Researchers on Monday said the fossils represent a dinosaur species called Ninjatitan zapatai that lived 140 million years ago during the Cretaceous. They identified Ninjatitan as a titanosaurus, a group of long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs that walked on four pillar-like legs.
The dinosaur’s incomplete skeletal remains were discovered in the Patagonian wilderness in Argentina, south of the city of Neuquen. The researchers said Ninjatitan showed that the titanosaurs only appeared as a group longer ago than was previously known.
“This is the oldest record known, not only from Argentina, but also worldwide,” lead author Pablo Gallina, a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET), told Reuters.
“Titanosaurs are recorded on different sides of the world, but the oldest known plates were more modern than this find.”
At a length of about 20 meters, Ninjatitan was a large dinosaur, but much smaller than later titanosaurs such as Argentinosaurus which reached a length of about 35 meters. The researchers also said the presence of such an early titanosaurus in Patagonia supports the idea that titanosaurs originated in the Southern Hemisphere.
Titanosaurs are part of a larger dinosaur group called sauropods that include others with similar body designs such as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus that lived in North America during the Jurassic period, which preceded the Cretaceous.
A number of titanosaurs living in Patagonia have achieved giant ratios such as Argentinosaurus, Patagotitan and Dreadnoughtus.
José Luis Carbadillo, another CONICET researcher, told a local university publication that the age of Ninjatitan’s remains could lead people to assume that the bones belonged to a dinosaur group that preceded the titanosaurs.
“In Patagonia, titanosaurs were known just under 120 million years ago,” he said.