Computer generated 3D illustration with the dinosaur Argentinosaurus.
Fossilized bone fragments found in Neuquén Province in northwest Patagonia could belong to an exceptional large specimen of Titanosaur, a sauropod family of dinosaurs including some of the largest terrestrial animals to ever walk on Earth.
Titanosaurian sauropods were the most diverse and abundant large-bodied terrestrial herbivores in the Southern Hemisphere landmasses during the Cretaceous, a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago. Their fossils have been discovered on all continents and titanosaur species comprise approximately one-third of known sauropods. Some taxa are regarded as the most massive terrestrial animals known to science, whereas others were apparently no heavier than modern cattle.
The recovered remains are not a complete skeleton, and consist mainly of pelvic bones and vertebrae. There are some similarities to fossils belonging to Andesaurus, a type of “super-sized titanosaur” which existed during the middle of the Cretaceous Period in South America. These large sauropods grew to be 18 meters (or 60 feet) long. Based on the size of the new remains, the authors suggest that this specimen was far larger, easily exceeding Andesaurus in size, maybe even bigger than the largest known Titanosaurian sauropods, the Patagotitan and Argentinosaurus. Patagotitan, described in 2014, is believed to have weighed almost 60 tons, reached lengths of over 31 meters (102 feet). Argentinosaurus is one of the largest known land animals of all time, with length estimates ranging from 30 to 40 meters (100 to 130 feet) and weight estimates from 50 to 100 tons.
Paleontologists discovered the fossilized remains of a 98 million-year-old titanosaur in Neuquén ... [+]
Body size and mass estimation of the sauropod dinosaurs is generally tricky, as many species are known only from fragmentary remains and not all bones are equally useful to reconstruct an animal's size. Based on the recovered fossils, the new specimen likely far exceeded a mass of 40 tons. However, without analyzing the dinosaur's humerus or femur, it is not yet possible to provide exact estimates. The research was published in the journal Cretaceous Research.
The largest animal ever to have existed on Earth remains the modern blue whale. Living in the sea, where its body is partly supported by water, it can reach a maximum length of 33.5 meters (110 feet) and weigh 173 tons.
