TEAM DIGS INTO DINOSAUR PAST
JCU students help unearth secrets of prehistoric giants
JAMES Cook University researchers have helped uncover the story of a huge new species of dinosaur unearthed in Africa which was believed to have lived about 70- 100 million years ago.
JCU head of geoscience Associate Professor Eric Roberts, working with Ohio University and JCU students Cassy Mtelela, Hannah Hilbert- Wolf, Leigh Lawrence and Theresa Orr, investigated the 20m- long titanosaur excavated in Tanzania and the geology of the area in which it was discovered.
Dr Roberts said titanosaurs were known to be found across the world and best known in South America, but fossils of the group were rare from the African continent.
He said ancient insects had bored into the bones of the Tanzania dinosaur, officially known as Shingopana songwensis, shortly after its death.
“This gave us a CSI- like opportunity to study the skeleton and reconstruct the timing of death and burial, as well as providing rare evidence for ancient insects and complex food webs during the age of dinosaurs,” Dr Roberts said.
The Rukwa Rift Basin Project is a collaboration between Dr Roberts and Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine professors Dr Patrick O’Connor and Dr Nancy Stevens.
The work began 16 years ago with a field camp in Tan- zania looking for fossils and working on understanding the east African rift system.
Dr Roberts said it had provided exciting opportunities to help train JCU honours and PhD students in the fields of palaeontology and geology over the past five years.
“We have exciting work that we are doing with our studentsd t and d there will be more new species named in the next few years with an opportunity for students to go and study the rift and search for fossils,” he said.
“The students will end up being the ones who discover a lot of the materials and its really fulfilling in that sense.”
A detailed comparison of Shingopana with other known sauropod dinosaurs suggested the species found in southern Africa was more div verse than previously thought.
The research team conducted analysis in order to understand the evolutionary relationships of these and other known titanosaurs.
The researchers discovered, in findings announced by the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology today, that Shingopana was more closely related to titanosaurs of South America than any other species currently known in Africa or elsewhere.
Dr O’Connor said they were just scratching the surface in understanding the diversity of organisms and the environments in which they lived in Africa during the late Cretaceous period.