PALEONEWS: Patagonia Vulture Valley Yields New Top Dino

[Betty Cunningham <bettyc@flyinggoat.com>]

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Patagonia Vulture Valley Yields New Top Dino

LA BUITRERA, Argentina, Jan. 26 (Reuters) - Herdsman Raul Avelas was
nonplused when he spied huge bones on his patch of Argentina's badlands
a decade ago, seeing them as just another protrusion for his flock to
stumble over en route to his adobe homestead. 

"Since I started walking around the countryside here as a boy I've seen
several bones, but I never gave it much importance," Avelas said,
adjusting his black beret and picking at his brown-stained teeth. 

But Buenos Aires paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia knew otherwise
after chatting with Avelas a year ago. The fossils he and his seven-man
team have since unearthed from a desolate, vulture-ridden cliff at La
Buitrera (The Vulture Cage) in southern Argentina's Patagonia are
believed to be from the biggest dinosaur species ever discovered. 

"There is nothing comparable to this so it is probably a new species,"
the wiry Apesteguia said. The tip-off were the two cervical vertebrae
each measuring 3.84 feet (1.2 metres), the biggest ever unearthed. 

"They were so big they seemed like a femur or tibia, but on closer
examination they turned out to be neck vertebrae," said Jorge Gonzalez,
a technical artist from the Argentine Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos
Aires who is in on the dig. 

With 10 to 12 vertebrae making up the neck, scientists envision a
plant-eating sauropod stretching 154-160 feet (48-50 metres) from head
to tail and towering 45 feet (14 metres). That is roughly half a city
block long and five stories high.  

DINOSAUR GRAVEYARD 

The closest rival is the Argentinosaurus discovered in the same region.
It was the largest type of dinosaur ever found but the new find is 26
feet (8 metres) longer and sports the same body shape: small head,
serpentine neck, barrel-shaped middle and a long tail. It weighed in at
80 metric tons or more. 

La Buitrera is about 50 miles (80 km) as the buzzard flies from the town
of Cipolletti in southern Rio Negro province. It is sparse land full by
thorny scrub where the air smells like a rich combination of oregano and
mint and temperatures regularly soar over 104 degrees (40 Celsius). 

The big-sky flatlands are inhabited by nandus (American ostriches),
mountain goats and wild horses. It also contains mule skeletons picked
bare by vultures and a cache of dinosaur bones rivaling those of China's
Gobi Desert and western Canada's Alberta province. 

"Rio Negro is very large and inhospitable and there's a lot of bones
here off the beaten track," Apesteguia said. 

Dagger-toothed Giganotosaurus, a bigger version of Tyrannosaurus Rex and
the largest flesh-eater ever identified, was uncovered nearby in 1993,
along with another carnivore still being studied that may be even
bigger. Hundreds of dinosaur eggs were also found in an extinct volcano
in 1998. 

"The lush vegetation brought the plant-eaters and they in turn attracted
the meat-eaters," said paleontologist Carlos Munoz, head of the
Florentino Ameghino museum in Cipolletti. 

In the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, La Buitrera was a
forested plain dotted by lakes and sluiced by a huge river that probably
flowed into the Pacific, unobstructed by the Andes mountain range, which
had yet to be born. Bones of dinosaurs that died along the river were
swept downstream and dumped on a bank that is now hard, brown
sedimentary rock. 

The fossils of what is believed to be the largest animal ever on Earth
were found by Avelas on a ridge overlooking the canyon left by the
river. The spot is perched atop the 128-foot (40-metre) walls of the
gorge, which is too narrow in sections for  access by vehicle or even
horse. 

Up to now the colossal dinosaur being unearthed there has simply been
tagged the "Rio Negro Giant," Munoz said. 

Craning its long neck to eat fruits and leaves from the trees dotting
the plain, the vegetarian beast probably ran in packs in the style of
elephants, Gonzalez said.  

OPERATION DINO-LIFT 

Its awesome bulk offered it protection from marauding meat-eaters, whom
it probably fended off with its enormous tail, he said. "Carnivores
probably attacked the young, who were easier to topple." 

The "Rio Negro Giant" now consists of some 20 individual body parts
including femurs, ribs and tail bones that lie strewn about the
excavation site, patiently worked on eight hours a day with picks,
brushes and plaster by the team of Argentine biologists, technicians and
paleontology students. 

Because of their lofty perch in the tight canyon and their combined
weight exceeding 440 pounds (200 kg), the specimens will most likely
have to be flown out by helicopter to the Florentino Ameghino museum,
Munoz said. "We're going to try to get all the visible bones out of here
by the end of January." 

The dinosaur diggers will then retire until school is out early in 2001,
when the tap-tap of picks will echo through the canyon once again.
Besides shards from the largest beast that ever roamed the planet, other
pieces are expected to turn up. 

"Here we've found crocodiles, sharks, birds, snakes, eggs, meat-eaters,
plant-eaters, you name it. This place has got them all," Munoz said. 

Emphasising the point, Apesteguia takes a small reddish-brown crocodile
head fossil out of its protective newspaper like someone unwrapping a
fragile crystal vase. 

"There are dinosaurs everywhere," he said. "The point is that here they
are preserved." 

-- 
Flying Goat Graphics
http://www.flyinggoat.com
(Society of Vertebrate Paleontology member)
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