Scientists have discovered 100-million-year-old dinosaur fossils in the West Khasi Hills of Meghalaya.

A team from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) found more than 25 disarticulated and mostly fragmentary bone specimens of a sauropod in the region. Some of the fragments were of different sizes. The best-preserved fossils were that of the dinosaur’s limb bones, which measured 55cm long.

The GSI team noted that this is the first record of sauropods of probable Titanosaurian origin being discovered in the region. The yet-to-be-published findings make Meghalaya the fifth state in India after Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu to report sauropod bones with Titanosaurian affinity.

Sauropods had very long necks, long tails and small heads relative to the rest of their body. They walked on four pillar-like legs and lived off plants. They were notable for their enormous size and were one of the largest animals to have ever lived on land. Titanosaurs were a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs who lived across Africa, Asia, South America, North America, Europe, Australia and Antarctica.

According to the scientists, dinosaur bones from Meghalaya were reported by the GSI in 2001 but were too fragmentary and ill-preserved to understand their taxonomic identification. The current cache of fossils was uncovered during fieldwork from 2019-2020 and 2020-2021. The researchers assume the fossils are from the Late Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago, but noted that their conclusions are drawn from preliminary studies and that detailed investigations are ongoing.

The robustness of the bone, the difference in curvature in the lateral margins and the proximal border being relatively straight are some of the morphological characters which hint at Titanosaurid affinity, according to researchers. Another incomplete limb bone measuring 45cm in length is also comparable with the limb bones of the Titanosauriform clade, they said.

Titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs were the most diverse and abundant large-bodied terrestrial herbivores in the Southern Hemisphere landmasses during the Cretaceous Period, but they were not endemic to the Gondwanan landmasses, the researchers said.

Gondwanaland is the southern half of the Pangaean supercontinent that existed some 300 million years ago and was composed of the major continental blocks of South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, India, Antarctica and Australia.