’Biggest dinosaur ever’ discovered

’Biggest dinosaur ever’ discovered

Mangalore Today News Network

Argentina, May 20, 2014:  Move over T-rex, see you later Stegosaurus, adios Argentinosaurus. Scientists have announced that the bones of a new, even larger dinosaur have been found.

Argentinosaurus currently holds the record for being both the heaviest land animal ever, and the longest, but the fossilized bones of the biggest dinosaur ever discovered have been found in Argentina.

Scientists believe the species of titanosaur weighed in at 170,000 pounds, as heavy as 14 African elephants.

A local farm worker found the remains which were captured by the BBC’s Natural History unit.

The Thigh bones’ connected to the...: A technician next to the femur of a dinosaur -- likely to be the largest ever to roam the earth

 

Residents and technicians gather around the bones of a dinosaur at a farm. They say it is the largest set of remains of a dinosaur ever found to date

 

Boney: One of the paleontologists lies next to the femur of sauropod

 

 

The fossils were then excavated by a team of palaeontologists from the Museum of Palaeontology Egidio Feruglio, led by Dr Jose Luis Carballido and Dr Diego Pol.

They unearthed the partial skeletons of seven individuals - about 150 bones in total - all in ’remarkable condition’.

According to the measurements of its gigantic thigh bones, the herbivore would have been 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall.

Palaeontologists think it is a new species of titanosaur – part of a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs that were characterised by their long necks and tails and small heads – dating from the Cretaceous period.

The mega dino would have weighed in at 77 tons, making it seven tons heavier than the previous record holder Argentinosaurus.

The creature, which lived in the forests of Patagonia between 95 and 100 million years ago, was yet to be named.

“It will be named describing its magnificence and in honour to both the region and the farm owners who alerted us about the discovery,” the researchers said.

 

 

Bones recovered: Gallina and his team of Argentine paleontologists say the 19 vertebrae they recovered in Argentinaís Patagonia region belongs to a new species of Diplodocid they named Leinkupal laticauda, providing what they say is the first evidence that a family of long-necked, whip-tailed dinosaurs survived beyond the Jurassic period, when they were thought to have gone extinc

 

The discovery came in the same week scientists confirmed the Argentinosaurus to be the biggest of them all.

That plant-eating dinosaur weighed a earth-shaking 90 tons when it lived about 90 million years ago in Argentina, although the record has been broken by this new find.

Oxford University palaeontologist Dr Roger Benson, who led the study, says the dinosaur weigh-in included species ranging from small bird-like dinosaurs to well-known carnivores such as the Tyrannosaurus rex.

The Tyrannosaurus rex, which weighed 7 tons, was the largest meat-eating dinosaur in the study, but it is small in comparison to the Argentinosaurus.

Introducing: Paleontologist Pablo Gallina speaks to the press about a newly discovered dinosaur discovered in Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Garguantuan: Its calculated 77-ton weight would have made it as heavy as 14 African elephants, beating the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus, by some seven tons

’It might be that they were simply much more ecologically diverse and that could have helped them survive an extinction,’ said Benson, who also noted that smaller creatures did a better job surviving the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous.

Paleontologist David Evans of Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum said dinosaur body size evolved relatively quickly early on in their time on Earth as they invaded new ecological niches, but then slowed down among most lineages.

The exception was the maniraptoran lineage that led to birds, Evans added.

More than 1,000 species of dinosaurs have been identified but many are known from only fragmentary fossil remains.

This study estimated the weight of every dinosaur whose remains are complete enough to contain the bones needed for the study’s formula, which is based on the relationship between the robustness of the limbs and the weight of the animal, the researchers said.