Looks like there was a land-bridge to "Europe" around the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary if you stick it in Paleotopography mode.
(I like that mode better because it appears to show the actual landmasses at the time vs the plates with an approximation of the modern masses overlayed)
Apparently I'm a bit slow today, because my brain started completing the headline as "Diplodocus, Long Thought Extinct, ..." before my eyes could finish reading it.
> The animal’s fossilized remains — 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevron bones — were unearthed at the La Tejería site near the city of El Castellar in the Spanish province of Teruel.
According to Wikipedia (if I'm reading correctly), the chevron bones are also part of the tail [1]. It's pretty cool how such a small part of the skeleton can carry so much information!
> The Spanish Diplodocus lived roughly 150 million years ago near the end of the Jurassic period.
> [...]
> According to the team, the presence of Diplodocus in Iberia offers strong evidence that dinosaurs moved between North America and Europe during that era, likely crossing temporary land bridges that appeared as the proto-North Atlantic Ocean periodically receded.
I want a map! I found this: https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/167017/view Is it the correct map? Is there a land (ice?) bridge between Newfoundland and Portugal? Am I interpreting it correctly?
Else comment I made, trying to answer that same question, I found https://thepangeamap.com - one of the neat features is being able to put dinosaurs in the timeline. The Paleotopography selection (rather than GPlates) also gives hints about the expected height and depth of the land and sea.
Too far south for an ice bridge - Newfoundland is south like modern Florida - tropical. And it's the Jurassic, hot with high sea levels, so even though its continental shelf extends out towards Spain, there are no ice ages to bare it (as was the Eastern US shelf a mere 12k years ago). But Pangea is ripping apart, it's a mess with crust blocks variously uplifted and tilted, massive weathering and sediment fluxes, so...
From the TFA paper[3]:
During the early Mesozoic, North America and Europe were connected to form the western and central part
of the supercontinent Laurasia. With the opening of the North Atlantic during the Late Jurassic and earliest
Cretaceous, the region fragmented into smaller tectonic units55–58 that might have periodically formed contiguous
land masses57,58 during sea level low-stands, characterized by exposure of continental margins and draining of
continental interior seaways55–58. The presence of a land bridge between North America and Europe during the
late Kimmeridgian-earliest Tithonian13 might explain similarities in some dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus59 and
Allosaurus60. However, the absence of turiasaurs in the Morrison Formation suggests that this clade dispersed
into western North America after the mid-Tithonian. Thus, unless we wish to argue that turiasaurs were actually present in the Morrison Formation but have not been found yet, a second later land connection between
Europe and North America is required. Specifically, during the mid-Valanginian (c.137Ma), a dramatic drop in
sea level7,55,56 potentially reconnected Europe and North America and so permitted a fi al exchange of vertebrate
clades across the Atlantic. Th s Valanginian event could also explain apparent faunal exchanges between these
continents proposed for the late Hauterivian-early Barremian13. Taxa that seem to disperse in the Hauterivian/
Barremian might actually have done so during the Valanginian lowstand, but gaps in the fossil record mean that
the results of these dispersals might not be detected until we access better sampled post-Valanginian deposits.
58 is available with a plate.[4] 57 is old, with only low-res global plates, ggl books preview has 138 Ma on p42. 56 I skipped. 55 is available[5] but is temporally low res.
There's a 2016 paper Late Mesozoic North Atlantic land bridges[6], Elsevier paywalled with excerpts, and on sci-hub.
FWIW "American" might be more continental than national; my recollection is that one of the places where tons of dinosaur bones were found in the early paleontology days is Alberta.
I honestly had the opposite misreading; I thought it was intentionally trying to say it also had been found in South America, but from some googling I can't find any reference to that. Wikipedia seems to have already been updated to "North America and Europe"
According to latest executive order, Spain has been renamed "Spanish Peninsula of America". So Diplodocus keeps being exclusively American.
> Diplodocus, Long Thought Exclusively American, Turns Up in Spain
Another example of quality American production moving overseas. Globalization will be the end of us
Reunite Pangea! https://thepangeamap.com (you can put Diplodocus on the timeline and see a projection of what the map was then)
So according to this map, North America was separated from Spain by a body of water when Diplodocus was alive?
Looks like there was a land-bridge to "Europe" around the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary if you stick it in Paleotopography mode.
(I like that mode better because it appears to show the actual landmasses at the time vs the plates with an approximation of the modern masses overlayed)
Oh wow! Now that's a cool site!
Apparently I'm a bit slow today, because my brain started completing the headline as "Diplodocus, Long Thought Extinct, ..." before my eyes could finish reading it.
> The animal’s fossilized remains — 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevron bones — were unearthed at the La Tejería site near the city of El Castellar in the Spanish province of Teruel.
According to Wikipedia (if I'm reading correctly), the chevron bones are also part of the tail [1]. It's pretty cool how such a small part of the skeleton can carry so much information!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemal_arch
“Diplodocus, Long Thought Extinct, turn up in Spain” yep same here
That damned loch ness monster
> The Spanish Diplodocus lived roughly 150 million years ago near the end of the Jurassic period.
> [...]
