An unassuming fossil that spent 40 years lying forgotten in a drawer has turned out to be the first dinosaur bone ever found in Antarctica.
The specimen was unearthed in 1985 on James Ross Island, but the team that discovered it was not sure what it was. It was stored away in the geology collection of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge, where it remained until recently.
“A Titanosaur tail bone, found in Antarctica in 1985, was rediscovered in a drawer at BAS, becoming the first dinosaur bone from the continent.”
Dr Mark Evans, the collections manager at BAS, spotted the fossil amongst thousands of specimens brought back from expeditions to Antarctica over the decades. "It's only when you start thinking 'what's in this drawer', that sometimes you come across something and you think, 'Ah, this looks interesting'," he said.
The discovery was recorded in a field notebook kept by geologist Dr Mike Thomson. Alongside a tiny, neat sketch of the fossil dated 9 December 1985 he had written "vertebra of large reptile", noting it was about 10cm wide.
Evans realised the vertebra looked very dinosaur-like, and that the date of its discovery meant it would have been the first dinosaur fossil found on the continent. He called in Prof Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum (NHM) to confirm his discovery.
"Although it's not too much to look at, it actually has a really distinctive shape," Barrett told us, holding the fossil in his hands. He pointed to a hollow on one end of the fossil and then turned it over to reveal a rounded bump at the other. The vertebrae line up to create a series of ball-and-socket joints running from head to tail.
"As soon as I saw it, I knew what we were dealing with… it was a dead cert we were dealing with a Titanosaur," Barrett said. "This is a combination of features that's completely unique to these types of dinosaurs."
The fossil is a tail bone from a type of dinosaur called a Titanosaur – this group contained the largest dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth. More than 100 species of Titanosaur have now been identified around the world. All are four-legged plant eaters, with very long necks that helped them reach up.
The discovery helps to reveal more about how these beasts lived in a part of the world where the fossil record is sparse. When Titanosaurs inhabited Antarctica 80 million years ago, it would have been covered in lush forest.