Can a New Egyptian Dinosaur Fossil Explain How the Continents Formed?

other mysteries as well. On januaryeen, the scientific journal Nature published a study announcing that the remains of a previously unknown dinosaur had been found in Egypt, long necked herbivore. The beast has been dubbed Mansurasaurus Shahine. Size Wise, it wasn't too impressive, but the discovery still has a lot of scientists very excited. That's because, by virtue of its age and anatomy, Mansursaurus might settle a debate about where the African continent was located on Earth when the non

avian dinosaurs died out. Alfred Wagner was a meteorologist who in nine in fifteen made the case for a theory he called continental drift. This is the idea that the continents gradually move across Earth's surface as time goes by, and he was right. We now know that, due to plate tectonics, the continents are indeed moving along at a steady pace, and a century is worth of research has allowed geologists to piece together the travel histories of the

major land masses. For instance, scientists have figured out that after having been separated for tens of millions of years, South and North America were reconnected by the Central American land Bridge around three point five million years ago. Still, our knowledge does contain some gaps. Consider Africa. Roughly three hundred million years ago, it was part of the super

continent Pangaea. This megaaland mass started to break apart about a hundred million years later, but we don't know exactly what Africa was doing during certain stages of this process. The Cretaceous period lasted from a hundred and forty five to sixty six million years ago. Famously, it ended with a mass extinction that wiped out all dinosaurs excluding birds.

We've uncovered numerous African dinal fossils from the early Cretaceous period, including bones that represent the weird fin backed carnivor Spinosaurus However, late Cretaceous material from Africa is awfully scarce. One co author of the Nature study is Ohio University paleontologist Patrick O'Connor.

He said via email, the Late Cretaceous fossil record is quite robust in some parts of the world, like South America, Madagascar, and North America, But by comparison, the Late Cretaceous fossil record, and particularly that of the end of the Late Cretaceous period eight two sixty six million years ago from continental Africa is a virtual blank slate. That's a problem for people who studied continental drift. Fossil evidence is critical when it comes to theorizing about when, where, and how the

continents emerged or separated. If you find similar looking fossil remains from the same geologic time on two separate continents, there's a good chance that those land masses were linked together at some point in the past. Historically, we haven't been able to compare Africa's Late Cretaceous fossil record with that of other continents. As O'Connor pointed out, they're simple. Aren't many African fossils that date back to this time.

The information gap has sparked some debate. Without the Late Cretaceous fossils to work with, paleontologists could only speculate about whether Africa was still connected to South America or Eurasia back then. Mansur Sourus offers a badly needed breakthrough. Its remains were first spotted during a December expedition into western Egypt Stahla Oasis. The campaign was spearheaded by Hashem Salem, a paleontologist at Mansura University in Egypt's Nile Delta. We

spoke with study co author Eric Gorskak via email. He said in early Feen the team came back and started the excavation that would last the next three weeks. In total, nineteen field jackets that's plaster coverings placed over and around fossils, and many isolated bone fragments were collected. Named in honor of Mansur University, Mansursaurus Shahine was a long necked dinosaur

or sapod. More specifically, it was a titanosaur, a group of Cretaceous sauropods whose ranks included some of the biggest animals to ever walk the Earth. One species, Argentinosaurus wink A lensis, may have weighed over seventy seven tons or seventy metric tons. Like many other titanosaurs, mens Oursaurus had bony knobs embedded in its skin. However, unlike many of

its cousins, this creature was no true behemoth. A full grown men's our Soaurus would have been around thirty three feet that's ten meters long and weighed just five point five tons or five metric tons. Because it was found in late Cretaceous rock, mens our Soaurus is hugely important knowing this salmonous. Team compared the animal's bones with those of contemporary titanosaurs from South America and Eurasia. It turns out that anatomically speaking, men's our soaurs bore a closer

resemblance to the Eurasian titanosaurs. In O'Connor's words, the finding points to some geographical connection between Africa and Eurasia for at least some point of the Latest Cretaceous. While the existence of Man's our Soaurus does strongly indicate that large animals like titanosaurs could travel from Eurasia to Africa back then, O'Connor says scientists need more fossils to confirm this hypothesis. Also, right now, it's impossible to say whether there was a

direct land bridge between the two continents. High sea levels at the time flooded parts of Europe and northern Africa, turning the region into a system of islands. So maybe instead of walking from one continent to the other, soropods like men's our soaurus made the journey via island hopping. The timing and extent of islands and land bridges is currently unknown, but scientists are on the case. O'Connor says that Salam and his students have great ambitions for studying

other fossils from Africa's Late Cretaceous deposits. Furthermore, O'Connor himself has, as he said, ongoing projects with other colleagues exploring similar aged rocks in Tanzania, Madagascar, and Antarctica. There are many more exciting discoveries on the horizon, and we can't wait to read about them. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this and lots of other dynamite topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.