Researchers have recognized fossil bone fragments of sauropod dinosaurs relationship again to about 100 million years from an space round West Khasi Hills District in Meghalaya.
The yet-to-be-published findings have been made throughout a latest area journey by researchers from the Geological Survey of India’s Palaeontology division in North-East.
The GSI researchers famous that that is the primary file of sauropods of possible Titanosaurian origin found in the area.
Sauropods had very lengthy necks, lengthy tails, small heads relative to the remainder of their physique, and 4 thick, pillar-like legs. They are notable for the large sizes attained by some species, and the group consists of the most important animals to have ever lived on land.
The discovering makes Meghalaya the fifth state in India after Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu and the one state in the North-East to report Sauropod bones having titanosaurian affinity, they mentioned.
Titanosaurs have been a various group of sauropod dinosaurs, together with genera from Africa, Asia, South America, North America, Europe, Australia, and Antarctica.
“Dinosaur bones from Meghalaya were reported by GSI in 2001 but they were too fragmentary and ill-preserved to understand its taxonomic identification,” mentioned Arindam Roy, Senior Geologist, Palaeontology Division, GSI.
“The present find of bones is during fieldwork in 2019-2020 and 2020-21. The last visit of the team was in February 2021. The fossils are presumably of Late Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago,” Roy instructed PTI.
He famous that the best-preserved fossils are limb bones, including the kind of curvature, growth of lateral and proximal margins of the partially preserved bone are indicative of it being a humerus bone.
He, nevertheless, famous that the conclusions are drawn from preliminary research and detailed work is happening.
The bone fragments have been collected from poorly sorted, purplish to greenish very coarse-grained arkosic sandstone interlaid with pebbly beds.
More than twenty-five disarticulated, largely fragmentary bone specimens have been recovered, that are of various sizes and happen as remoted specimens however a few of them have been discovered in shut proximity to one another, the researchers mentioned.
Taxonomic identification as much as genus stage is troublesome resulting from poorly preserved, incomplete, fragmentary nature of the bones and a lot of the recovered bones are partially petrified and partially changed, they mentioned.
Therefore, solely three of the best-preserved ones could possibly be studied. The largest one is {a partially} preserved limb bone of 55 centimetres (cm) lengthy. It is comparable with the typical humerus size of titanosaurids.
Robustness of the bone, the distinction in curvature in the lateral margins and the proximal border being comparatively straight, are a few of the morphological characters that trace on the titanosaurid affinity, in keeping with the researchers.
Another incomplete limb bone measuring 45cm in size can also be comparable with the limb bones of titanosauriform clade, they mentioned.
“The abundance of bones recovered during the present work and especially the finding of few limb bones and vertebrae having taxonomic characters of titanosauriform clade are unique,” Roy mentioned.
“The record of the sauropod assemblage of probable titanosaurian affinity from Meghalaya extends the distribution and diversity of vertebrates in the Late Cretaceous of India,” he famous.
An incomplete chevron of caudal vertebrae and in addition cervical vertebra have additionally been reconstructed from a number of recovered bone specimens.
The different fragmentary specimens although partially preserved may in all probability be components of limb bones of a sauropod dinosaur.
Titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs have been essentially the most various and ample large-bodied terrestrial herbivores in the Southern Hemisphere landmasses throughout the Cretaceous Period however they weren’t endemic to the Gondwanan landmasses, the researchers mentioned.
Gondwanaland is the southern half of the Pangaean supercontinent that existed some 300 million years in the past and consists of the main continental blocks of South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, India, Antarctica, and Australia.
In India, the Late Cretaceous sauropod dinosaur typically belong to the titanosaurian clade and has been reported from the Lameta Formation of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra and Kallamedu Formation of Tamil Nadu, the researchers mentioned.
