The tail club was a rare trait that did not survive beyond the Pleistocene Era, which ended about 11,700 years ago.
The last species to have teeth are glyptodonts, the large dome-shaped armadillos of South America and an extinct species of turtles from South America and Australasia. Previously, only two species of dinosaurs had tail clubs. Ankylosaurs are four-legged armored tanks and long-necked sauropods known as ankylosaurs.
Of the approximately 250 species of sauropods, only three are known to have tail clubs. Those three are from the basal (or early form) sauropods of China. Thanks to this, that number has now increased to four. research Published in September 2024.
New sauropod with tail club
New member of Tail Club, Cortasaurus yamapaliensis that It was also a basal sauropod that originated from the Jurassic period of India, approximately 201.4 to 145 million years ago.
The species itself is relatively new to science, having been discovered in the 1970s. Geologist and paleontologist P. Yadagiri first named the fossil in 1988. fossil It consisted of approximately 12 people of various ages at a site in south-central India. The site produced more than 800 vertebrate fossils that remain in the collection of the Geological Survey of Southern India in Hyderabad.
Jeffrey Wilson Mantilla is a co-author, professor, and curator at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology. He reviewed approximately 400 fossils. K. yamapaliensis In 2001, I realized that 4 was a tail club. This led lead author Tariq Abdul Kareem to conduct the final study on the tail club.
Kareem explains: “Basal sauropods make up about 10% of all known sauropods. However, all known sauropod tail clubs originate from this basal taxon. “As odd as this distribution makes it seem, we don’t know much about the relationships of basal sauropods, and even less about what these tail clubs were used for.”
Read more: How did sauropods evolve to such gigantic sizes?
tail club research
Most of the Tail Club’s research has focused on Ankylosaurus. It was widely believed that their tail clubs were defensive weapons, but in 2022 paper Challenged the hypothesis that tail clubs may have been used in combat between ankylosaurs during mating season.
Isn’t this also the case? K. yamapaliensis? The difficulty in basic sauropod research is due to the small number and fragmentation of fossils available, Kareem says. This makes it difficult to determine my specific usage.
And why is defense the main purpose? At about 36 feet long, the dinosaur was substantial. But fossils of coexisting predators have not yet been found in India, Kareem points out.
The team turned to CT scans to find out more about: K. yamapaliensis Tail Club. From the outside, “there are indications that these tail clubs are basically vertebrae that have been fused together and then deformed,” Kareem says.
If it is truly a deformed vertebra, a CT scan will show the neural tube, or “the internal canal through which the spinal cord passes,” he explains. That’s exactly what they discovered.
Read more: Dinosaurs who fought with their tails
fossil growth rings
But they also found evidence of potential growth rings. This is a surprising revelation if true, since most growth rings are known from other parts of dinosaur skeletons, such as the femur or ribs.
The research team was cautious about the findings and said further research was needed. However, evidence suggests that the tail club K. yamapaliensis As the animal grew, its shape changed along its growth rings.
“One of the important aspects of this study is the fact that the tail clubs sampled come from: K. yamapaliensis “It includes both smaller and larger individuals,” says Kristi Curry Rogers, a vertebrate paleontologist at Macalester College who was not involved in the study. “These data allow us to understand how the tail club has changed throughout life and how it has integrated into the vertebrae at the tip of the tail.”
Most of what we know about sauropods comes from the new sauropods, the neopods. This species evolved millions of years later than its primitive form. K. yamapaliensis. Among them are giants that many of us recognize from museums or movies, such as: Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurusand diplodocus.
But studying these later species “tells us little about their early evolutionary history before they became cosmopolitan and reached extreme body sizes,” says Kareem. This is why we study the following early forms: K. yamapaliensis Very important.
of course, “Cortasaurus The tail club is just one example of the unique fossils India has to offer,” adds Kareem.
Read more: Dinosaur size didn’t make it one size fits all
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