Dinosaur species discovered in the Argentine province of Neuquén

Buenos Aires. A team of scientists from Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet) discovered a new species of sauropod dinosaur that lived about 83 million years ago in what is now the southern Argentine province of Neuquén.

Conicet reported that the discovery was published in the magazine Historical Biology.

The new species, named Yeneen houssayi in honor of the Argentine scientist and researcher Bernardo Houssay, it belongs to the group of titanosaurs, quadruped dinosaurs with a long neck and tail.

“Yeneen houssayi It had a small head in relation to the rest of the body. It measured between 10 and 12 meters long and weighed about 8 to 10 tons. The distinctive characteristics that allowed us to define the new species are found mainly in the dorsal vertebrae, which, it is worth mentioning, all of them were preserved, the sacrum and the first caudal vertebra,” said Leonardo Filippi, first author of the work and Conicet researcher at the Museo Municipal Argentino Urquiza (MAU), in Rincón de los Sauces, a town in the province of Neuquén.

The name of the genus, Againwas inspired by the Tehuelche culture, also known as Our Aonianswhich means “spirit or entity related to winter”, due to the area of ​​La Invernada, where the new dinosaur was found.

The name of the species, houssayiis in honor of the founder and first president of Conicet and Nobel Prize winner in Medicine in 1947, Bernardo A. Houssay.

The information detailed that this new sauropod dinosaur, belonging to the group of titanosaurs, joins those already known in the area and those from the Bajo de la Carpa Formation: Overosaurus paradasorum e It is oslatus.

“The discovery of a new species that preserves a large part of its axial skeleton, that is, the vertebrae, provides valuable anatomical information that allows it to be compared with other titanosaurs. These data, together with the presence of this third species in the area, contribute to formulating new hypotheses, which suggest that the notable diversity of this group of dinosaurs during the Late Cretaceous could be due to the acquisition of different feeding strategies or, alternatively, reflect a faunal replacement event within the formation,” Conicet explained in its bulletin.

The details linked to the discovery date back to 2003, when an officer from Squadron 30 of the National Gendarmerie, based in the Neuquén town of Chos Malal, reported the discovery of fossil remains in the area known as Cerro Overo-La Invernada, in the vicinity of Rincón de los Sauces.

The information allowed us to identify a site of great paleontological potential where bones belonging to several specimens of titanosaur sauropods were found.

However, due to access difficulties, the remains could not be rescued at that time and were kept in custody.

A decade later, in 2013, after the work carried out in the area together with an oil company that made it possible to open new roads, the deposit was rediscovered and became a priority for the Argentine scientific team.

The excavation tasks were carried out in two campaigns carried out between 2013 and 2014, with the participation of paleontologists, technicians and volunteers who worked on the extraction of the specimens.

At the end of the field work, the materials recovered from the site were transferred to the MAU. There, in the laboratory, the preparation and cleaning tasks began, which required months of work.

After extensive research, the team managed to describe and name a new species of dinosaur, represented by a specimen that preserves six cervical vertebrae, the entire 10 dorsal vertebrae, several associated ribs, the sacrum and the first caudal vertebra.

“In addition, a second juvenile individual was found, represented by a small hip bone. And a third specimen located a few meters away, from which some vertebrae and bones of the extremities were recovered. The latter presents notable differences with Againso it is interpreted as a different titanosaur sauropod, which will be the subject of future study,” said Filippi.