Landscape view from the excavation site.
Photo: Amalia Villafañe
A German-Argentine team of palaeontologists led by dinosaur expert Oliver Rauhut of the Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns (SNSB — the Bavarian State Natural History Collections) has discovered a new long-necked dinosaur, Bicharracosaurus dionidei, from the Late Jurassic of Argentina, dating to about 155 million years before creationism's mythical 'Creation Week'. The team's findings have recently been published in PeerJ.
Dinosaurs are such a problem for creationists, and the evidence for their existence is so overwhelming, that they cannot get away with the usual denial of inconvenient facts. Besides, children find them fascinating and these are exactly the people creationists need to recruit into their cult before they acquire the knowledge and wisdom that are the effective antidotes to creationist brainwashing.
Their problem is simple. According to the childish mythology they are required to defend, nothing died until Eve's 'sin', when their supposedly omnipotent god somehow lost control of its creation and things began to go wrong. That means they must pretend that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, and that dinosaurs either survived the mythical global flood or were all exterminated in it. But that merely raises more questions. Why would a creator god go to the trouble of creating dinosaurs only to destroy them for something in which they played no part? And why are there no human fossils, artefacts or footprints in the same undisturbed geological strata as non-avian dinosaurs?
But creationism is not about following evidence or answering awkward questions of the kind, “if that is true, why do we find this?” It is about believing what one is told to believe, or being threatened with hellfire and eternal torture for asking the wrong questions.
The result of this hopeless muddle is that creationists are forced into ever more desperate claims. They must persuade their followers that dinosaurs were alive only a few thousand years ago, by presenting the Paluxy River “human footprints” as evidence, despite their having long since collapsed into misidentified dinosaur tracks, erosional marks and dubious carvings. They also repeat the claim that scientists found fresh blood and soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, or that dinosaur remains have been “carbon dated” to only a few thousand years old — claims that depend on misrepresentation, contamination, or the simple fact that radiocarbon dating is the wrong tool for fossils tens of millions of years old.
But the inconvenient facts remain.
And the facts are that all non-avian dinosaurs died out in the Cretaceous-Palaeogene mass extinction about 66 million years ago, tens of millions of years before humans existed. The avian dinosaurs survived as birds, but the great terrestrial dinosaur lineages disappeared. Meanwhile, palaeontologists continue to dig up new fossils which confirm that dinosaurs were a highly diverse group of reptiles and the dominant large land animals for vastly longer than humans, or even placental mammals, have existed.
Needless to say, there were no human footprints, stone tools, fresh blood, or conveniently misplaced creationist anachronisms associated with the remains of Bicharracosaurus dionidei. What the researchers found was something far more useful: the partial skeleton of an adult sauropod from the Late Jurassic Cañadón Calcáreo Formation in Patagonia, including more than 30 vertebrae from the neck, back and tail, together with ribs and part of the pelvis.
At an estimated length of about 20 metres, B. dionidei was smaller than the very largest sauropods, some of which reached around 40 metres. But its scientific importance lies not in record-breaking size, but in where it fits in the sauropod family tree. The animal appears to have combined features seen in both brachiosaurids and diplodocids, and phylogenetic analyses suggest it was a macronarian sauropod with possible brachiosaurid affinities. If that interpretation is confirmed, it would make B. dionidei the first known Jurassic brachiosaurid from South America.
It lived on the southern supercontinent Gondwana, before South America and Africa had fully separated, and it helps fill a significant gap in the fossil record of Late Jurassic sauropods from the Southern Hemisphere. Much of what palaeontologists know about these animals has come from North America, Europe and the famous Tendaguru beds of Tanzania, so a new Patagonian form provides important evidence for how these giant herbivores evolved and dispersed across the ancient southern continents.
What Were Sauropod Dinosaurs?The discovery of B. dionidei and its significance for understanding the evolutionary history of sauropods was the subject of an SNSB news release:Sauropods were the great long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged herbivorous dinosaurs that included famous genera such as Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus and, later, the enormous titanosaurs. They belonged to the saurischian, or “lizard-hipped”, branch of the dinosaur family tree, and were part of the wider sauropodomorph lineage. True sauropods appeared by the Late Triassic and diversified during the Jurassic, becoming some of the most spectacular animals ever to walk on land. [1]
Brachiosaurus
Diplodocus
Their basic body plan was simple but highly successful: a massive barrel-shaped body, pillar-like legs, a long balancing tail, a small head, and an often astonishingly long neck. Most were herbivores, using their necks to reach vegetation over a wide feeding area without needing to move their huge bodies constantly. Different groups probably fed in different ways, from high browsing among trees to lower feeding on ferns, horsetails, cycads and other Mesozoic vegetation. [2]
Sauropods included the largest land animals known. Their gigantism was made possible by a suite of evolutionary adaptations rather than by any single feature. These included lightened, air-filled vertebrae, a bird-like system of respiratory air sacs, rapid growth, column-like weight-bearing limbs, and relatively small heads that reduced the weight carried at the end of the neck. These traits allowed some sauropods to reach sizes far beyond those of the largest land mammals. [3]
They were not all the same, however. Diplodocids such as Diplodocus tended to have especially long tails and relatively low-slung bodies. Brachiosaurids such as Brachiosaurus had longer forelimbs and a more elevated shoulder region, giving them a giraffe-like profile. Titanosaurs, which became especially diverse in the Cretaceous, included some of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered and were among the last sauropods before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. [2]
Sauropod fossils have been found on every continent, showing that they were a globally successful group for more than 100 million years. Their bones, footprints, eggs and nesting sites all point to real animals living in real ecosystems, evolving, diversifying and eventually, apart from the bird lineage of dinosaurs, disappearing in the end-Cretaceous extinction. That record is exactly what palaeontologists expect from descent with modification over deep time, and exactly what creationism has to misrepresent or ignore. [2]
Palaeontologists Discover New Long-Necked Dinosaur in Patagonia
Palaeontology, Munich, 16.04.2026: A German-Argentine team of paleontologists led by SNSB dinosaur expert Oliver Rauhut has discovered a new long-necked dinosaur, Bicharracosaurus dionidei, from the Upper Jurassic period in Argentina, dating back approximately 155 million years. Long-necked dinosaur fossils from the Jurassic period in the Southern Hemisphere are rare, so the new fossil contributes to a better understanding of the evolution of these giant herbivores on the southern continents. The researchers have now published their findings in the journal PeerJ.
