Nemegtosaurus

MAIN INFORMATION: Nemegtosaurus (meaning 'Reptile from the Nemegt') was a sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now Mongolia. Measuring an estimated 12.5 m (41 ft) long and weighing 20 t (44,000 lb), it was named after the Nemegt Basin in the Gobi Desert, where the remains — a single skull — were found. The skull resembles diplodocoids in being long and low, with pencil-shaped teeth. However, recent work has shown that Nemegtosaurus is in fact a titanosaur, closely related to animals such as Saltasaurus,[1] Alamosaurus and Rapetosaurus.

Physical Appearance: Nemegtosaurus would look like the most sauropods, a quadruple scaly dense base of a Sauropod, a long, balancing tail bared with no crested details, and the body also lacking any sexual details in them, making it also bare. What made Nemegtosaurus look different, was that its head looked similar to that of a Diplodocus, having a narrower head with a rounded snout. The position of a Nemegtosaurus' long neck was that it was straightened, estimated to over sauropods, being as close to 90 degrees in angle.

Appearance: Nemegtosaurus would have a pale skin color of red on most of its body parts, its belly and front of its neck having a color of desert brown stretched to range on both. Nemegtosaurus would have a color of dark shade of gray on the upper half of its head, the skin around its eyes also being a dark shade, similar to a panda.

Paleontology: The skull of Nemegtosaurus comes from the same beds as the titanosaur Opisthocoelicaudia, which is known from a skeleton lacking the neck and skull. Originally, the referral of Nemegtosaurus to Diplodocoidea and Opisthocoelicaudia to Camarasauridae argued that the two represented different species. Both of these genera represent advanced titanosaurians, however, raising the possibility that the two are in fact the same animal.[1] Relocation of the Nemegtosaurus type locality in Central Sayr and discovery of postcrania comparable to those Opisthocoelicauda holotype at the Nemegtosaurus holotype locality has discussed the possibility that Opisthocoelicauda is a junior synonym. Consequently, Opisthocoelicaudiinae would be a junior synonym of Nemegtosauridae.[2] In 2019, Alexander O. Averianov and Alexey V. Lopatin in a paper describing new specimens of Nemegtosaurus reanalyzed the argument for synonymy and determined that the taxa were not synonymous because shared characters between the species were either difficult to determine or based on comparisons with a specimen which actually belonged to Nemegtosaurus.[3]

Nemegtosaurus is found in the Maastrichtian aged (66-72 Ma) Nemegt Formation, which makes it one of the last sauropods on earth. There, on a lush river delta flowing through the ancient sands of the Gobi Desert, Nemegtosaurus would have coexisted with animals like the ornithomimid Gallimimus, the alvarezsaurid Mononykus, the velociraptorine Adasaurus, and the giant, saber-clawed therizinosaur Therizinosaurus. It also lived alongside the tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus. With its possible body length of 12 metres (39 ft),[6] an adult Nemegtosaurus may have been able to defend against Tarbosaurus, but juveniles would have been vulnerable.

Like other titanosaurs, the teeth are slender pencil-like structures that are ground down at a sharp angle to produce a chisel-like tip. The diet of Nemegtosaurus is unknown, however. There are no plant fossils from the Gobi, but during the Late Cretaceous, flowering plants became increasingly diverse, although in many environments ferns and conifers were still more common.

Settings: This would take place on an endless, sandy desert related to the Gobi Desert resorting to some canyons in this landscape of Nemegt Formation.

Size: Nemegtosaurus would measure an average of over 12-13 meters in length, with its straightened long neck making Nemegtosaurus a height of over 23-23.6 meters tall.