When you buy through tie on our internet site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
A strange metal money of tiny titanosaur has finally been gift a name , about 50 years after its bones were unearthed from the Egyptian desert .
The new described specie , calledIgai semkhu , lived 75 million year ago in what is now the Kharga Oasis .
A reconstruction ofIgai semkhu, a 75-million-year-old titanosaur unearthed in an oasis in Egypt.
The nameIgai semkhutranslates to " Forgotten Lord of the Oasis " in ancient Egyptian and can be represented in hieroglyphic . " It ’s named after a god the Ancient Egyptians would have worshiped in the oasis it came from , " survey authorMatthew Lamanna , a palaeontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History , told Live Science .
The relatively diminutive titanosaur , which was a " mere " 33 to 50 feet ( 10 to 15 meters ) long , was described July 2023 in theJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology .
" It ’s definitely something to get aroused about , " Lamanna said . " It is helping filling in this black hole in our understanding of the final 30 million years of the Age of Dinosaurs on one of the largest landmasses on Earth . "
Related : Long - neck dinosaur probably had even longer necks than we thought
German research worker first chippedIgai semkhufrom rocks in the Western Desert in Egypt in 1977 , but the specimen was forgotten for decades until Lamanna and his colleagues accept a second look .
It turn outI. semkhuwas a previously unknown genus and species of titanosaurian , which is a subgroup of sauropod dinosaur . Sauropods were industrial plant - eat on dinosaur with small heads , long neck and self-aggrandizing , elephant - comparable bodies .
But 75 million years ago , whenIgai semkhuwas probable to be alive , most sauropods were already extinct , go away titanosaur as the only existing sauropod lineage in theCretaceousera ( 145 million to 66 million years ago ) .
Despite their name , titanosaurian were n’t all titanic . " Titanosaurs graze from some of the smallest sauropods ever found , about the size and weight of a moo-cow , all the way up to the size of a humpback hulk , " say Lamanna . They were " the largest land brute to have ever survive . "
Igai semkhusits somewhere in between these extremes . Eric Gorscak , study co - author and paleontologist at Midwestern University , estimatedI. semkhu’ssize from a pair of leg bones — the shinbone and fibula . The upper estimate , about the duration of a school bus , would set it " slimly below average " in size of it , Lamanna said .
Because all that remains ofI. semkhuis a few branch bones and some vertebra , it is insufferable to know exactly what it appear like , Lamanna said .
But despite the scantfossilsavailable , I. semkhuis one of the most completedinosaurfossils ever unearth in Africa , where known dinosaur fossil are comparatively rarefied .
" When you are talk about continental Africa , the last 30 million years of the dinosaur record book are almost non - existent , " Lamanna say .
— Giant never - before - seen long - make out ' titan ' dinosaur unearthed in Europe
— last bit of dinosaur and mammalian ’s epic ' mortal combat ' struggle preserved by volcanic bam
— ' Killer ' Cretaceous croc down a dinosaur as its last repast
Partly , that ’s because paleontologist have n’t been digging in Africa for as long as they have in other position . In addition , while the continent harbour many Cretaceous - era rock and roll , very few are easily approachable . Many likely fossil website are either covered by thick vegetation or deep desert littoral zone .
This rarity make the freshly identify titanosaurian significant .
" Igaiis , although still fragmentary , gross relative to the rest of the phonograph recording , and is therefore a pretty significant improver to our understanding,“John Whitlock , prof of Anatomy at Mount Aloysius College in Pennsylvania , who was not involve with the study , told Live Science .
