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ANDREW MCAFEE/CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORYMighty Mansourasaurus: More Than the Sum of Its Parts
When Mansourasaurus was formally described in
January in Nature Ecology & Evolution, it represented
more than just a cool new fossil. The animal, which lived
about 75 million years ago in what’s now Egypt’s Dakhla
Oasis, belongs to the titanosaurs, the most evolved
of the giant, long-necked, whip-tailed, plant-eating
dinosaurs. At about 30 feet long, Mansourasaurus isn’t
the largest titanosaur, but it is the most complete ofany dinosaur specimen from that period in Africa. It
also has some surprising anatomical traits that link it to
unexpected relatives thousands of miles away. A team of
young trailblazers made the ind, changing how the ield
is perceived in their conservative country.PALEONTOLOGY
Fossils from unexpected places, and new ways to study them,
are changing how we see the deep past. BY GEMMA TARLACH
About 75 million years ago, the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt’s Western
Desert was a world of lush vegetation and coastlines where the
titanosaur Mansourasaurus, described this year, roamed.