Dinosauria in Bahariya Oasis

Paralititan J.B. Smith, Lamanna, Lacovara, Dodson, J.R. Smith, Poole, Giegenback & Attia 2001 "tidal giant"

pa-RAL-i-TIE-tuhn* (Gr. paralos "near the sea" + Gr. titan "giant")* (m) named to indicate a giant titanosaur found in fossil mangrove deposits that suggest it inhabited a tidal environment. Paralititan is known from parts of a skeleton (Holotype: CGM 81119 (Egyptian Geological Museum, Cairo) including caudal vertebrae, dorsal and sacral ribs, incomplete scapulae, complete right humerus, and distal metacarpal, found in the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) Bahariya Formation in the Bahariya Oasis near Gebel Fagga, Egypt. The humerus is 1.69 m (5.6 ft.) long. Paralititan represents one of the heaviest dinosaurs known (est. up to 70 (64 metric) tons, and 25-30.5 m (80-100 ft) long), only somewhat smaller than Argentinosaurus.

Type Species: Paralititan stromeri [STROH-mer-ie] J.B. Smith, Lamanna, Lacovara, Dodson, J.R. Smith, Poole, Giegenback & Attia 2001: in honor of Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach [1870-1952], German paleontologist who discovered dinosaur skeletons at the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt in the early 20th century. Sauropoda Titanosauria Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) Africa [added 8-2001]

'Tidal giant' remains found in Sahara Desert



WASHINGTON (AP) - A long-necked animal that weighed more than 60 tons lived on a lush coastal plain in what is now the Sahara Desert some 90 million years ago and may have been the second largest dinosaur ever to walk the Earth, researchers say.

A team led by Joshua B. Smith of the University of Pennsylvania found fossilized remains from the giant animal in the sand of an Egyptian desert near the Bahariya Oasis, scene of other notable dinosaur finds.

Smith and his colleagues identified the monster as a sauropod, a type of plant-eater, and named it Paralititan stromeri. Paralititan means "tidal giant." Stromeri refers to Ernst Stromer, a geologist who found dinosaur fossils in the area in the 1930s and took them to Germany, only to have them destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II.

The new discovery was being published today in the journal Science.

"This tells us we had really, really big (plant-eating dinosaurs) hanging out on the coast of North Africa back then," said Smith. He said it was known that Africa had at least three very large predators living 95 million years ago, but until now scientists were puzzled where those massive meat-eaters got their food.

Paralititan answers that question, said Smith.

"Now we've found a 90-ton steak that they were eating," said Smith.

Only a few fossilized bones were found at the site, but Smith said they were enough to calculate the size of Paralititan. The key was finding the right humerus, a bone in the four-legged animal that corresponds to the upper arm bone in humans. The bone was 51/2 feet long.

By comparing that humerus length and size to the more complete skeletons of other sauropods, Smith said his team could estimate the size of Paralititan.

The animal was 80 feet to 100 feet long, from its nose to the tip of its tail, and weighed 60-70 tons, said Smith.

That size puts Paralititan second only to Argentinosaurus, a sauropod discovered in South America that has been estimated to have been 90 feet long and to have weighed about 90 tons.

At the time the two giants lived, Africa and South American had only recently split apart, moving under the forces of continental drift. For this reason, Smith said it is likely that the two animals had a common ancestor that once roamed across the land mass of the joined continents.

Although the discovery site in Egypt is now desert, Smith said that it once was a dinosaur paradise, with lush trees and ferns growing beside a warm tropical sea. There were many other dinosaurs, along with fish, turtles and sharks, he said.

"It was a really productive ecosystem that was probably a perfect place for these guys," he said.

Later, the sea level fell and the continents shifted. Now the discovery site is almost 200 miles from the Mediterranean, on a plateau in the Sahara Desert.

It may have been "dinosaur heaven," Smith said, but it was also a dangerous place for Paralititan.

