A massive dinosaur fossil was found under Antarctic’s ice. It’s been there for about 190 million years. Long before ice covered the southernmost continent, a massive plant-eating dinosaur lumbered across the land. It’s remains have been officially identified a new species: Glacialisaurus hammeri.
It’s not a recent
discovery. The bones were unearthed in the early 1990s high on Mount
Kirkpatrick, not far from the Beardmore Glacier. Because of the extreme
environment, the fossils were chiseled and sawed out over multiple seasons.
This was an exhausting and dangerous process. Then the bones sat unclassified
until 2 researchers gave it a name and a place on the dinosaur family tree.
When the bones were
discovered, they weren’t lying around. Located over 13,000 feet in elevation,
they had to be removed from dense rock using jackhammers and rock saws. And
what they pulled from the tock was not a complete skeleton; it was mostly just
parts of a leg, foot, and ankle. But these fragments had unique features that
set this dinosaur apart.
The Glacialisaurus
hammeri was a sauropodomorph, which is a broad group that would later
produce such giants as Apatosaurus and Diplodocus. It measured 20
to 25 feet long and weighed between 4 and 6 tons. It was large, but not quite
the size of its later relatives.
Sauropodomorphs are
interesting because they sit between early two-legged plant-eaters and enormous
quadrupeds, which came later. According to analysis, when these dinosaurs lived,
they were evolving rapidly and spreading all over the place.
Although not fully
preserved, its tail may have been a defensive weapon. Some relatives are
believed to have cracked their tails like whips, generating loud booms. That
detail hasn’t been confirmed for Glacialisaurus.
The site had more than
one discovery. Nearby, they uncovered remains of a theropod called Cryolophosaurus
ellioti, bones from a possible sauropod, and a pterosaur wing bone. They
even found a tooth from a tritulodont, which is a strange (and extinct)
mammal-like reptile that is not easy to classify.
This suggests that
Jurassic Antarctica wasn’t a barren wasteland. It might have been cold, maybe
seasonal, but it supported a range of species. The presence of both primitive and
advanced dinosaurs in the same area implies that evolutionary stages
overlapped.
Glacialisaurus and its neighbors show
how widely early dinosaurs were spread, even in places unexpected.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-190-million-year-old-dinosaur-fossil-was-found-under-antarctic-ice-and-it-s-absolutely-massive/ar-AA1SJ6S7?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=69499fae85184c6cab53548ad5035203&ei=32