With their massive bodies, long necks and tails, and tiny heads, long-necked dinosaurs (sauropods) embody the image of a typical dinosaur for many people. Sauropods include the largest known land animals of all time, with body lengths of up to 40 meters; the best-known examples are Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus.
The new long-necked dinosaur from southern Argentina is not quite as large: the researchers estimate the length of Bicharracosaurus dionidei to be around 20 meters. Parts of its spine were recovered, including over 30 neck, back, and tail vertebrae, several ribs, and a fragment of the pelvic bone. The structure of the bones indicates that the remains belong to an adult animal that lived on the southern continent of Gondwana around 155 million years ago. The fossil is interesting to researchers in many ways: it combines a mix of characteristics from both brachiosaurids and diplodocids. For instance, some skeletal parts of Bicharracosaurus show similarities to the African Giraffatitan, a brachiosaurid from Tanzania. Other features, particularly those of its dorsal vertebrae, resemble Diplodocus and its closest relatives from North America.Our phylogenetic analyses of the skeleton indicate that Bicharracosaurus dionidei was related to the Brachiosauridae, which would make it the first Brachiosauridae from the Jurassic of South America.
Alexandra Reutter, first author.
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Munich, Germany.
The paleontologist analyzed the remains of the new dinosaur as part of her doctoral thesis.Our knowledge of the evolution of sauropods from the Late Jurassic has so far been based almost entirely on numerous fossil findings from North America and other sites in the Northern Hemisphere. For a long time, there was only a single significant site on the southern continents, in Tanzania. The fossil site in the Argentine province of Chubut, from which Bicharracosaurus dionidei originates, provides us with important comparative material, allowing us to continuously supplement and reevaluate our understanding of the evolutionary history of these animals, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.
Professor Oliver Rauhut, senior author
Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie
Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns
Munich, Germany.
The first remains of Bicharracosaurus dionidei were discovered by shepherd Dionide Mesa on his farm, the researchers chose the species name of the new dinosaur in his honor. The genus name is derived from “bicharraco,” colloquial Spanish for “big animal”. The fossil comes from the Cañadón Calcáreo rock formation in the Patagonian province of Chubut and is housed at the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio in Trelew, Argentina.
Publication:
Landscape view from the excavation site.Photo: Amalia Villafañe
Fossil extraction of Bicharracosaurus dionidei in the field.
Photo: Pablo Puerta.Dionide Mesa, discoverer of the Bicharracosaurus fossils.
Photo: María Agustinho.
Bicharracosaurus vertebrae under preparation at the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio in Trelew, Argentinien.Photo: Amalia Villafañe.Alexandra Reutter studying Bicharracosaurus fossils in the collection of the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio.Photo: Amalia Villafañe.
So here, once again, we have real science doing what creationism cannot do: adding detail, correcting gaps, refining classifications and building a coherent picture from evidence. Bicharracosaurus dionidei is not an isolated curiosity or an inexplicable anomaly. It is another piece in the immense jigsaw of dinosaur evolution, fitting into a wider pattern of sauropod diversification, dispersal and adaptation across Jurassic Gondwana.
Nothing about it requires magic. Nothing about it suggests a recent creation, a global flood, or humans sharing the world with giant Jurassic sauropods. Its age, anatomy, geological context and evolutionary relationships all make sense within the framework of deep time, plate tectonics, common ancestry and descent with modification. Those are the ideas that allow palaeontologists to make sense of the evidence, test competing hypotheses and revise their conclusions when new fossils are found.
Creationism, by contrast, contributes nothing to that process. It did not predict Bicharracosaurus; it does not explain its relationship to other sauropods; it cannot account for its presence in Late Jurassic Patagonia; and it cannot explain why its fossils occur in the strata where evolutionary biology and geology predict they should be, and not alongside humans, modern animals, or the debris of a recent global flood.
That is why discoveries like this are so awkward for creationists. They are not merely isolated facts to be dismissed or distorted; they are part of a vast, mutually reinforcing body of evidence from anatomy, stratigraphy, biogeography and evolutionary history. Every new fossil like Bicharracosaurus dionidei adds another thread to that evidence, and every thread runs through deep time, not through Bronze Age mythology.
As usual, then, the contrast could hardly be clearer. Science follows the evidence and discovers a new sauropod from Jurassic Patagonia. Creationism starts with a conclusion and then has to explain away the evidence. One approach produces knowledge; the other produces excuses.
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