STL Science Center

STL Science Center

17 February 2015

What The Fossils Looked Like

©Henken Fossils
A company called Henken fossils touts the cast pictured here as an Aegyptosaurus vertebra. As stated previously, there is not, to my knowledge, known remains of the specimens that Ernst Stromer recovered from the rock formations of Egypt and northern Africa. I have to additionally state that I have not seen any images of Aegyptosaurus fossils in all of my searches this week while looking for information on the dinosaur. The idea that the vertebra pictured here might be from Aegyptosaurus may indeed be a little unrealistic given the lack of information and images that are archived online, but that is not to say that it is not similar to what we would expect for sauropod vertebrae. The size may be similar to what would be expected for a sauropod of that size as well, though we could possibly say that it may not be the full size adult titanosaur, there may well not be any knowing for sure, lest more fossils of Aegyptosaurus are discovered, recovered, and studied against the descriptions of Stromer. Assuming, or perhaps hoping against hope, that some day there are some new fossils discovered, we may be able to answer that question for certain and to put to rest the story of Stromer and open a new history of the titanosaur and our understanding of its habitat, life history, and morphology. We may learn a lot about it, but we will definitely have to wait until a new series of fossils is discovered, and we do not know when that will happen!

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