A replica of one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered is unveiled at the American Museum of Natural History on January 14, 2016 in New York City. (Photo : Getty Images/ Spencer Platt)
A new discovery of a complete dinosaur skull in Argentina might offer new clues to its species. The newly discovered dinosaur might have super senses of eyesight and hearing, but its head was mostly pointed at the ground.
Skulls of titanosaurs are some of the rarest kinds of dinosaur fossils, and this new discovery of a fully complete one is only the fourth of its kind out of over 60 named species. The complete skull gave some clues to the researchers like it had a drooping head, the brain was small compared to the size of its body, and had large eye sockets, which meant that it had better eyesight compared to other titanosaurs in theory.
The Sarmientosaurus musacchioi is a new species of a long-necked titanosaur, according to the official website of PLOS ONE. The newly discovered dinosaur was a medium-sized for a titanosaur, and was about 40 to 50 feet long and 8 to 12 tons. It probably pointed its snout down at the ground most of the time to feed on plants.
Ohio University's Lawrence Witmer told Reuters in a statement that it made sense to imagine that the new dinosaur was standing with its feet, and it was just moving its long neck around while the head finds and eats plants that were growing in the lower parts of the area. He added that its posture was revealed by the orientation of its inner ear, which was found in the newly discovered skull.
Witmer said that the newly discovered skull will provide their research team the best information on brain structure for any sauropod. It had a long hearing organ or the cochlear duct, which indicates that it had good hearing of low-frequency sounds being transmitted over far distances. The hearing organ might have been used to check on out of sight herd members, he added.
The skull has also helped fill the void in the fossil record of its family tree, which indicated that some titanosarus had the same look of their ancestors. Even if the descendants evolved into other directions, the facial structures were still the same.
Check out the Sarmientosaurus skull and brain video below:
