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A rare specimen found in the south of France has been revealed – an almost complete dinosaur skeleton found attached from its last skull to its tail.
The massive fossil came to light in May 2022, after 25-year-old amateur paleontologist Damien Boschetto and his dog discovered something unusual while walking in a forest in Montouliers, France. Boschetto noticed a recently collapsed cliff edge and decided to take a closer look, when he saw an exposed bone sticking out of the ground, local media outlet France Bleu first reported on February 13.
The Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Society at the Cruzy Museum, in collaboration with the French National Center for Scientific Research, identified the nearly 10-meter-long (32.8-foot-long) fossil as an excavated Titanosis skeleton. Boschetto, who has been a member of the association for eight years, told CNN that the discovery of dinosaur remains is “always exciting and interesting in terms of scientific research and understanding the ecosystems of that time,” finding the bones in almost their anatomical position. is what makes this unusual.
“From a museographic point of view, it will be possible to present almost complete animals to the public in anatomical positions, which is amazing,” Boschetto said by email.
A group of history and archeology enthusiasts created the Cultural Society of Archeology and Paleontology in 1975 to protect the heritage around the village of Cruzy, and some members became enlightened amateurs in paleontology due to the area’s wealth of dinosaur fossils, said Jean-Marc Veyssières , a member of the group and one of the fossil preparers for this discovery. Today, the society is made up of the inhabitants of the region, including a few scientists as well as students.
“The most exciting thing was realizing that there was at least one animal that we were anatomically related to and it was a titanosaur, a dinosaur with a long neck,” Veyssières said in an email. “(Boschetto) is enthusiastic and curious about nature, he spends a lot of time surveying the region in search of new areas. … He was an expert on the Late Cretaceous fauna of our region.”
The association has been excavating the site, which Boschetto referred to as a bone bed, a term used by paleontologists to describe a dense area of animal bones and other fossilized remains, for the past two years. And the newly announced discovery was not Boschetto’s first.
The recently revealed 70% complete skeleton of Titanosis was recovered during the excavation along with several fossils of various dinosaurs and other vertebrates, including some with almost complete anatomical parts. Among the other remains identified were those of Rhabodon – a herbivore, or plant eater, like the Titanosaur – and fragments of the skeletons of carnivores such as Theropods and crocodiles, according to Boschetto.
The Titanosaur skeleton currently resides in the Cruzy Museum laboratory, where it will be further studied, Veyssières said.
Titan found safe
Researchers estimated the age of the newly discovered fossil to be about 70 to 72 million years old, but Titanosaurs disappeared around four feet from the Late Cretaceous to the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 163.5 million to 66 million years ago. . The titanosaurs belong to a larger group of dinosaurs called sauropods, a family of long-necked herbivores that were some of the largest dinosaurs of their time, according to Britannica.
Titanosaur fossil remains have been found widely in Europe, but little has been found in an anatomical connection, Boschetto said. Finding a skeleton in this linked state suggests the body was buried before it fully decomposed, leaving “some tissue connecting the bones together,” said Matthew Carrano, a research geologist and curator of Dinosaurs at the Institute. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. .
The completeness of the specimen “will make it easier to determine whether it is a new species or a new specimen of an already known species,” Carrano said in an email. “It will take time to learn all the details about this new specimen, but I am sure it will provide important new information about this group of dinosaurs.”
The region where Boschetto found the specimen is known to be rich in dinosaur fossils and other contemporaneous species and is “building one of the largest collections of Upper Cretaceous dinosaurs in France,” he said. . The society did not publicize the discovery until the excavation was completed to protect the archaeological site, he said.
The society plans to continue researching the fossils and further search the area, and members of the group hope to secure funds to “create a large-scale museum that will be able to present these collections and present,” Boschetto said.
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