The fossil material was unearthed at the La Tejería site in El Castellar, in the province of Teruel, an region that has become one of Europe’s most productive windows into Mesozoic life. Over the course of careful excavation, the team recovered fourteen exceptionally preserved caudal vertebrae, the bones of the dinosaur’s tail, along with several chevron bones, the small paired elements that hang beneath the tail vertebrae and help protect blood vessels and support musculature. Although skull material and limb bones were not part of the recovered assemblage, the quality and diagnostic character of the tail bones proved sufficient for the researchers to make a confident identification at the genus level, something rarely achievable with fragmentary sauropod remains.

Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, a PhD student in biodiversity and evolutionary biology at Fundación Dinópolis and lead author of the study, described the slow accumulation of evidence that led the team to their conclusion. From the earliest stages of the osteological study, he explained, the researchers noticed strong similarities between the Spanish bones and several diplodocine sauropods. As the anatomical work progressed, they began to identify a combination of features characteristic of Diplodocus species, and subsequent evolutionary analyses repeatedly pointed in the same direction. With each new result, he said, the picture became clearer: the team was looking at a Diplodocus. He added that the outcome of the dig represents some of the strongest palaeontological evidence yet found for episodes of dispersal and faunal exchange between North America and Europe across the proto-Atlantic Ocean during the Late Jurassic, and that the discovery allows a better understanding of Iberian Mesozoic ecosystems and the diversity of sauropod dinosaurs that inhabited the European Jurassic.

The identification rested on a suite of distinctive anatomical features preserved in the vertebrae and chevrons. The tail bones display large pneumatic cavities, air-filled spaces that lightened the skeleton in these colossal animals, a hallmark of many sauropod lineages but expressed in a particularly characteristic form in Diplodocus. The underside of the tail vertebrae bears deep longitudinal grooves, and the chevron bones are distinctly forked, with unique medial fossae, depressions on their inner surfaces, that match the condition seen in North American Diplodocus material. The vertebral centra, the main cylindrical bodies of the vertebrae, are elongated and lack the lateral ridges found in many related diplodocids. Taken together, this combination of traits distinguished the Spanish specimen from other European diplodocids and aligned it with the Diplodocus lineage.

To test the anatomical assessment rigorously, the research team combined traditional comparative anatomy with advanced phylogenetic analyses, employing both maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference methods. These computational approaches evaluate how anatomical characters are distributed across known taxa to reconstruct evolutionary relationships. In both analytical frameworks, the Spanish specimen was confidently placed within the genus Diplodocus, and more specifically as a close relative of Diplodocus hallorum, one of the largest and longest species within the genus. The convergence of anatomical and statistical evidence is what gives the identification its strength, since isolated tail vertebrae can be notoriously difficult to assign to a precise genus among the many similar diplodocid sauropods known from the Late Jurassic.

The Spanish Diplodocus dates to approximately 150 million years ago, near the end of the Jurassic Period, a time that corresponds closely with the age of the Morrison Formation faunas in North America. Its presence in Europe provides compelling evidence that dinosaurs could migrate between the two landmasses during the Late Jurassic. The most likely mechanism, according to the researchers, involved temporary land bridges that emerged as the proto-North Atlantic Ocean underwent regressive phases, periods in which sea levels fell and exposed connections between now-separated continental areas. Such episodic corridors would have allowed herds of giant herbivores, and presumably the predators and smaller animals that followed them, to move between North America and Europe, explaining how a genus once thought to be endemic to the American West could appear on the Iberian Peninsula.

Co-author Dr Alberto Cobos, managing director of Fundación Dinópolis, emphasized the sheer scale of the animal. The Diplodocus from El Castellar was approximately 25 meters long, comparable in size to its North American relatives, making it another of the giant sauropods of the Spanish Jurassic. He noted that it joins other enormous sauropod dinosaurs from Teruel with very different characteristics from those of diplodocids, such as Turiasaurus and Losillasaurus, among others. The fossils of all these dinosaurs, including those of the new Diplodocus specimen, he said, make Teruel a reference place for understanding this great diversity. The coexistence of a diplodocid giant alongside turiasaurian sauropods of entirely different build suggests that Late Jurassic Iberian ecosystems supported multiple niches for gigantic herbivores, perhaps with the different lineages specializing in different vegetation or feeding heights.

