Paleontologists have unearthed the first known Diplodocus specimen outside of North America at a site in La Tejería, Teruel, Spain, fundamentally challenging long-held assumptions about Late Jurassic dinosaur distribution and transatlantic faunal migration approximately 150 million years ago.
Rewriting the Late Jurassic Paleobiogeography Map
For over a century, every documented specimen of the iconic 25-meter-long sauropod Diplodocus was tethered to a single geographic cradle: the Morrison Formation in the western United States. That paradigm shifted dramatically when researchers from the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis published their findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, detailing the recovery of one of the most complete diplodocid skeletons ever found in Europe.
The excavation yielded 14 exceptionally well-preserved caudal vertebrae from the tail, alongside several V-shaped hemal arches and chevrons. Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, an evolutionary biodiversity paleontologist at the University of Valencia and author of the paper, noted the methodical nature of the discovery. “From the earliest stages of the osteological study, we observed strong similarities with several diplodocine sauropods,” Sánchez Fenollosa explained. “As we examined the anatomy more closely, we began to identify a combination of traits characteristic of Diplodocus species. Then, as we ran different evolutionary analyses, they continued to point in the same direction. With each new result, the picture became clearer: we were looking at a Diplodocus.”
The Proto-Atlantic Land Bridge Mechanism
The presence of this giant sauropod in the eastern Iberian Peninsula serves as concrete physical evidence of dispersal events and faunal exchange between North America and Europe. According to researchers, these massive terrestrial animals likely migrated across temporary land bridges that emerged when the proto-North Atlantic experienced episodes of sea regression.
Alberto Cobos, chief executive of the Dinópolis Foundation, pointed out that the Spanish specimen closely resembles its North American relative, Diplodocus hallorum. This discovery positions the El Castellar specimen alongside other massive Jurassic sauropods native to Teruel, such as Turiasaurus and Losillasaurus, though those genera exhibit vastly different anatomical characteristics from diplodocids.
Ecosystem Complexity in the Iberian Mesozoic
The fossil beds have consistently yielded a rich mix of sauropods, theropods, stegosaurs, and ornithopods. This diverse assemblage indicates that the coastal environments of Jurassic Europe supported highly complex ecosystems capable of sustaining multiple types of dinosaurs.
For researchers analyzing dinosaur distribution dynamics, the find demands a rigorous re-evaluation of how efficiently these massive organisms could traverse intercontinental boundaries when tectonic and sea-level fluctuations aligned. The unearthed fossils are now housed and publicly exhibited in the dinosaur gallery of the Aragonese Museum of Paleontology at Dinópolis in Teruel.
