Maybe 'Bigfoot & # 39; was a dinosaur-paleontologists find the largest fossil ever discovered

Paleontologists have discovered "Bigfoot" – not the mythical creature wandering in the forest, but a collection of fossils that make up the largest dinosaur foot ever found.

"It was immediately obvious that the foot, nearly a meter wide Anthony Maltese, senior author of the fossil research, said in a statement

The study found that the Fossils excavated in Wyoming come from a brachiosaurus, a type of sauropod dinosaur that was among the largest terrestrial animals on Earth.The findings, published Tuesday in the newspaper PeerJ also confirm that 150 million years ago, brachiosaurs traveled a vast territory of North America.

] This illustration shows a brachiosaurus eating a Araucaria tree.These dinosaurs had necks huge and relatively short tails.The researchers identified a magpie d Brachiosaurus Tuesday as the largest dinosaur foot ever unearthed. Davide Bonadonna, Milan, Italy

"There are traces and other incomplete skeletons of Australia and Argentina that seem to come from even larger animals, but these gigantic skeletons were found without the feet. "This beast was clearly one of the largest that has ever walked in North America," said in a statement the co-author Emanuel Tschopp of the Paleontology Division of the American Museum of Natural History

of the University of Kansas, which included Maltese, now at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, Colorado.

Now, after a thorough review, the researchers identified the foot as belonging to an animal closely related to the long-nated, long-tailed sauropod Brachiosaurus, best known for its appearance in the film Jurassic Park [19659010] See all best photos of the week in these slideshows

3D scanning and detailed measurements to compare the specimen to the feet of several other species of dinosaurs. Their study confirms that this foot is the largest dinosaur foot ever discovered.

The study also shows that brachiosaurs lived from eastern Utah to northwestern Wyoming.

"It's surprising," says Tschopp. "Many other sauropod dinosaurs appear to have inhabited smaller areas during this time."

The rocky outcrops that produced this fossil – the Wyoming Black Hills area, famous today for tourist attractions like Mount Rushmore – contain many more dinosaur fossils. Maltese. The research team hopes to continue their education in this region.