First Confirmed Diplodocus Fossils Found in Spain, Rewriting Dinosaur Biogeography

At the La Tejería site near the Spanish village of El Castellar, paleontologists from the Dinópolis Foundation unearthed 14 exceptionally preserved tail vertebrae and several chevron bones. The 150-million-year-old fossils, spread across 108 square feet of rock, carried the distinctive deep longitudinal grooves and pneumatic cavities of a dinosaur that textbooks have long insisted never lived in Europe: the Diplodocus.[1][3][5]

The discovery, detailed this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, marks the first confirmed evidence of the iconic long-necked sauropod outside of North America. For nearly 150 years, every verified Diplodocus bone had been pulled from the Morrison Formation in the western United States, cementing the animal's status as a uniquely American giant.[1][2][5]

"We are delighted with this discovery," said Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, a paleontologist at the Dinópolis Foundation and lead author of the study. "From the early stages of the osteological study, we noticed strong similarities with several diplodocine sauropods. As we looked more closely at the anatomy, we began to identify a combination of features characteristic of Diplodocus species."[3][6]

The Spanish specimen measured an estimated 25 meters (82 feet) in length, putting it on par with its massive North American relatives. The animal lived during the Late Jurassic period, a time when the supercontinent Pangaea was fracturing and the proto-North Atlantic Ocean was in its early stages of opening.[1][3][6]

Because a 25-meter land animal cannot swim across an open ocean, the find fundamentally alters the geographic map of the Late Jurassic world. The presence of Diplodocus in Iberia provides compelling evidence that dinosaurs were able to migrate between North America and Europe, likely crossing temporary land bridges that emerged when sea levels periodically dropped.[1][5][6]

"The outcome of the dig is some of the strongest paleontological evidence for episodes of dispersal and faunal exchange between the two continents across the proto-Atlantic Ocean," Sánchez Fenollosa noted. One possible route may have connected what is now Newfoundland with the Iberian Peninsula, allowing herds to walk between the landmasses.[1][3]

The fossils were initially discovered in 2008, when the first five vertebrae turned up at La Tejería. It took subsequent excavations in 2014 and 2015 to recover the remaining nine vertebrae and the chevron bones—V-shaped structures attached beneath the tail. Some of the bones were still articulated in the exact sequence they held while the animal was alive.[1][5]

The exceptional preservation allowed researchers to run rigorous evolutionary analyses. By comparing the Spanish fossil's features with those of other sauropods, the team placed the specimen firmly within the Diplodocus genus, identifying it as a close relative of the North American species Diplodocus hallorum.[2][3]

The newly identified Diplodocus joins an already impressive roster of enormous sauropods known from the Spanish Jurassic. The Teruel region was a coastal plain shaped by rivers, supporting a highly diverse ecosystem that included other massive plant-eaters like Turiasaurus and Losillasaurus.[2][6]

"The fossils of all these dinosaurs, including those of the new Diplodocus specimen, make Teruel a reference place for understanding this great diversity," said Alberto Cobos, managing director of the Dinópolis Foundation and co-author of the study. The fossils are now on display in the dinosaur hall of the Museo Aragonés de Paleontología.[2][3]