Remains of a Sauropod Possibly Reveal the Largest Animal to Ever Walked on the Earth’s Surface
We all know that dinosaurs were generally huge beasts, but some of them are even defying all expectations after paleontologists manage to rebuild their skeletons from bone remnants. The same thing happened after a pile of bones was discovered in the Patagonia region from Argentina, according to Salon.com.
After putting together the bone remnants, researchers concluded that they belong to a dinosaur species that measured about 9 to 12 meters in length.
The titanosaur enters the scene
The newfound bones likely belonged to a titanosaur, meaning a group of huge sauropods that survived up until the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event from 66 million years ago.
The new dinosaur could surpass the size of the patagotitan and of every other known sauropod, but scientists aren’t sure because the fossil record is incomplete.
However, the new findings from Patagonia have “contributed to a better understanding of the phylogenetic relationships of titanosaurs, revealing the existence of a previously unknown lineage and shedding new light on body mass evolution,” said Alejandro Otero, who is co-author of the study and also a paleontologist with Argentina’s Museo de La Plata. Also, Otero admitted the following:
“We need to go back to the field place to recover more bones to picture out more about this huge specimen”
Sauropods were known to have extremely long necks, small heads and legs, and elongated tales.
Titanosaurs (or titanosaurians; members of the Titanosauria group) were not only a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, including genera from Asia, Africa, South America, Europe, North America, Australia, and Antarctica. The titanosaurians were also the last surviving group of the long-necked sauropods. The group was named after the Titans from ancient Greek mythology, via the type genus Titanosaurus.
The new study was published in the journal Cretaceous Research.
Tiesha loves to share her passion for everything that’s beautiful in this world. Apart from writing on her beauty blog and running her own beauty channel on Youtube, she also enjoys traveling and photography. Tiesha covers various stories on the website.
0 comments