Paleontologists have just discovered the bones of the largest animal known in Argentina. When the researchers were first drawn to the site, they knew that there was something large buried there. Twenty-four large vertebrae, the pelvis, and pectoral girdle all indicated that it was a large dinosaur — but they didn’t know exactly how big. Now it is looking like it is a long-neck dinosaur that will be longer than 122-feet and over 70 tons! It could be larger than the largest known dinosaur right now. That dinosaur is a long-necked titanosaur named Patagontitan.
The remains are 98 million years old.
The bones were found in the Neuquén Province in northwest Patagonia. It was preserved in the thick sedimentary deposits known as the Candeleros Formation. The new find is believed to be a titanosaur but needs to be fully excavated to confirm its species. Researchers think that this fossil may represent a sub-species of larger titanosaurs.
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The sheer size of this find is very exciting.
Paul Barrett, a paleobiologist with the Natural History Museum in London, told LiveScience , “Given the measurements of the new skeleton, it looks likely that this is a contender for one of the largest, if not the largest, sauropods that have ever been found.”
The team is still uncovering the dinosaur, so the real size is not known yet.
Titanosaurs had a large range.
Paleontologists have discovered titanosaur fossils on every continent except Antarctica. However, they are most commonly found in Patagonia. The researchers believe that the “size differences could indeed explain the existence of such sauropod diversity in the Neuquén Basin during the Late Cretaceous in terms of niche partitioning.” In other words, because there are so many sauropods in the region, they likely evolved into different sizes to specialize in eating different foods.
We will have to wait for more information.
The fossils are located in an area that is hard to access. Alejandro Otero explains, “The place of the finding is very hard to access, so the logistics is pretty complicated. […] But we expect to return there after the pandemic situation.”
The future trips will focus on uncovering more of the fossil. “It is a huge dinosaur, but we expect to find much more of the skeleton in future field trips, so we’ll have the possibility to address with confidence how big it really was,” Otero says.
The discovery is already an important find, but it promises larger discoveries in the coming years.
h/t: Live Science
