of 90 million years, Angolatitan is the first and only known representative of this early lineage of long-necked dinosaur in this part of the world...

The scientific name Angolatitan means "Angolan giant" and adamastor refers to the mythical sea giant of the South Atlantic feared by Portuguese sailors.

[SunkenCiv]

Here's an earlier article (press release, it's bilingual) on the same site.

Angola is central to understanding the evolutionary history of this group of animals. Currenty we are concentrating on the final chapters of their history, but fortunately, Angola has older rocks too, and therefore allows access to several other chapters in the history of these fascinating animals. We have thus far discovered a number of forms, including one called Tuarangisaurus. This taxon is very interesting because it appears to conserve morphology that corresponds to juvenile plesiosaurs of other taxa. Also, from a biogeographic perspective, this taxon appears to be restricted to the southern hemisphere, but is widespread, occurring in three different continents: South America (Argentina), Oceania (New Zealand) and now Africa ( Angola, see summary in Araújo et al. 2010).

[SunkenCiv]

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[null and void]

Sauropod ping...

[Verginius Rufus]

Yes, they grew to be 13 meters long, but they were cute when they were young. Helen Thomas had one as a pet.

[Mister Da]

I know where you can find a fully intact Wenniesaur Cluelessis. There is a breeding colony on the Potomac.

[bigheadfred]

They discovered it in 2005 but only got around to reporting it now. They mutsa told them the fun-ding was over.

[SuzyQue]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO1bn1qKu7A
Aaron Neville.

[razorback-bert]

Drat, I thought they had a live one.

[TheOldLady]

Will Angola take out DC dinosaurs off our hands for us? Why should they have only one?

[JoeProBono]

In this undated photo supplied by the PaleoAngola Project, researcher Octavio Mateus analyses part of a fossilized dinosaur. Paleontologists say it is from a new dinosaur, citing unique skeletal characteristics.

[JoeProBono]