Tito, an Italian dinosaur

The remains of dinosaurs found in Italy become five: with the discovery of "Tito", we can boast the first italian sauropod dinosaur, a young Titanosauridae that lived about 112 million years ago (Cretaceous, Albian). Now the finds, although found in Lazio, because unfortunately the lack of a serious museum of paleontology in the capital, except for the one bad run concealed within the faculty of Geology of the University La Sapienza, far from any tourist itinerary that might enhance it, you are in the Museum of Natural History in Milan, where they were studied, the center of excellence in research on Italian dinosaurs.
A group of Italian paleontologists, with an article published in the international journal Cretaceous Research, therefore, announces the discovery of fossil bones on Prenestini Mounts, less than 50 km from Rome. All five dinosaur found so far in Italy are new species, and Tito, with its bizarre vertebral joints "inverted," may represent another. "It is possible -says the paleontologist Cristiano Dal Sasso who studied it- that the Italian dinosaurs are so special, because it evolved in partial isolation, or simply in different environments from large continental spaces." The very first one was the theropod Scipionyx samniticus, said Ciro, a small bipedal carnivorous dinosaur very peculiar. Tito, in contrast, seems to be the oldest representative of the titanosaur family in southern Europe, herbivorous long-necked quadrupedal sauropods, the largest land animals ever to appear on our planet. Hence the nickname of Tito, which evokes among other things, a Roman emperor of the nearby capital.
When it died, Tito was at least 6 meters long and weighed 600 kg, but was still growing, the researchers said. "Give me a bone, and I will build again the whole animal," said the famous French anatomist Cuvier. "And so we did with Tito" recalls Cristiano Dal Sasso. "In fact -he explains- the three extracted bones, two are fragmentary, so that one can only deduce that belong to portions of the pelvic girdle of a large reptile. Instead the caudal vertebrae, 10 cm long, perfectly preserved in three dimensions, missing only the neural plug and an articulation on the right side ". "Viewed under a microscope, the sediment that covers the bones is filled with marine microfossils -adds the paleontologist Federico Famiani-. The carcass of the dinosaur was broken up by the waves on a beach in the Lower Cretaceous". The anatomical detail of the vertebra leaves suppore that "Tito could use its tail as a prop, concluded Dal Sasso-, perhaps to stand up and graze the tops of the tallest trees, as they often show us reconstructions of other relatives such camarasaurs, brachiosaurs and diplodocids.
In Europe, we know a few titanosaurs from this era, mostly of African or South American origin. The similarity of Tito with the African Malawisaurus did think that in the Lower Cretaceous our paleo-Peninsula would form a larger than expected chain of platforms, more or less as large as Sardinia, which allowed the passage of dinosaurs and other land animals between Africa, Asia and Europe through the Tethys Sea. The discovery thus adds important paleogeographic data for understanding the prehistory of Italy. "Footprints of titanosaurs found in Lazio region -specify researchers Umberto Nicosia and Andrea Cau, indicate that the emergences of these platforms were more common than we thought." This confirms the hypothesis that in the Cretaceous the Italian peninsula was not all submerged by the sea as once thought, but formed a bridge to Europe.
Fascinating is also the story of Tito dinosaur discovery. Years ago, Antonio Bangrazi, while building a dry stone wall with boulders recovered from a rocky wall located between the towns of Cave and Rocca di Cave, from Palestrina (Rome), he noticed that some blocks seemed to contain fossilized bones, having noticed the porosity medulla, thanks to his passion for the natural sciences. But not showed anybody until the summer of 2012, when his friend Gustavo Pierangelini, highly intrigued, managed to photograph them and to send them by email to Cristiano Dal Sasso of the Natural History Museum of Milan (MSNM), for an evaluation preliminary paleontological, the paleontologist himself who revealed the wonderful peculiarities of Ciro, which remained some internal organs fossilized, unique in the world. "I confirmed once the presence of fossil bones, but to understand the shape and rank them had to extract them from the rock," says Dal Sasso. Therefore the finding was notified prior to Sandra Gatti, then to Alessandro Betori, the Superintendence of Lazio and southern Etruria led by Alfonsina Russo, who authorized subsequent investigations and the filing of the exhibits at the MSNM. Months later, as one of the blocks assigned to Fabio Fogliazza of the MSNM Paleontology Laboratory came to light almost complete vertebra, showing unequivocal diagnostic characters: was emerging the identity card of a dinosaur ver seen in Italy.

an article by Cristiano Cascioli

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