The 20-Meter Dinosaur with Spanish Cousins: Meet Brazil's Newly Crowned Super-Sauropod

Before the Atlantic Ocean rudely tore the supercontinents apart, traveling from South America to Europe didn't require an 11-hour red-eye flight—it just took a very long, plodding stroll. Now, paleontologists in Brazil have officially described Dasosaurus tocantinensis, a breathtaking 20-meter (66-foot) Cretaceous giant that proves long-necked dinosaurs were doing transatlantic family reunions long before airlines existed.

Published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology by an international team of Brazilian and Spanish researchers, the magnificent beast was first stumbled upon during construction work for a road-rail cargo terminal in Davinópolis, in the northeastern state of Maranhão. Workers initially mistook the colossal fossilized leg bones for giant Ice Age sloths or mastodons. But when paleontologists cleaned off the rock from the 120-million-year-old Itapecuru Formation, they realized they were staring at the largest dinosaur ever found in Maranhão.

What makes Dasosaurus an international sensation is its family tree. When researchers ran comprehensive phylogenetic algorithms comparing its bones to sauropods worldwide, its closest evolutionary cousin wasn't an Argentine or Brazilian neighbor. It was Garumbatitan morellensis—a sauropod discovered thousands of miles away in Morella, Spain!

How did two virtually identical cousin species end up on opposite sides of the globe? Between 140 and 120 million years ago, South America, Africa, and the Iberian peninsula were still stitched together within the disintegrating supercontinent Gondwana. Animal migrations freely crossed across vast land corridors spanning from ancient Iberia through North Africa directly into modern-day northern Brazil.

The discovery of Dasosaurus tocantinensis cements northern Brazil as a crucial paleogeographical crossroad during the Cretaceous. As paleontologists continue excavating Maranhão's railway corridor, who knows what other globe-trotting giants will crawl out of the Mesozoic rocks.