Paleontologists Find Skeletal Remains of Sarmientosaurus in Argentina

Scientists have attempted to look for evidence to prove that dinosaurs really roamed the earth before. Now, a new species of titanosaurian dinosaur was discovered based on a complete skull and partial neck fossil which was dug up in Patagonia, Argentina.

According to a new study, paleontologists have discovered Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, a kind of titanosaurian dinosaur. They were considered to be of modest size about 40 feet long and 10 tons in weight. These plant eaters have long necks and tails and may have been the most common large herbivore in the Southern part of the landmasses during the Cretaceous, Science Daily reported.

Among the 60-plus identified titanosaurs, only four are characterized by almost complete or half-complete skulls. With the use of a computerized tomography (CT) imaging, the researchers were able to conduct an in depth study of the well-preserved anatomically 'primitive' skull and neck fossils of Sarmientosaurus.

The New York Times reported that Matthew C. Lamanna, an assistant curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh said that the group was rather mysterious. He also explained that by mixing the data from different discoveries, they are slowly building up a picture as to was the biology of these animals was like. "In other words, what makes the largest land animals of all time tick?" he continued.

In a paper published last week said that a second group of paleontologists described the remains of a baby titanosaur. They emphasized that its quick growth in a only a couple of months made them similar to the size of a large dog. The bones of the baby titanosaurs were proportionally similar to an adult one, suggesting that the young ones quickly stood on their feet after they hatched and fended themselves.

For Sarmientosaurus, which lived about 95 million years ago, scientists have the opposite: almost all of the head, which was about a foot and a half long, and part of the neck, but nothing from the rest of the body. Paleontologists including Rubén D. F. Martínez of the National University of Patagonia in Argentina found the skull in 1997. (Sarmientosaurus is named after the town of Sarmiento, close to where the skull was discovered; musacchioi honors Eduardo Musacchio, a paleontological who died in 2011.)

"The head of titanosaurs is totally key to understanding them as living animals." Dr. Lamanna said.