Scientists have unearthed huge 98-million-year-old fossils in southwestern Argentina, which they say are among the largest dinosaur ever discovered.
Pieces of human-sized fossilized bone belonging to the giant sauropod appear to be 10-20 percent larger than those attributed to Swimsuit from Patagotitan, the largest dinosaur ever identified, according to a statement Wednesday from the CTYS scientific office at the National University of La Matanza.
Sauropods were huge long-necked, long-tailed, herbivorous dinosaurs – the largest terrestrial creatures that ever lived.
Amongst them, Swimsuit from Patagotitan, also from Argentina, weighed about 70 tons and was 40 meters long, or about the length of four school buses.
(Jose Luis Carballido / CTyS-UNLaM / AFP)
Alejandro Otero of Argentina’s Museo de La Plata is working to piece together a likeness of the new dinosaur from two dozen vertebrae and pieces of pelvic bone that have been uncovered so far.
He has published an article on the unidentified dinosaur for the scientific journal Chalk research, according to the university’s statement.
The search for more body parts buried deep in the rocks continues. For scientists, the holy grail is the great femur or humerus bones, which are useful in estimating the body mass of a long extinct creature.
The huge fossils were discovered in the Neuquen River Valley in 2012, but excavations didn’t begin until 2015, according to paleontologist Jose Luis Carballido of the Museo Egidio Feruglio.
(Jose Luis Carballido / CTyS-UNLaM / AFP)
“We have more than half the tail, a lot of hipbones,” said Carballido, who also worked on the classification of Patagotitan a few years ago.
“It’s clearly still in the rock, so we’ve got a few more years of digging to do.”
The enormous skeleton was found in a rock layer dating back to some 98 million years during the Upper Cretaceous, added geologist Alberto Garrido, director of the Zapala Museum of Natural Sciences.
“We suspect the copy is complete or nearly complete,” he said.
“It all depends on what happens to the excavations. But regardless of whether it is bigger (then Patagotitan) or not, the discovery of an intact dinosaur of such dimensions is new. ”
© Agence France-Presse