For 40 Years, Historic Dinosaur Fossil Hid in a Drawer

A bone that spent decades in a museum drawer has just been promoted to a scientific first. Researchers now say the 10-centimeter fossil vertebra, collected on Antarctica's James Ross Island by a British Antarctic Survey geologist in 1985 and long mistaken for a marine creature, is actually from a titanosaur—the first-known dinosaur fossil ever recovered from the continent, which has since given up bones from at least 12 dinosaur species, Smithsonian reports. The 82-million-year-old tail bone, described in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, points to a relatively small titanosaur, around 23 feet long, though scientists can't pinpoint the species, per the BBC.

Its distinctive ball-and-socket structure tipped off experts, who say the find helps fill a puzzling gap in the Southern Hemisphere's dinosaur record. During the late Cretaceous, Antarctica, South America, and New Zealand were linked as remnants of the supercontinent Gondwana, and the team thinks the Antarctic Peninsula, covered in dense forests, likely acted as a land bridge for titanosaurs moving between South America and New Zealand while bypassing Australia. The rediscovery also underlines the scientific value of old collections: as one co-author put it, the bone "sat in a collection drawer for decades" before fresh eyes and new methods revealed what it really was.