First Dinosaur Discovered in Colombia

The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology published on Thursday that Colombian scientists discovered the remains of a dinosaur in the town of Villa de Leyva, in the central department of Boyaca, making it the first discovery of a fossil of this type in Northern South America.

The skull found belongs to a brachiosaurid sauropods, a species who lived about 130 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous. According to the report, the dinosaur was 18-meters tall and weighed 10 tons. The important discovery was made by the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio of Argentina, the Paleontological Research Center and Colombia's National University.

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Despite the fossiliferous richness of this region in Colombia, it is the first time the remains of this kind of species have been found. Scientist only have records of water reptiles and other species that lived in a different era, some people believe that part of what is now Colombia was an island so it would be one of the few examples of a island dinosaur.

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Experts say South America is one of the most important continents for dinosaur discoveries, although numerically less impressive than that of North America. The most significant findings took place in Argentina in 2014 when paleontologists found a skeleton of a huge dinosaur that lived around 77 million years ago, measured 26 meters long and weighed about 65 tons.