A chance discovery made in southern France has revealed a
rare specimen — an almost complete dinosaur skeleton found connected from itshind skull to its tail.
The massive fossil came to light in May 2022, after now
25-year-old amateur paleontologist Damien Boschetto and his dog stumbled across
something unusual while walking in a forest in Montouliers, France. Boschetto
had noticed a cliff edge that had recently collapsed and decided to take a
closer look, when he spotted an exposed bone sticking out of the ground, local
media outlet France Bleu first reported on February 13.
The Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Association
at the Cruzy Museum, in collaboration with the French National Center for
Scientific Research, identified the nearly 10-meter-long (32.8-foot-long)
fossil as a Titanosaur skeleton upon excavation. Boschetto, who has been a
member of the association for eight years, told CNN that while unearthing
dinosaur remains is “always exciting and interesting for scientific research
and the understanding of the ecosystems of that time,” finding the bones in
their almost original anatomical position is what makes this find
extraordinary.
“From a museography point of view, it will make it possible
to present to the general public animals almost complete in anatomical
positions, which is something great,” Boschetto added via email.
A group of history and archaeology enthusiasts created the
Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Association in 1975 to safeguard
the heritage around the village of Cruzy, with several members becoming
enlightened amateurs in paleontology due to the areas’ wealth of dinosaur
fossils, said Jean-Marc Veyssières, a member of the group and one of the fossil
preparers for this discovery. Today, the association is made up of inhabitants
of the region, including a few scientists as well as students.
“The most exciting thing was to realize that we had at least
one anatomically connected animal and that it was a titanosaur, a long-necked
dinosaur,” said Veyssières in an email. “(Boschetto) is an enlightened
enthusiast and curious about nature, he spends a lot of time surveying the
region in search of new areas. … He became an expert on the Late Cretaceous
fauna of our region.”
The association has been excavating the site, which
Boschetto referred to as a bone bed, a term used by paleontologists to describe
a dense area of animal bones and other fossilized remains, for the past two
years. And the newly announced find was not Boschetto’s first.
The recently revealed 70% complete Titanosaur skeleton was
retrieved during the excavation along with several fossils of various dinosaurs
and other vertebrates, including some in anatomical connection and near
complete. Other remains identified included those of a Rhabdodon — a herbivore,
or plant-eater, like the Titanosaur — and fragments from skeletons of carnivores
such as Theropods and crocodiles, according to Boschetto.
The Titanosaur skeleton currently resides in the Cruzy
Museum’s laboratory, where it will be further studied, Veyssières said.
Researchers estimated the age of the newly discovered fossil
to be around 70 to 72 million years old, but Titanosaurs roamed around on four
legs from the Late Jurassic Epoch to the end of the Cretaceous Period,
approximately 163.5 million to 66 million years ago. Titanosaurs belong to a
larger group of dinosaurs known as sauropods, a family of long-necked
herbivores that were some of the largest dinosaurs of their time, according to Britannica.
Remains of Titanosaur fossils are widely unearthed in
Europe, but few are discovered in anatomical connection, Boschetto said.
Finding a skeleton in this connected state suggests that the body was buried
before it had entirely decomposed, leaving “some tissues connecting the bones
to one another,” said Matthew Carrano, research geologist and curator of
Dinosauria at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History.
The completeness of the specimen will “make it easier to
determine whether it’s a new species or a new specimen of a species that’s
already known,” Carrano said in an email. “It will take time to learn all the
details about this new specimen, but I’m sure it will provide important new
information about this group of dinosaurs.”
The region in which Boschetto discovered the specimen is
known to be rich in fossils of dinosaurs and other species living at the same
time and is “building one of the largest collections of dinosaurs from the
Upper Cretaceous in France,” he said. The association did not publicize the
discovery until excavation was complete to protect the archaeological site, he
added.
The association plans to continue research on the fossils
and to further search the area, and the group’s members hope to obtain the
funds to “create a large-scale museum that can accommodate and present thesecollections,” Boschetto said.
