Dreadnoughtus schrani - thoughts and musings

March 2009 or thereabouts is when I first learned about it. I walked into the prep lab into the Academy of Natural Sciences and it was full. And by full, I mean "there was literally no table space because of the sheer size of the bones".

For those who don't know, the prep lab at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University is a room open to the public where you can go in and see newly discovered fossil specimens being cleaned, and you can actually ask the preparators questions thanks to the lowered glass wall. It's pretty sweet. And I had the opportunity to ask plenty of questions, because holy crap these bones were huge.

Simply put, the bones were of a giant Patagonian titanosaur. They were first discovered in March 2005 by Kenneth Lacovara and his team from Philly, and it took four years to fully excavate them, whereupon they were shipped to Pennsylvania, and now the long job of cleaning them all off began. Most importantly, it seemed to be the most complete giant titanosaur yet discovered. I was fully aware of Argentinosaurus and other giant South American sauropods at the time, and the fact that another equally huge one was right here in Philadelphia, not especially far from where I lived, was quite thrilling.

And over the next five years, the bones remained in the prep lab. I would visit rather regularly to check on their progress. It took a really long time. (It's only today, September 4 2014, that I found out that there were actually two specimens of the giant titanosaur). Pictures of the bones filtered across the paleoInternet, and over time they joined the ranks of mythical undescribed giant sauropods. The Lacovara titanosaur was its moniker, and it was spoken of in hushed tones. If this really was a complete giant titanosaur - well, it would change almost everything.

Around mid-February 2014 for the Academy's annual Paleopalooza, I went in and noticed that there was actually table space in the prep lab. It actually felt kind of surreal to me seeing it without the titanosaur bones, which you might think is a bit weird and you'd be absolutely right. The titanosaur had been replaced with a comparatively tiny hadrosaur. Which is also cool, but y'know, it doesn't quite measure up, both figuratively and literally.

Believe it or not, I actually ran into Ken Lacovara himself that day. And for whatever reason I forgot entirely to ask him about the titanosaur. We discussed local fossils and college opportunities instead. But the fact that the bones were fully prepared meant that the light at the end of the tunnel was approaching. In July I met with a Drexel geology student, who also said that the official description was almost upon us. The reveal was coming, although I did't know exactly when.

September 3, 2014. Thanks to a thing called Internet history I know the exact place and moment when I discovered that the reveal of the titanosaur was nigh. 4:26pm Eastern Standard Time. I happened to be looking up the Inversand site online, which is a local Late Cretaceous marine burial that Dr. Lacovara is also working on. I found that he actually had a Wikipedia page now, something that hadn't happened until recently. Through that I went through various contributions of Wikipedia users and found something very interesting. .

THE LACOVARA TITANOSAUR HAD A NAME. And it was the most epic name in perhaps the entire history of paleontology: Dreadnoughtus schrani. And...there was a Wikipedia link?

I clicked it; it redirected to the Titanosaur page. Some quick digging revealed that Nature Publishing had an embargo on all information about the dinosaur until September 4th at 9am EST. That almost never happens, at least to my knowledge. This was big.

I frantically attacked Google for info. This DeviantArt journal entry came up, apparently the abstract to the description itself. 26 meters long and 59.3 metric tons - huge. And it was indeed the most complete yet found. More digging revealed the Geological Society of America abstract, to be presented in mid-October. So I figured two things: the paper was either going to be published TOMORROW, or sometime in mid-October. Either way, it was going to be soon.

It was indeed today, but I didn't expect this much fanfare. Wow. They weren't kidding.

Some links, to prove a point:

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/thepulse/item/72248-philly-scientists-discover-new-gigantic-dinosaur-dreadnoughtus-photos?linktype=hp_pulse http://phys.org/news/2014-09-unveil-dreadnoughtus-gigantic-exceptionally-sauropod.html http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29050114 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-dreadnought-dinosaur-most-complete-specimen-of-a-giant/ http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2014/September/Dreadnoughtus-Dinosaur/ http://www.nature.com/news/earth-shaking-dinosaur-discovered-1.15842

There's even an official Drexel video up on YouTube about it already:



There's more besides - almost every major news site I can think of has picked up the story - but these are the good ones that I found in about 10 minutes of looking. So yeah.

AND THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS. (and the Supplementary Information!) So with the background out the way (longer than I expected), some random thoughts about it: I'm heading to the Academy's Members Night next Friday, so hopefully I will be able to get more info then.
 * Per MYDD, there are actually quantitative measurements of each of the discovered bones in the supplementary info (starting around page 35), which is really quite an amazing thing.
 * There are actually two specimens, neither of which seem to be fully grown. Which means that as an adult Dreadnoughtus (that name) may have been even larger.
 * The tail is remarkably complete, measuring ~30 ft long. Very muscular with broad chevrons - something we haven't seen before.
 * Obligatory picture of Dr. Lacovara doing the Jensen.
 * A separate paper on the vertebrae is going to be coming out, according to another GSA abstract. Can't be bothered to find the link right now.
 * Never heard of the Cerro Fortaleza Formation before, and the Internet fails to be useful in this regard, so it's difficult to see what its geological contemporaries were, fauna-wise. Some shed theropod teeth were found associated with the bones along with likely scavenging marks (the paper says it's probably Orkoraptor), and that's all we've got.