Living during the same time and place were three of the biggest known dinosaur predators _ fast, toothy hunters that at 50 feet were bigger than the later and more famous Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Smith said that while recovering the fossils of Paralititan, the researchers found the tooth of a Carcharodontosaurs, one of the fiercest of the predators.

"The skeleton was torn apart," said Smith, suggesting that meat-eaters feasted on Paralititan after it fell on a beach, lapped by the tides. Just what killed the animal was not clear, he said.

Michael Parrish, a dinosaur expert at Northern Illinois University, said Paralititan "is an exciting find" because it fills in details about a poorly understood era.

"This helps our view of that part of dinosaur history."

which is not well understood," Parrish said.

Dinosaur, crab fossils reveal ecosystem secrets

For centuries, they wouldn’t be caught dead next to each other.

But now a team of geologists directed by Joshua Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, have found a well-preserved fossil of a crab within inches of a tail vertebra from a massive plant-eating dinosaur.

This well-preserved fossil of a crab was found within inches of a dinosaur tail in Egypt’s Bahariya Oasis, the first evidence in literature of the two found together. The find helps piece together what ancient envrionments might have been like.
The find, in Egypt’s Bahariya Oasis, is the first instance of a crab fossil found with a dinosaur fossil. It reveals much about both species and the kind of ecosystem where the fossils were found, thought to be a predator-rich mangrove setting dominated by tree ferns and other coastal plants, similar to Florida’s swampy Everglades. The rocks containing these fossils are about 94 million years old, which means they date back to the Cretaceous Period, which lasted from 130-65 million years.

"The two normally don’t hang with each other, or they are at least not commonly discovered together," said Smith, of crabs and dinosaurs. Smith made international news in 2001 when he and collaborators published results of their discovery of the second most massive dinosaur ever unearthed, Paralititan stromeri, in the same part of the Bahariya Oasis. "There have been anecdotal mentions of crabs with dinosaurs, but those remains turned out to be lobsters or ghost shrimp. Even if the time gap between the two is thousands of years, we have visual proof of these two coexisting together. This is a nice surprise. It fills in more about this kind of ecosystem."

The results are in a paper that will be published later this year in the Journal of Paleontology.

Smith and collaborators from the University of Pennsylvania, the Cairo Geological Museum, and Drexel University discovered the fossils in 2001, on an expedition for dinosaur bones. They found a dinosaur tailbone, fossil plants and the crab, all within a foot-and-a-half of each other. Because there have been informal (though never published in peer-review journals) mentions of crabs being part of ecosystems where dinosaur bones have been found, and more importantly because he isn’t qualified to describe a crab, Smith wanted to clarify and sought geologist Carrie E. Schweitzer, Ph.D., of the Kent State University Department of Geology.

"As far as we can tell from the literature, this is the first confirmed notice of a crab associated with a dinosaur," said Schweitzer, who is the lead author on the crab paper. "The find is significant because it permits paleontologists to frame a very diverse -- and thus much more accurate -- description of what these ancient environments would have looked like.

"The deposits that enclose the dinosaur and the crab also contain crocodile-like animals, various invertebrates, fish, sharks, plesiosaurs, a kind of reptile, and turtles as well as plant material. Thus, we have a very complete idea of what types of organisms comprised the ecosystem."

Crabs, "brachyuran decapods" in technical jargon, from coastal habitats are uncommon in the fossil record because their remains rapidly disintegrate, either from decomposition or scavenging by other predators. The geologists think that the crabs of the Bahariya Formation probably were scavengers that fed on vegetation and other organic material. They were a possible food source for fish and other vertebrates and invertebrates in the ecosystem.

Smith speculates that it is possible that small or baby dinosaurs might have fed on the crabs, but said speculation is the most he can do.

"This would have been a very productive place biologically, for crabs, they would have been very happy here," Smith said. "Almost everything we’re finding at the site is a predator. I could see a baby Spinosaurus picking up mangrove crabs, but it’s all speculation because we have no solid proof of what dinosaurs ate."