DIPLODOCUS FOSSIL FOUND IN SPAIN, FIRST OUTSIDE UNITED STATES

Palaeontologists have identified the first confirmed Diplodocus remains found outside the western United States, at the La Tejería site near the village of El Castellar in Teruel province, eastern Spain. The find has been dated to roughly 150 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic period. Researchers published their findings on Tuesday in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology, led by study first author Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, a doctoral student at the Joint Palaeontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis. Diplodocus fossils from this period had previously been known only from the Morrison Formation in the western US, according to the researchers.

Diplodocus, nicknamed "Dippy", is among the best-known dinosaurs; life-size replicas of a fossil skeleton unveiled at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh in the early 1900s were later sent to museums around the world, including in Spain. Accounts of the newly identified specimen differ: one report described it as consisting of 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevrons, bones that supported blood vessels and muscles in the tail, while another described it as a complete, 25-metre-long fossil. Researchers identified the specimen as a close relative of Diplodocus hallorum based on its distinctive anatomical features.

Sánchez Fenollosa said the discovery provides some of the strongest palaeontological evidence yet that dinosaurs moved between North America and Europe during the Late Jurassic, potentially via temporary land bridges as the Atlantic Ocean began opening after the break-up of the supercontinent Pangaea. Study co-author Alberto Cobos, managing director of the Dinópolis Foundation, said a friend had reported spotting bones on a mountainside, prompting him to visit the site near El Castellar the same day. The fossil has since gone on display in the dinosaur hall of the Museo Aragonés de Paleontología at Dinópolis in Teruel.