ARTICLES https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0455-5 © 2018 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved. 1 Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center, Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt. 2 Department of Biological Sciences, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA. 3 Ohio Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Studies, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA. 4 Integrative Research Center, The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA. 5 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Athens, OH, USA. 6 Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt. 7 Department of Earth Sciences, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Denver, CO, USA. 8 Department of Integrative Anatomical Sciences, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. 9 Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. *e-mail: sallam@mans.edu.eg N umerous palaeobiogeographic studies have proposed hypotheses to explain the nature of the terrestrial ver- tebrate faunas that inhabited continental Africa dur- ing the post-Cenomanian Cretaceous (PCC; ~94–66 million years ago) 1–9 . Some of these works have argued that the African mainland was home to an endemic terrestrial verte- brate assemblage that was isolated from other land areas on an ‘island continent’ 1–3,6 , whereas others have postulated the exis- tence of Late Cretaceous dispersal routes between Africa and neighbouring landmasses that would have led to the devel- opment of faunal commonalities among these areas 4,7,8,10 . In particular, many studies have proposed the existence of biotic connections between northern Africa and southern Europe based largely on the presence of continental vertebrate taxa with hypothesized Gondwanan affinities in terminal Cretaceous deposits of the latter region 4,8,10,11 . Nevertheless, in the absence of anatomically and phylogenetically informative terrestrial ver- tebrate fossils from the PCC of continental Africa (including the then-conjoined Arabian Peninsula but excluding Madagascar) these hypotheses have remained essentially untestable. Here we present a new titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) of Egypt that is represented by the most complete terrestrial vertebrate skeleton yet discovered from the PCC of the African mainland. Phylogenetic analysis of this com- paratively complete and informative taxon provides an opportunity to test hypotheses of biotic connections between northern Africa and southern Europe during the PCC. Results Systematic palaeontology. Sauropoda Marsh, 1878 Titanosauria Bonaparte and Coria, 1993 Lithostrotia Upchurch, Barrett and Dodson, 2004 Mansourasaurus shahinae gen. et sp. nov. Etymology. ‘Mansoura’, for Mansoura University in Mansoura, Egypt, home institution of the research collaborative that undertook the field and laboratory work; ‘sauros’, Greek, lizard. ‘shahinae’ honours M. Shahin for her contributions to the foun- dation of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP). Holotype. MUVP 200, an associated partial skeleton consisting of cranial fragments, dentaries, cervical and dorsal vertebrae and asso- ciated ribs, scapulocoracoid, sternal plate, humeri, radius, metacar- pal III, metatarsals I, III and II or IV, probable partial osteoderms, and several unidentified fragments. Locality. North of the road between Mut and Balat, Dakhla Oasis, Western Desert of Egypt (Fig. 1a). Horizon. Upper member of the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian 12–16 ) Quseir Formation. New Egyptian sauropod reveals Late Cretaceous dinosaur dispersal between Europe and Africa Hesham M. Sallam  1 *, Eric Gorscak  2,3,4 , Patrick M. O’Connor  3,5 , Iman A. El-Dawoudi 1 , Sanaa El-Sayed 1 , Sara Saber 1,6 , Mahmoud A. Kora 1 , Joseph J. W. Sertich 7 , Erik R. Seiffert 8 and Matthew C. Lamanna  9 Prominent hypotheses advanced over the past two decades have sought to characterize the Late Cretaceous continental vertebrate palaeobiogeography of Gondwanan landmasses, but have proved difficult to test because terrestrial vertebrates from the final ~30 million years of the Mesozoic are extremely rare and fragmentary on continental Africa (including the then- conjoined Arabian Peninsula but excluding the island of Madagascar). Here we describe a new titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur, Mansourasaurus shahinae gen. et sp. nov., from the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) Quseir Formation of the Dakhla Oasis of the Egyptian Western Desert. Represented by an associated partial skeleton that includes cranial elements, Mansourasaurus is the most completely preserved land-living vertebrate from the post-Cenomanian Cretaceous (~94–66 million years ago) of the African continent. Phylogenetic analyses demonstrate that Mansourasaurus is nested within a clade of penecontemporaneous titanosaurians from southern Europe and eastern Asia, thereby providing the first unambiguous evidence for a post-Cenomanian Cretaceous continental vertebrate clade that inhabited both Africa and Europe. The close relationship of Mansourasaurus to coeval Eurasian titanosaurians indicates that terrestrial vertebrate dispersal occurred between Eurasia and northern Africa after the tectonic separation of the latter from South America ~100 million years ago. These findings counter hypotheses that dinosaur faunas of the African mainland were completely isolated during the post-Cenomanian Cretaceous. NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION | www.nature.com/natecolevol