Giant Dinosaur Discovered Reveals Surprising 120-Million-Year-Old Connection Between Continents

EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—120 million years ago, a relative of a Spanish dinosaur ended up buried in what is now northeastern Brazil.

It didn't swim; it walked (or at least its ancestors did) across a land bridge spanning North Africa, back when Europe, Africa, and South America were still joined within the supercontinent Gondwana.

Today, that traveler is known as Dasosaurus tocantinensis: measured about 20 meters in length, and stands as the latest evidence of a transcontinental migration route that paleontologists are only just beginning to map out.

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A study published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology and led by Elver Luiz Mayer of the Federal University of the São Francisco Valley (UNIVASF), identifies the Brazilian sauropod's closest relative as Garumbatitan morellensis a species found in the Arcillas de Morella Formation in Spain originating over 120 million years ago.This massive distance serves as a map of how life moved before the Atlantic Ocean separated the continents.

The discovery began with heavy machinery rather than an archaeological dig. According to the accompanying FAPESP press release, a team of archaeologists monitoring the construction of a road-rail terminal in Davinópolis (a requirement for environmental licensing) found bones at a depth of about eight meters. Initially, they thought the remains belonged to Quaternary megafauna—mammals that might have coexisted with early humans.

However, when Mayer saw where the material was coming from, he realized the error in dating spanned more than a hundred million years. Previous research had already dated the geological formation to the transition between the Early and Late Cretaceous periods.

What emerged from that pit is a remarkable find by the standards of Brazilian paleontology. The specimen includes tail vertebrae, a 1.5-meter femur, ribs, and bones from the feet, arms, and legs. The team believes more remains of the same creature lie beneath the terminal. Until now, only more modest sauropods had been recorded in Maranhão, such as Amazonsaurus maranhensis, which measured about 10 meters.

The Dasosaurus is twice that size.

"Because it includes tail vertebrae, a 1.5-meter femur, ribs, foot bones, and arm and leg bones, this is considered a relatively complete specimen. We believe there are more fossils from this same specimen yet to be excavated at the site," noted Max Langer, a professor at the University of São Paulo (FFCLRP-USP) and co-author of the study, in the statement.

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In the scientific paper, they show how the value of the discovery extends beyond its size. In addition to expanding the known diversity of Early Cretaceous sauropods in northern South America, "this discovery highlights biogeographical connections with more northern Gondwanan areas, as well as Europe."

There is a strange irony actually to all this if you think about it. The dinosaur that documents an ancient corridor between continents was revealed thanks to a modern corridor.

In Brazil, a tropical country blanketed in vegetation, fossils rarely appear on the surface on their own. In fact, it is roads, quarries, and infrastructure projects that expose the rock, as Langer explained in the statement.

This makes coordination among construction companies, archaeologists, and paleontologists not just a bureaucratic detail, but potentially the difference between discovering a giant and crushing it by accident.