Jorge Calvo, a paleontologist at both museums, is uncertain when it will be fully analyzed. Unfortunately, the head is poorly preserved. Meanwhile, Sampson says, discoveries in Madagascar may include up to 90 percent of a skeleton from a single titanosaur, more complete than any reported. And a partial skull from Madagascar gives new hints of what a titanosaur's face looked like, he says. Still another discovery, in Utah, is challenging the conventional idea about where titanosaurs first appeared.
Many scientists believe they arose south of the equator and migrated north.
Malawisaurus, the oldest titanosaur definitely identified in Africa, dates back 100 million to 140 million years. The oldest from South America, Andesaurus delgadoi , is about 100 million years old. North America's alamosaurus is a mere 70 million years old. But a quarry near Moab, Utah, has now produced titanosaur remains from somewhere between 100 million and 150 million years ago, says Brooks Britt, director of Eccles Dinosaur Park and Museum in Ogden. That places titanosaurs in North America earlier than in South America and maybe about the same time as they roamed in Africa.