First Diplodocus fossil found outside North America unearthed in Spain

Paleontologists in eastern Spain have identified the first confirmed fossil remains of Diplodocus ever found outside North America, a discovery researchers say reshapes assumptions about how the giant, long-necked dinosaur moved across the ancient world roughly 150 million years ago.

The specimen, unearthed at the La Tejería site in the municipality of El Castellar in Teruel province, consists of 14 exceptionally preserved tail vertebrae and several associated bones known as chevrons, according to a study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Researchers estimate the animal measured approximately 25 meters, or about 82 feet, long, and say it represents one of the most complete diplodocid skeletons ever recovered in Europe. Until now, every confirmed Diplodocus specimen had come from the Morrison Formation, a rock formation spanning several states in the western United States that has long been considered the dinosaur's exclusive range.

The excavation and analysis were led by researchers at the Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis, a Spanish research institution devoted to paleontology in the Teruel region. Lead author Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, a doctoral student in biodiversity and evolutionary biology, described the process of narrowing down the identification in a statement accompanying the study's release: "With each new result, the picture became clearer: we were looking at a Diplodocus." Co-authors on the study include researchers Josué García Cobená and Alberto Cobos, the foundation's managing director.

The find matters because it provides physical evidence for a long-debated idea among paleontologists: that dinosaurs were able to move between North America and Europe during the Late Jurassic period, when the two continents were separated by a proto-Atlantic Ocean that may have included temporary land bridges or chains of islands. Researchers described the Teruel fossil as "some of the strongest paleontological evidence" yet for this kind of faunal exchange between the continents, since diplodocid remains found previously in Europe and Africa had been too fragmentary or ambiguous to confirm as belonging specifically to Diplodocus rather than to related but distinct sauropod genera.

Coverage of the discovery, first detailed in mid-September, noted that Teruel has become an increasingly significant site for European dinosaur research, hosting one of the continent's densest concentrations of Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous fossil deposits. A summary of the study's findings noted that the Spanish specimen's vertebrae showed close anatomical similarity to North American Diplodocus material, supporting the identification despite the roughly 8,000-kilometer distance between the two known ranges.

The fossils are now on public display at the Museo Aragonés de Paleontología, part of the Dinópolis paleontological park in Teruel, where they will remain available for both public viewing and continued scientific study. Researchers said further excavation at the La Tejería site is planned, in hopes of recovering additional skeletal material that could help clarify how widely Diplodocus and its relatives ranged across the Jurassic world, and how populations on either side of the widening Atlantic diverged over time.

Diplodocus was first described scientifically in 1878, based on fossils recovered from the Morrison Formation, which stretches across Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Dakota and has since yielded the vast majority of what paleontologists know about the genus, including its whip-like tail and comparatively small, elongated skull. Teruel's fossil beds have drawn growing scientific attention in recent decades precisely because they preserve a similar Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous window on a different continent, giving researchers a rare opportunity to compare dinosaur communities that lived at roughly the same time on opposite sides of the widening Atlantic rift.