The broader fossil record of the region reinforces that picture of ecological richness. The area where the specimen was found has yielded numerous dinosaur fossils representing sauropods, theropods, stegosaurs, and ornithopods, indicating that these ancient coastal environments supported complex and diverse ecosystems. During the Late Jurassic, eastern Iberia lay along the margins of the expanding Atlantic, with shallow seas, coastal plains, and floodplains that periodically preserved the remains of the animals that roamed them. The addition of Diplodocus to this faunal list strengthens the resemblance between Iberian and North American Late Jurassic assemblages, supporting the idea of a broadly shared dinosaur fauna across the two regions rather than isolated provincial communities.

Diplodocus itself occupies a special place in the history of palaeontology and popular culture. First discovered in the United States in 1878, the genus is famous for its enormous length of up to 25 meters, its long whip-like tail, and its relatively small head perched at the end of a gracefully curved neck. Throughout the early twentieth century, casts of Diplodocus skeletons were displayed in leading natural history museums around the world, making the animal a symbol of global palaeontology and a beloved icon of prehistoric life. Its frequent appearances in exhibitions, books, and audiovisual productions about dinosaurs have made it one of the best-known of all the so-called terrible lizards among the general public, which is precisely why the confirmation of its presence in Europe carries such resonance both scientifically and culturally.

The fossils themselves are now on display for future research and public education in the dinosaur hall of the Museo Aragonés de Paleontología at Dinópolis in Teruel, a city in eastern Spain situated roughly between Madrid and Valencia. There, visitors can see the tangible evidence of an animal that lived 150 million years ago on a planet whose geography differed profoundly from today’s, when the Atlantic was still young and narrow and continents remained within reach of wandering giants. For palaeontologists, the specimen opens new questions about how many other supposedly North American dinosaur lineages may await discovery in European rocks, and about the frequency and duration of the dispersal events that connected the faunas of two continents. For the moment, the tail bones from La Tejería stand as the first physical proof that Diplodocus, the archetypal giant of the American Jurassic, also called Europe home.

Subject of Research: First discovery of the sauropod dinosaur genus Diplodocus outside North America, from Late Jurassic deposits in Teruel, Spain

Article Title: First ever find of a Diplodocus outside of North America

Article References: First ever find of a Diplodocus outside of North America. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Diplodocus, sauropod, Late Jurassic, Teruel, Spain, paleontology, Morrison Formation, faunal dispersal, proto-Atlantic, vertebrate paleontology, dinosaurs, Iberia

Archaeopteryx, preserved in the exquisite 150-million-year-old Solnhofen limestones of southern Germany, remains the most phylogenetically basal bird relevant to understanding the evolutionary leap from terrestrial dinosaur to powered flyer. Although the slightly younger Chinese bird Baminornis has narrowed the gap, Archaeopteryx still brackets the critical transition better than any other taxon. The authors argue that interpreting its anatomy requires separating the signal of its environment from the signal of its ancestry, especially when compared with the non-volant avialan Anchiornis, which lived in the hot, humid forests of the Yanliao Biota rather than the bushy, conifer-dominated, seasonally wet Solnhofen archipelago.

The case for flight rests on a suite of features that distinguish Archaeopteryx sharply from its closest non-flying relatives. Its feathered wing surfaces are proportionately larger than in Anchiornis, Zhenyuanlong, or Caudipteryx, and its primary feathers show vane asymmetry within the range of living flying birds. Crucially, newly described specimens, especially the best-preserved and painstakingly prepared Chicago specimen FMNH PA 830, preserve large tracts of tertial feathers that close the gap between the wing and the body created by the elongated humerus, a gap that would have disrupted lift in non-avian pennaraptorans. Bone density and humeral cross-sectional geometry also fall within the range of extant volant birds, most closely resembling those that use short-distance flapping flight.

Yet the flight was unmistakably limited. The shoulder joint, with its laterally oriented glenoid on a fused, axe-shaped scapulocoracoid, restricted the upward sweep of the wing, capping the power of the downstroke. No specimen preserves an ossified sternum, the anchor of the main flight muscles in modern birds, and the long, shallow deltopectoral crest of the humerus suggests low-frequency wingbeats akin to flap-gliding. The authors reconstruct a flight stroke powered differently than in living birds, possibly involving the deltoid complex for the upstroke and a pectoralis attaching to a coracoclavicular membrane or short cartilaginous sternum. As a result, Archaeopteryx most likely could not launch from a standstill; it probably needed a running start, an elevated perch, or the reliable coastal headwinds of its island habitat, a trick many modern seabirds still exploit for bounding flight.

