The Volgatitan ( Volgatitan simbirskiensis ) sounds like a villain straight out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe but it was , in fact , a living , breathing brute that roamed what is now Siberia 200 to 65 million years ago . Researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences described the dinosaur for the first time in a composition print in the journalBiological Communications .
The Apocalypse was made after the discovery of seven vertebrae bones representing the prior and middle caudals from an grownup specimen on the banks of the Volga River ( hence the name ) , 5 kilometer ( 3 nautical mile ) from the Russian city of Ulyanovsk and 700 klick ( 430 naut mi ) from Moscow . From these fossil , the researchers were able to square up the creature ’s size of it ( 17 lots ) and the family unit of dinosaurs the species belonged to ( the titanosaurian sauropods ) .
The titanosaurian sauropods ( or titanosaurs ) – named after the Titans , Ancient Greek deities cognize for being especially large – weresome of the biggest vertebratesto walk the Earth , with some especially large coinage tipping the scales at over 70 dozens .
They were also the last make it group of a type of dinosaur calledthe sauropod , a band of giant herbivores discernable by their extremely long necks and tails , small heads , and stocky peg . Diplodocus , Brontosaurus , andBrachiosauruswere all sauropods . In fact , sauropods were so common that they are thought to have made uproughly a quarter of all dinosaur species – if you omit birds , that is . But because of their modest and fragile bones , their cadaver are vulnerable to disintegration and erosion , which means their fogy record is lack and discoveries like this are comparatively rare .
The newfangled find , the researchers say , is particularly striking and newsworthy . This is because there were two principal groups of lithostrotian titanosaurs . One went on to disperse across much of the worldly concern , their range unfold to every continent including Antarctica . The 2d – the lineage that Volgatitan go to – was thought to have been curtail to regions in the Southern Hemisphere , specifically South America . This special dinosaur seem to be the oldest representative of its lineage of titanosaurs geologically speaking , dating back to the Early Cretaceous , and apparently the first of its kind in Europe .
The discovery challenges the titanosaur timeline . It suggests , the researcher say , that the statistical distribution of titanosaurs during the other Cretaceous was much broader than antecedently think . It may also imply that the Titanosauria had a long ( and currently little - known ) early evolutionary history in the supercontinent Laurasia .
