An area of the Thar Desert in India’s Rajasthan state where 167-million-year-old dicraeosaurid fossils were found.Credit...Krishna Kumar
The New York Times' Trilobite column has a story about a new dinosaur from India. The animal, called Tharosaurus indicus, is an early member of the dicraeosaurids, which are sauropods. It lived about 167 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. The fossils were discovered in the Thar Desert, located in the northwest of India. The region contains part of the border between India and Pakistan. T. indicus represents the earliest record of both dicraeosaurids and diplodocoids. The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Dicraeosaurids like Tharosaurus indicus are part of a larger group called diplodocoid sauropods. These dinosaurs are characterized by their elongated bodies and necks. They are ubiquitous among fossil beds from the Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous periods. The dicraeosaurids are distinguished by spikes on the back of their necks, and have been unearthed in Africa, the Americas and China. But no such fossils had been documented in India before, said Sunil Bajpai, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and an author of the study. Earlier theories suggested that India was inhabited only by the predecessors of diplodocoids.
But Dr. Bajpai and other researchers wondered if there was more to the story. In 2018, the Geological Survey of India and IIT Roorkee began a collaboration aimed at systematically exploring and excavating fossils near Jaisalmer, a major city in the Thar Desert. Initial finds included now-extinct hybodont sharks and marine bony fish. Then in 2019, the excavation of dinosaur fossils got underway, yielding the eventual discovery of Tharosaurus indicus.
