Brazilian researchers study 70-million-year dinosaur

Researchers at the University of Brasília (UnB) began this month to prepare and study the fossil of a dinosaur that lived in Brazil about 70 million years ago. The skeleton of a titanosaur – a giant dinosaur that fed exclusively on plants and could have been as large as 15 meters long, 2.5 meters tall, and weighted about 10 tons – was found in Marília, in the state of São Paulo, in 2009.

Professor/Paleontologist Rodrigo Santucci, in charge of the study, expects the efforts to last ten years, because the bones, which must be cleaned carefully, are under rocks that weigh tons. “When we found it, the fossil was at ground level. We used a jackhammer and sledgehammers to dig around until we had room to walk. Then we isolated it in a plaster cap and split the blocks of matrix stone apart,” the teacher explained. The ten blocks of stone with the plaster jackets containing the bones can get as heavy as ten tons.

The fossil was discovered by researcher William Nava, and the excavations were completed between 2011 and 2012. With poor infrastructure to examine the discovery on site, the material had to be sent to Brasília on trucks and cranes, and arrived safely in February.

According to Santucci, more than half of the dinosaur skeleton is preserved. The excavations found pieces of the skull; neck, body, and tail vertebrae; ribs, femur, and pelvis bones; and paws. The first phase of the study will be devoted for preparing the fossil for study. “At this stage, we will have to remove the rock surrounding the bones without damaging them, by using equipment to remove fragments of the rock. This takes time, because it has to be done very carefully,” the researcher pointed out. The process is expected to take five years.

Once all the bones have been removed from the matrix, the researchers will proceed to examine the fossils. It takes another five years to describe and contrast them with the features of other species of titanosaurs. “Once the fossil has been cleaned up, we will set about describing and contrasting it with the other dinosaurs in the same group. This should tell us whether it is similar to any known species or this is a new discovery,” explained Santucci.

A total 50 titanosaurus species are known worldwide – ten of which were discovered in Brazil. According to the researcher, his finding has a fair chance of being an uncataloged species. The final step will be to make two replicas of the dinosaur – one of them will be kept by the University of Brasilia and the other one will be put on show at the Paleontology Museum in Marília, where the fossil was originally found. 3D printers will be used to produce the replicas.

The researcher explained that searching for creatures that lived millions of years ago is instrumental in helping us understand current issues such as climate change, for example. “Every new piece, each new dinosaur that we add to this gallery to understand the past also helps us with [understanding] the present. If you want to talk authoritatively about the present, you need to understand the past.”

Translated by Mayra Borges