The largest dinosaur foot to date belongs to a Titanosaurus

Giant dinosaurs roamed the Wyoming Black Hills region about 150 million years ago. These herbivorous dinosaurs belonged to the family sauropods

Sauropods

The sauropods are characterized by long necks and tails. Sauropods such as Diplodocus and Brontosaurus are among the largest known animals on the planet.

A new article published in the newspaper PeerJ now describes a foot that presumably belonged to a sauropod. The specimen, which is 3.2 feet wide, was large enough that it immediately appeared that it belonged to a very large animal. Scientists have aptly nicknamed it "Bigfoot".

Bigfoot

The almost complete foot fossil is composed of 13 bones. It was excavated from a rock body called Morrison Formation in 1998. The region produced many dinosaur fossils dating back to the late Jurassic, about 155 to 148 million years ago. Scientists have hitherto uncovered diplodocus, allosaurus and stegosaurs from this region.

Anthony Maltese of the Colorado Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center and his colleagues used 3D scanning and made detailed measurements to compare specimens with sauropods.

The results revealed that the foot was exceptionally large and belonged to an animal very close to Brachiosaurus. This giant dinosaur species was featured in the 1993 dinosaur movie Jurassic Park . Researchers reported that this prehistoric animal was about 13 feet tall at the hip, which means that it is a titanosaurus, the largest group of sauropods

"The size material and a medially metatarsal distal articular surface IV involve identification. "Maltese and his colleagues wrote in their study, published July 24." It's the largest reported pound of a sauropod dinosaur and it represents the first confirmed elements of upper Jurassic brachiosaurs of North America 19659002] The largest dinosaur foot found to date

Comparison with other sauropod feet revealed that Bigfoot is the largest dinosaur foot found to date.

"There are traces and other incomplete skeletons of animals, but these gigantic skeletons were found without the feet," said coauthor Emanuel Tschopp, of the Di vision of P aleontology.

Research has also shown that brachiosaurus inhabited a vast area that stretched from east Utah to northwestern Wyoming about 150 million years ago. . Dinosaur experts have said this discovery is surprising since other sauropod dinosaurs appear to have lived in small areas during this period.