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| Copyright Ivan Gromicho/SHN |
Despite being one of the first
species of dinosaur to be described in Portugal , the classification of
sauropod Lourinhasaurus was contested
in recent years . Discovered in 1949, it is a standard reference on European
sauropod dinosaurs literature since its publication in the 50s. Recently, a
team of Portuguese and Spanish paleontologists, lead by Sociedade de História
Natural (Torres Vedras, Portugal) researchers Pedro Mocho and Francisco Ortega,
reviewed the fossil Lourinhasaurus
alenquerensis deposited in the Geological Museum of Lisbon.
Discovered in 1949, it is a
standard reference on European sauropod dinosaurs literature since its
publication in the 50s. Recently, a team of Portuguese and Spanish
paleontologists, lead by Sociedade de História Natural (Torres Vedras, Portugal)
researchers Pedro Mocho and Francisco Ortega, reviewed the fossil Lourinhasaurus alenquerensis deposited
in the Geological Museum of Lisbon.
Since the 50s, the big showy femur exposed in the rooms of the Geological
Museum Lourinhasaurus received
thousands of visitors, but to date, neither the public nor the researchers had a
clear idea about what group of sauropods this specimen belong to. It was found
in 1949 in the field near Moinho do Carmo ( Alenquer, Portugal ) and first
studied by Albert Lapparent and George Zbyszewski in 1957 .
A team of Portuguese and Spanish researchers , from the Laboratory of
Paleontology and Paleoecology of the Sociedade de História Natural (Torres
Vedras, Portugal ) and the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia ( UNED), carried out a thorough review of the remains of Lourinhasaurus alenquerensis and concluded that this dinosaur is a
European representative of the same group as the North American Camarasaurus
dinosaur known .
" The Lourinhasaurus sauropod
found in Moinho do Carmo is one of the classics of European dinosaurs fossil
record, and there where proposed quite divergent classifications for it,
reaching a point that we did not know what their true phylogenetic position ,
and is relationship with other sauropod dinosaurs. This is problematic at the
time when we build our interpretations about paleobiogeography " said
Portuguese Pedro Mocho, lead author of the study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society,
and also a researcher of the Sociedade de História Natural (Torres Vedras,
Portugal) and in the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (were he is a Phd
candidate).
This dinosaur lived in the Iberian Peninsula in the Upper Jurassic , 150
million years ago . With the appearance of a typical sauropod: Long neck and
tail, small head and four sturdy legs , could weigh up to 10 tonnes and
measuring 15 meters , very similar to the famous Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus
physically.
.
Systematic Review
Researchers from the Sociedade de História Natural and the UNED, which counted
with the collaboration of expert Rafael Royo - Torres from the Fundación
Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis , reviewed in depth all the
elements that were extracted in the excavation of the Moinho do Carmo and that are
today deposited in the Geological Museum of Lisbon.
"These remains are very
numerous, constituting one of the most complete European sauropods "
refers Rafael Royo - Torres. This review led to reinterpret some of their bony
elements and thereby realize its phylogenetic position. " The most interesting
was that we were able to find nowadays a number of former remains of
Lourinhasaurus never before described in the extensive collections of the
Geological Museum in Lisbon. Several weeks were required to review all the
boxes with leftovers of Lourinhasaurus and we can now reveal it to the
scientific community . The collections of the Geological Museum remain a mine
of knowledge for all of us to explore", believes Pedro Mocho.
"The specimen was described in the '50s with the name Apatosaurus alenquerensis (a diplodocíd
sauropod). In 1998 we published a preliminary review and realized that it did
not belong to the North American genus Apatosaurus and established a new genus
named Lourinhasaurus " explains
Francisco Ortega, a researcher from Evolutionary Biology Group at UNED and also
from the Laboratory of Paleontology and Paleoecology from the Sociedade de
História Natural, and co-author. " Since then, some authors suggested the
possibility of a European camarasaurid, but without performing a detailed
systematic review ".
The deposits of fossil vertebrates from the Portuguese central coast are a key
to the interpretation of peninsular ecosystems during the Upper Jurassic . The
close relationship of Lourinhasaurus
with North American genus Camarasaurus
continues to add information on the process of continental separation of
Europe and America!
