Paralititan

Phylogeny: Dinosauria > Saurischia > Sauropodomorpha > Plateosauria > Massopoda > Sauropoda > Gravisauria > Eusauropoda > Neosauropoda > Macronaria > Somphospondyli > Titanosauria > Lithostrotia > Saltasauridae

Overview: Fossils of large-bodied dinosaurs are far from unheard of in Egypt’s Bahariya Formation, but Paralititan was particularly enormous. Length estimates put it at around eighty-five feet or twenty-six meters long, with a weight of between thirty to fifty tons. It lived during the earliest part of the Late Cretaceous, or about ninety-five million years ago. Sauropods had long since reached such sizes, but Paralititan belonged to a specific group that would give rise to some of the largest terrestrial animals ever recorded - the Titanosauria. Some titanosaurs, including Argentinosaurus and Patagotitan, grew to be even larger than Paralititan. Not all titanosaurs were huge, however. Some of the smallest known sauropods also belonged to this lineage. Within the larger clade Titanosauria, most studies place Paralititan within the family Saltasauridae, making it a somewhat more derived titanosaur. Titanosaurs first appear in the fossil record during the earliest days of the Cretaceous, eventually replacing most other sauropod groups like the diplodocids.

Formally described as a genus in 2001, Paralititan is based on relatively limited fossils, mainly made up of a few vertebrae and a large limb bone. These fossils preserve enough features to reveal how it should be classified, but also enough to get some decent size estimates. Paralititan was probably the largest animal in its local environment, which would’ve primarily been along the northern coast of what is now North Africa. This region would’ve been far wetter than it is today. Paralititan had a wide variety of plants to feed upon growing along tidal flats, lagoons and mangrove swamps. Its generic name, meaning “tidal giant”, refers to this habitat. The specific name, P. stromeri, honors the German paleontologist Ernst Stromer, who first described fossils from the Bahariya Formation. Paralititan notably lived in a region with a high diversity of large predatory theropods. This included the famous Spinosaurus, though it primarily hunted aquatic animals. Other genera like Carcharodontosaurus and the related Tameryraptor were another matter, however.