SciNews has a post about a new species of titanosaur from Uruguay. Mesetasaurus protector lived between 86 and 72 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. The paper describing this species was published in the journal Ameghiniana.

The new species was a member of a group of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs known as Aeolosaurini, a lineage that flourished across South America during the final chapters of the Cretaceous.

“Titanosaurians constituted the most abundant and diverse sauropod clade during the Late Cretaceous, with several dozen genera recognized, particularly in South America,” said Dr. Matías Soto Núñez from the Universidad de la República and colleagues.

“They were already present by the Valanginian (137 to 132 million years ago), reaching enormous body sizes during the Albian-Cenomanian (113 to 94 million years ago), and were the only sauropods to persist until the end of the Cretaceous (67 million years ago).”