> According to the team, the presence of Diplodocus in Iberia offers strong evidence that dinosaurs moved between North America and Europe during that era, likely crossing temporary land bridges that appeared as the proto-North Atlantic Ocean periodically receded.
I want a map! I found this: https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/167017/view Is it the correct map? Is there a land (ice?) bridge between Newfoundland and Portugal? Am I interpreting it correctly?
Else comment I made, trying to answer that same question, I found https://thepangeamap.com - one of the neat features is being able to put dinosaurs in the timeline. The Paleotopography selection (rather than GPlates) also gives hints about the expected height and depth of the land and sea.
We could save a lot of money and emissions if we brought the continents back together! Imagine Paris to New York by high speed train.
Ew no, not with the Americans behaving the way they are now. The Atlantic is fine where it is thank you very much.
As an American...I concur. The rest of the world doesn't deserve that.
Americans behaving the way they are now and Parisians mixed together? Hell on Earth
I would think so yes. But not an authority on this.
The map is super cool though. Makes you think of the earth as something still aging since it looks clearly “earth” but with major differences.
> map!
Maps.[1][2]
Too far south for an ice bridge - Newfoundland is south like modern Florida - tropical. And it's the Jurassic, hot with high sea levels, so even though its continental shelf extends out towards Spain, there are no ice ages to bare it (as was the Eastern US shelf a mere 12k years ago). But Pangea is ripping apart, it's a mess with crust blocks variously uplifted and tilted, massive weathering and sediment fluxes, so...
From the TFA paper[3]:
During the early Mesozoic, North America and Europe were connected to form the western and central part of the supercontinent Laurasia. With the opening of the North Atlantic during the Late Jurassic and earliest Cretaceous, the region fragmented into smaller tectonic units55–58 that might have periodically formed contiguous land masses57,58 during sea level low-stands, characterized by exposure of continental margins and draining of continental interior seaways55–58. The presence of a land bridge between North America and Europe during the late Kimmeridgian-earliest Tithonian13 might explain similarities in some dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus59 and Allosaurus60. However, the absence of turiasaurs in the Morrison Formation suggests that this clade dispersed into western North America after the mid-Tithonian. Thus, unless we wish to argue that turiasaurs were actually present in the Morrison Formation but have not been found yet, a second later land connection between Europe and North America is required. Specifically, during the mid-Valanginian (c.137Ma), a dramatic drop in sea level7,55,56 potentially reconnected Europe and North America and so permitted a fi al exchange of vertebrate clades across the Atlantic. Th s Valanginian event could also explain apparent faunal exchanges between these continents proposed for the late Hauterivian-early Barremian13. Taxa that seem to disperse in the Hauterivian/ Barremian might actually have done so during the Valanginian lowstand, but gaps in the fossil record mean that the results of these dispersals might not be detected until we access better sampled post-Valanginian deposits.
58 is available with a plate.[4] 57 is old, with only low-res global plates, ggl books preview has 138 Ma on p42. 56 I skipped. 55 is available[5] but is temporally low res.
There's a 2016 paper Late Mesozoic North Atlantic land bridges[6], Elsevier paywalled with excerpts, and on sci-hub.
And that's my time budget.
[1] https://portal.gplates.org/cesium/?view=topo_recon [2] rocks: https://portal.gplates.org/cesium/?view=GeologyR key: https://portal.gplates.org/portal/geology/ [3] quote is on page 9: https://dinodata.de/bibliothek/pdf_d/2017/001_s41598-017-146... [4] paper ref 58, 150/136 Ma plates on page 31, key on page 29, 3 MB but downloads slowly: https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00117/22805/20913.pdf [5] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Golonka-Jan/publication... [6] Late Mesozoic North Atlantic land bridges (2016). Available on sci-hub. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128...
Original article (in Spanish), from the source itself: https://fundaciondinopolis.org/un-descubrimiento-paleontolog...
How do we know it wasn’t an American diplodocus on a gap year trip to Europe?
Probably went one summer to run the bulls in Pamplona.
Is "American" a nationality where maybe "North American" a geography? I don't think Diplodocus has US citizenship...
American as in the continent, US the country has nothing to do with this
Even the dinosaurs are abandoning the USA.
Back in the day, they migrated away, only to be brought back as diesel fuel today. ;)
Diplodocus?
* DnB beat drops *
This probably is the most succinct way to write the title, but assigning nationality to dinosaurs is _weird_.
FWIW "American" might be more continental than national; my recollection is that one of the places where tons of dinosaur bones were found in the early paleontology days is Alberta.
I think that’s what most tripped me up. “North American” would’ve been clearer here.
Nah, this is a Yankee/American issue. Citizens of the US claiming a noun that belongs to the continent.
I honestly had the opposite misreading; I thought it was intentionally trying to say it also had been found in South America, but from some googling I can't find any reference to that. Wikipedia seems to have already been updated to "North America and Europe"
North and South American dinosaurs were very different.
Yes, and the difference being that they did not build a huge wall between them.
Maybe in "Iberia" instead of Spain?
Iberia is an airline my dudes. (/s before someone comes correcting me about it)
Now here I thought it was the Byzantine Theme in the Caucases
Spoken like someone who's dinosaurs have never been to the moon.