Paleontologists in Argentina have discovered the petrified remains of a 98-million-year-old titanosaurus, which they say was one of the largest animals ever on earth.
According to paleontologist Jose Luis Carballido of the Museo Egidio Feruglio, a team of researchers with Naturales y Museo, Universidad de Zaragoza and Universidad Nacional del Comahue actually found in 2012. A new report published in the journal Cretaceous Research outlines the group they found.
In this contribution we present a giant titanosaurus suropod from the Candeleros formation (Cenomanian, circa 98 Ma) of the province of Neuquén, which consists of an articulated sequence of 20 anterior plus 4 posterior hemispheres and several appendicular well. “This specimen proves the presence of a second taxon of Candeleros Formation, in addition to Andesaurus, and is considered here to be one of the largest sauropods ever found, probably larger than Patagotitan,” reads the published report.
Patagotitan is a species that lived 100 million to 95 million years ago and weighed 122 feet long and weighed more than 70 tons. The new find appears to be 10 to 20% larger than that attributed to Patagotitan, the largest dinosaur ever identified, according to a statement from the CTYS Scientific Agency of La Matanza National University.
“It’s a giant dinosaur, but we expect to find a lot more of the skeleton in the future, so we’ll have the opportunity to confidently address how big it really was,” said Alejandro Otero, a paleontologist at the Argentine Museo de La. Plata, told CNN in an email.
But researchers really do not know what they found.
“While anatomical analysis does not currently allow us to regard it as a new species, the morphological inequality and the lack of equivalent elements with regard to civil taxa also prevent us from assigning this new material to already known genera. A preliminary phylogenetic analysis places this new sample at the base of the clade leading to Lognkosauria, in a polytomy with Bonitasaura. The sample reported here strongly suggests that the largest and medium-sized titanosaurs coexist with small rebbachisaurids at the beginning of the Late Cretaceous in the province of Neuquén, indicating suspected niche distribution, ”the report reads.
“Titanosaurs belong to the sauropod family, which means they were herbivores, had massive bodies and long necks and tails,” Phys.org reported. ‘Such dinosaurs would have had little concern for carnivorous enemies if they had managed to grow to full size. Their fossils have been found on all continents except Antarctica. The researchers conclude by noting that more excavations in the area are likely to reveal more fossils from the same dinosaur and perhaps evidence of its true size. ”
The paleontologists are still looking for more body parts, buried deep in rock, especially the large femur or humerus bones, which can be used to more accurately estimate the body mass of a long extinct creature.
“We have more than half the tail, a lot of hip bones,” said Carballido, who also worked on the classification of Patagotitan a few years ago. “Of course it’s still in the rock, so we have a few more years to dig.”
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