The National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) announced that a field team uncovered a nearly complete skeleton of a long-necked dinosaur in the high Andes of La Rioja Province. The new species, recovered 3,000 meters above sea level in the Quebrada de Santo Domingo near the village of Jagüé, was named Huayracursor jaguensis.
The expedition collected part of the skull, an uninterrupted vertebral column that ran to the tail tip, and almost fully articulated fore- and hind-limbs—an uncommon level of preservation for Triassic fossils.
“We estimate that Huayracursor must be between 230 and 225 million years old, which makes it one of the oldest dinosaurs in the world,” said Agustín Martinelli of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences, according to ORF Science.
The peer-reviewed description appeared in the journal Nature. “Due to its completeness, this fossil will become a reference to understand the beginnings of the sauropod lineage,” said doctoral researcher Malena Juarez, according to RTBF.
Measurements indicated a body length of about two meters and a mass near 18 kilograms, almost twice as heavy as previously known Argentine relatives. The animal already displayed an elongated neck and a sturdier torso than most contemporaries.
“It is one of those discoveries that do not happen often,” said CONICET paleontologist Martín Hechenleitner, according to La Voz del Interior.
“From stratigraphic and sedimentological studies, we were able to recognize that the Triassic lands of the Northern Precordillera belong to a sedimentary basin that evolved independently of other basins in the southwest of Gondwana,” explained Sebastián Rocher of CONICET and the National University of La Rioja, according to La República, adding that the work “opens the possibility of extending explorations even further west, in the Andes mountain range.”
Classified as a primitive sauropodomorph, Huayracursor occupied a basal position on the lineage that later produced giants such as Patagotitan and Argentinosaurus. “These traits appeared earlier than we thought,” Hechenleitner said in the same statement.
“For more than half a century, faunas of that age have been confined to discoveries in the Ischigualasto Provincial Park, in Cerro Las Lajas, and in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,” Martinelli noted, according to La República, calling the new basin “a perspective of great discoveries.”
Despite biting cold and fierce winds, the Quebrada de Santo Domingo has yielded fossil plants, early dinosaurs, and mammal-like reptiles, providing a rare window into Late Triassic ecosystems. The skeleton is now at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires, where preparators are removing the last encasing rock and researchers are scanning the bones for further study.
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