According to information from the University of Lisbon, the remains that could correspond to a sauropod dinosaur, approximately 12 metres high and 25 metres long, are now being studied by an international research team.

The discovery initially began in 2017 when works on a house in Pombal uncovered fragments of fossilised bones, leading the home owner to contact the research team to investigate further.

According to a report by phys.org, between 1 and 10 August, 2022, Portuguese and Spanish paleontologists working on the site have been unearthing what may be the remains of the largest sauropod dinosaur to be found in Europe.

"It is not usual to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position. This mode of preservation is relatively uncommon in the fossil record of dinosaurs, in particular sauropods, from the Portuguese Upper Jurassic," says Elisabete Malafaia, Postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Ciências ULisboa), Portugal.

"The research in the Monte Agudo paleontological locality confirms that the region of Pombal has an important fossil record of Late Jurassic vertebrates, which in the last decades has provided the discovery of abundant materials very significant for the knowledge of the continental faunas that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula at about 145 million years ago," added Elisabete Malafaia.

Photo: Instituto Dom Luiz (Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon)