An expedition from Mansoura University sought to uncover a new species of dinosaur that is found a critical discovery for science. The paleontologists named it Mansourasaurus Shahinae and found it in the Dakhla Oasis in Central Egypt. According to BBC the enormous plant eater was the size of a school bus and the weight of an elephant; and was a member of a group called Titanosaurs that included the earth’s largest-ever land animals and it was from the Cretaceous Period, this time marks the final chapter in the age of dinosaurs, which came to an abrupt end when a giant meteor smacked into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula.
“Its remains are the most complete of any mainland African land vertebrate during an even larger time span, roughly 30 million years before the dinosaur mass extinction 66 million years ago,” said Paleontologist Hesham Sallam of Egypt’s Mansoura University, who led the study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, reported Reuters.
“It was thrilling for my students to uncover bone after bone, as each new element we recovered helped to reveal who this giant dinosaur was,” said Dr Hesham Sallam of Mansoura University, who led the research told BBC.
“Africa remains a giant question mark in terms of land-dwelling animals at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs,” said Dr Eric Gorscak of The Field Museum, who worked on the research, published in the journal, Nature Ecology & Evolution.
“Mansourasaurus helps us address longstanding questions about Africa’s fossil record and paleobiology – what animals were living there, and to what other species were these animals most closely related?”
Dr Matt Lamanna of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, a study co-researcher, said that his jaw “hit the floor” when he saw the pictures of the fossils.“This was the Holy Grail,” he said. “The end of the age of dinosaurs in Africa is one of the final frontiers for dinosaur paleontology,” Lamanna added. The new find “adds a bit of hard evidence to what African fauna was like” during this crucial time period. “A well-preserved dinosaur from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in Africa that we paleontologists have been searching for for a long, long time,” he said.