ALAMOSAURUS

Alamosaurus sanjuanensis

Etymology: San Juan's poplar lizard

Nickname: "Ala" or "Alam"

Classification: Sauropoda, Saltasauridae

Diet: Herbivore

Size: 30 meters long

Provenance: Ojo Alamo Formation, New Mexico, USA - Late Cretaceous, Maastrichtian stage, 67 - 66 million years ago

Movie appearances: Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Alamosaurus sanjuanensis is a species of saltasaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Cretaceous period, living very close to the end of the period.

The eyes of Alamosaurus are usually of a dark yellow color. It had a mouth full of thin teeth adapted to strip off plant material, not being able to chew, relying on its enormous gut to break down the vegetation it ate.

Alamosaurus roams its natural environment in herds. This dinosaur has been observed enjoying aquatic plants, using its long neck to pluck them out of the water surface or even from below the water itself.

Living back in the Cretaceous of North America, Alamosaurus is known to tower over most other animals it coexisted with, with only contemporaneous flying animals such as Quetzalcoatlus, and potentially Arambourgiania, reaching bigger heights through their flight alone. Alamosaurus was resurrected by Biosyn in the early 2000s, and placed in their special sanctuary located in Italy by the early 2020s, where these were often observed hanging around the lacustrine regions. Alamosaurus may possibly still be living in the Biosyn Sanctuary, and potentially some individuals, escaping from illegal black market, could be roaming freely elsewhere, in the wild.

FILM vs. REALITY

DISCLAIMER: Alamosaurus does not show up in the Jurassic Park films, and it instead, here, represents a plausible substitute to the films' Dreadnoughtus. The films' Dreadnoughtus differs from the real life Dreadnoughtus in a few traits. One of the striking is its absolutely enormous size, easily reaching about 50 meters long, way larger than that of any other known fossil sauropod. Although Dreadnoughtus, in real life, is known only from a single immature fossil specimen that's estimated to belong to an individual that measured around 26 meters long, a fully skeletally mature adult probably didn't reach such huge dimensions, with a more parsimonious 40 meter maximum length being more plausible (which would probably make it one of the, if not the, largest land animal ever, with a mass of 190 tonnes, nearing that of the absolute largest blue whales). In the Jurassic World: Dominion prologue, Dreadnoughtus is seen coexisting with the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus, which would be inconsistent with the fact that it lived in South America, while the previously mentioned pterosaur is north american.

Alamosaurus provides a more realistic replacement, as this was a gigantic sauropod that did coexist with Quetzalcoatlus, with maximum length estimates reaching about 30 meters, which corresponds to a very large sauropod indeed, though not as large as a projected adult Dreadnoughtus size. The real life Dreadnoughtus and Alamosaurus would have more slender front limbs, ending in horseshoe-shaped paws, instead of elephantine-like feet. Both Dreadnougthus and Alamosaurus are giant titanosaurs that might have been related, though its still disputed. Also disputed is whether or not they would have had claws on their front feet, particularly a large thumb claw, as front feet in titanosaurs are poorly preserved so which features were absent or present are difficult to know for sure. The back feet of both dinosaurs were probably ending in large curved claws, not the spaced out elephant-like nails shown in the film counterpart. Realistically too, the skull and face would probably be less blocky with a simple wide mouth, where teeth are distributed back in the mouthline, instead Dreadnougthus and Alamosaurus would have a more slender face, with teeth more concentrated to the tips of the mouth, with the back of the mouthline possibly encased behind cheek tissue, as would be expected for more derived titanosaurs. It is generally unclear what specific vegetation giant titanosaurs, like Dreadnougthus and Alamosaurus, were eating, and although feasting on high canopy would be the most plausible choice, its not unfeasible that feeding on other vegetation, such as aquatic plants, would be out of the question. Alamosaurus is already known to have lived in an environment where freshwater systems were well present, so its not unfeasible to imagine it enjoyed living in such a setting, exploiting the flora that grew there.