The professionals who worked on the duplication works of a BR-153 highway, at kilometer 85 in the city of Mirassol, in the interior of São Paulo, were surprised to find a animal considered extinct millions of years ago. The fossils found during the excavations, according to the archaeologists, they are bones of a dinosaur called Titanosaurus. A type of quadrupedal sauropod with a very long neck.
Read more: Scientists are still surprised by archaeological finds
see more
School director intervenes delicately when noticing a student wearing a cap in…
Mother informs school that 4-year-old daughter, who prepares her lunch, can…
fossils are found
After workers located the bones, they found that the findings were, in fact, a mineral formation. Paleontologists went to the site after having access to photos of the object. When they got there, they confirmed the discovery of the fossils. William Nava, a paleontologist at the Museum of Paleontology in Marília, said that pieces of the femur, humerus, tail vertebra and a tooth of the dinosaur in question were found.
These parts took more than ten hours for professionals to excavate correctly and to that it was possible to remove them completely from the site, since they were buried ten meters from the surface.
Where were they taken?
After being removed, the bones were taken to the Museum of Paleontology Pedro Candolo, in Uchoa. They will be analyzed there for at least 12 months for a more precise identification of the animal's species.
The analysis procedure has steps. First, it is necessary to remove the block of rock so that it is possible to have full access to the bone. It is then compared with other dinosaur fossils from the same group. In this way, it is possible to identify if it is really a tyrannosaurus or if the fossils belong to another species.
More Brazilian Dinosaurs
The paleontological study in the country is growing more each day. After the new fossil discoveries, the spirits of students and professionals alike have been growing, especially as these new discoveries bring the media spotlight to the cases and the study. All this attention is also international. In 2022, we already had two discoveries – in addition to that of the titanosaur – because of road works. All in the São Paulo region.
See what they were:
- Rachid Rayes (SP-333) — femur and rib from a 65-million-year-old dinosaur;
- Dona Leonor Mendes de Barros (SP-333) — fossilized leg of a titanosaur.
There were also some more recent new species in the region of São José do Rio Preto. There, for example, a type of dwarf titanosaur was found.
