Dinosaur bones found in Patagonia suggest the long-necked sauropod lived beyond the Jurassic period, contrary to previous beliefs.
"It was a surprise, because the first remains we found were very deteriorated and we didn't think much of them, but later through careful laboratory work, cleaning rock from the bones, we could see that they were from a diplodocid, something unthinkable for South America," Pablo Gallina, a researcher at Buenos Aires' Maimonides University told the Associated Press.
The discovery of the fossils suggests the dinosaur was present in South America during the Cretaceous era; in the past researchers believed the diplodocids went extinct during the Jurassic period.
"Diplodocids were never certainly recognized from the Cretaceous or in any other southern land mass besides Africa," the authors said, the Associated Press reported. "The new discovery represents the first record of a diplodocid for South America and the stratigraphically youngest record of this clade anywhere."
The team named the new species "Leinkupal laticauda," which are native Mapuche names for "vanishing" and "family" and Latin words meaning "wide" and "tail."
The finding could suggest that not all sauropods were wiped out when researchers thought they were.
"Here's evidence that one or two groups got through. Rather than a total extinction, that it was devastating, but it didn't completely kill them off," Paleobiologist Paul Upchurch at University College Londonurch told the Associated Press.
The finding also shows the diplodocids genetically slit off from a common ancestor much earlier than previously thought.
"There's certainly a possibility that this would push the origin back a bit," Upchurch said. "I've been arguing for a long time that these species developed in the middle Jurassic, so for me this isn't a problem, but others think it happened a bit later."
The continents of Africa and South America are believed to have separated during the Jurassic period.
