First Dinosaur Bone Found in Antarctica Confirmed
Palaeontologists confirmed the 1985 fossil is a Titanosaur tail bone, helping explain dinosaur life in Antarctica where fossils are rare.
- Palaeontologist Mark Evans identified Antarctica's first dinosaur bone while reviewing British Antarctic Survey holdings, ending 40 years of storage in a drawer.
- Geologist Mike Thomson originally unearthed the specimen on James Ross Island on December 9, 1985, recording it as a "vertebra of large reptile" in his field notebook before it remained forgotten for decades.
- The fossil is a caudal vertebra from a Titanosaur that lived around 82 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period, with scientists estimating the animal was about 23ft long.
- Professor Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum confirmed the identification, noting the bone's distinctive features; the study was published in the scientific journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
- This discovery offers new clues about how Titanosaurs spread across the Southern Hemisphere, with findings suggesting Antarctica was once highly habitable, helping scientists understand these giants' role in ancient ecosystems about 80 million years ago.
51 Articles
51 Articles
Associated Press News
A rare dinosaur fossil from Antarctica is found tucked away in a drawer
Scientists have stumbled on a rare dinosaur fossil from Antarctica tucked in a drawer. It comes from the tail of a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur called a titanosaur.
Antarctica retains one of the rarest dinosaur records in the world. Therefore, the finding of a fossilized vertebra of a long-necked dinosaur provides new information about the animals that inhabited the continent when the climate was very different from the current one. The fossil belongs to a titanosaur, a group of herbivorous sauropods, and represents just the second body remnant of this type of dinosaurs found in Antarctica. The study, publi…
A Fossil From Antarctica Sat in a Drawer for 40 Years. It Turned Out to Be the First Dinosaur Bone Ever Found on the Continent
After being forgotten for decades, the mysterious tail vertebra has finally been identified as part of a titanosaur. The discovery helps researchers understand how dinosaurs may have traversed Earth's southernmost regions
First ever dinosaur found in Antarctica described for science
The first dinosaur fossil found on the Antarctic continent has been described scientifically. The fossil, a vertebra, was found on a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) expedition in 1985 but has only recently been recognized as that of a dinosaur. The paper, "A titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Antarctica," is published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
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