The hindlimbs tell an equally nuanced story. The leg proportions match terrestrial rather than cursorial locomotion, similar to galliform birds that run only when threatened, while preserved foot pads and scales indicate soft tissues predominantly adapted for walking. But the first toe, the hallux, was reversed, absent in closely related non-avian dinosaurs, giving the foot an incipient grasping ability suited to gripping branches and rocks. Analysis of pedal claw curvature remains contentious, with different quantification methods yielding terrestriality, arboreality, or both, and the authors suggest the claws may simply have served multiple roles. Digit II, notably, lacks the hyperextension features of dromaeosaurids, removing another supposed link to raptorial behavior.

The hands, however, were fully equipped for climbing. Curved, laterally compressed manual claws with well-developed flexor tubercles, originally inherited from grasping predatory ancestors, were likely exapted for scansorial locomotion. Soft tissue traces in the Chicago specimen reveal that the major and minor digits were separate rather than ligamentously bound, and the well-preserved articular surfaces of the minor digit indicate it was mobile, supporting a grasping function while the rigid major digit held the flight surface. The authors also revive the possibility of wing-assisted incline running, the behavior in which living birds flap their way up steep slopes, though they caution that Archaeopteryx’s shoulder musculature differed enough that any such behavior would have deviated from the modern version.

Diet remains one of the most provocative questions. No stomach contents are known, but the Chicago Archaeopteryx preserves three feeding-related structures previously unknown outside birds: a primitive bill-tip organ inferred from neurovascular openings at the tip of the snout, choanal oral papillae, and an ossified basihyal indicating a mobile tongue. Together these point to precision feeding on small, energy-rich foods such as insects, seeds, and grains, in stark contrast to the whole-prey carnivory of its closest relatives. Reduced tooth counts and unserrated, basally bulbous teeth reinforce the shift. The seasonal Solnhofen climate, marked by dry spells punctuated by bursts of rain that triggered germination and insect emergence, would have favored exactly the kind of omnivorous generalist that could exploit shifting, multi-trophic food resources through the year.

Life history adds a final layer of strangeness. All known specimens fit a single growth curve and were actively growing at death, suggesting protracted development like that of other early birds, with sexual maturity reached before somatic maturity. Even the smallest, most immature individual, the Chicago specimen, preserves fully developed wing feathers, implying that flight was possible from early in life. Reproduction must be inferred from relatives: ground nests with partially embedded, colored, asymmetrical eggs and precocial hatchlings seem most likely, with nesting close to foraging grounds given limited aerial range. The scleral ring indicates a diurnal, bright-light-adapted animal, and the complete plumage, with eleven primaries and open, fluffy body feathers, may have been black and white, a disruptive pattern suited to open, well-lit terrain.

Perhaps the most haunting insight concerns how Archaeopteryx came to be fossilized at all. It is the most common theropod in the Solnhofen limestones, while every other theropod is known from a single specimen, and the authors attribute this not to abundance but to the animal’s large wings, which acted as sails. All the preserved individuals were immature and presumably inexperienced, suggesting they were caught in storms and blown out over the sea, their feathered airfoils carrying them fatally seaward. Even in death, the wings that made it the first flyer on Earth shaped its fate. In life, the review concludes, Archaeopteryx occupied a unique ecological niche that no living bird or non-avian dinosaur can replicate, spending its time on the ground, in the foliage, and in the air, its body a mosaic of inheritance and innovation shaped by the very dawn of flight.

Subject of Research: The ecology, locomotion, diet, and life history of the earliest known flying dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, from the Late Jurassic Solnhofen limestones.

Article Title: The ecology of Archaeopteryx

Article References: O’Connor, J. K., & Clark, A. D. (2026). The ecology of Archaeopteryx. Discover Ecology, 2(1), Article 12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44396-026-00026-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44396-026-00026-z

Keywords: Archaeopteryx, paleontology, origin of flight, Solnhofen, Late Jurassic, avian evolution, Anchiornis, wing-assisted incline running, paleoecology, feathered dinosaurs, Chicago specimen, early birds