Paleontologists say gigantic dinosaur bones may have come from the largest land animal to ever walk on Earth

Paleontologists in Argentina have discovered the fossilized remains of a 98-million-year-old titanosaur that they believe may have come from the largest animal to ever walk on earth.

A team of researchers from Naturales y Museo, Universidad de Zaragoza and Universidad Nacional del Comahue actually found the remains in 2012, but excavation work only started in 2015, according to paleontologist Jose Luis Carballido of Museo Egidio Feruglio. . In a new report published in the journal Cretaceous Research, the group sets out what they found.

“In this contribution, we present a giant titanosaur sauropod from the Candeleros Formation (Cenomanian, circa 98 Ma) from the province of Neuquén, made up of an articulated sequence of 20 most anterior plus 4 posterior caudal vertebrae and several appendicular bones. . This specimen clearly proves the presence of a second taxon from the Candeleros Formation, in addition to Andesaurus, and is here considered to be one of the largest sauropods ever found, probably exceeding Patagotitan in size, ”the published report states.

Patagotitan is a species that lived 100 million to 95 million years ago and was up to 122 feet long and weighed over 70 tons. The new finding appears to be 10% to 20% larger than those attributed to Patagotitan, the largest dinosaur ever identified, according to a statement Wednesday from the scientific agency CTYS of the National University of La Matanza.

“He’s a huge dinosaur, but we expect to find a lot more skeleton on future field trips, so we’ll have the opportunity to confidently determine how big he really was,” Alejandro Otero, paleontologist at the Museo de La of Argentina Plata, told CNN via email.

But the researchers really don’t know what they found.

“If the anatomical analysis does not currently allow us to consider it as a new species, the morphological disparity and the lack of equivalent elements compared to contemporary taxa also prevent us from assigning this new material to already known genera. A preliminary phylogenetic analysis places this new specimen at the base of the clade leading to Lognkosauria, in a polytomy with Bonitasaura. The specimen reported here strongly suggests the coexistence of larger and medium titanosaurs with small rebbachisaurids in the early Upper Cretaceous in the province of Neuquén, indicating a putative niche partition, ”the report states.

“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 to do with carnivorous enemies if they managed to grow to their full size. Their fossils have been found on every continent except Antarctica. The researchers conclude by noting that more excavations in the area will likely reveal more fossils of the same dinosaur and possibly evidence of its true size.

Paleontologists are always looking for more body parts, buried deep in rock, especially the large bones of the femur or humerus, 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 Patagotitan rankings a few years ago. “He’s obviously still inside the boulder, so we’ve got a few more years to dig ahead of us.

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