A New Titanosaur from the Late Cretaceous of North Africa — the World’s Smallest Supergiant Sauropod

Titanosaurs were the last and largest of the sauropods, and included the largest land animals of all time, supergiants like Argentinosaurus and Patagotitan that weighed 60 to 80 tons and grew to 100 feet or more in length. A new small titanosaur from the Maastrichtian of Morocco isn't closely related to other titanosaurs from the latest Cretaceous of Africa, Madagascar, or Europe. Instead, it appears to be an argentinosaur, closely related to Argentinosaurus and Patagotitan from the middle Cretaceous of South America. Morocco seems to have had a unique fauna, suggesting a unique evolutionary history. Its dinosaur fauna was the result of millions of years of continental drift, extinction, diversification, and oceanic dispersal- and it may have evolved in isolation from the rest of Africa, a Lost World of dinosaurs that persisted up to the time of the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous. Also, what we can learn about the philosophy of science from Richard Feynman, Wayne Gretzky, and Groucho Marx.