'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered

Paleontologists have discovered fossilised bones of the “biggest dinosaurs” ever to walk the Earth in Argentina.

14:04 19 May 2014

'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered

 

A team of paleontologists has excavated partial fossilised bones of what they believe the biggest dinosaur to walk the Earth in Argentina. Based on its huge thigh bones, the dinosaur was about 40m long and 20m tall. Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it is seven tonnes heavier than Argentinosaurus. The paleontologists from the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio, led by Dr Jose Luis Carballido and Dr Diego Pol, believe it is new species of titanosaur – an enormous herbivore dating from the Late Cretaceous period. 

 

The researchers told BBC News: "Given the size of these bones, which surpass any of the previously known giant animals, the new dinosaur is the largest animal known that walked on Earth.”

 

"Its length, from its head to the tip of its tail, was 40m.

 

"Standing with its neck up, it was about 20m high - equal to a seven-storey building."

 

Dr Paul Barrett, a dinosaur expert from London's Natural History Museum, added: "Without knowing more about this current find it's difficult to be sure. One problem with assessing the weight of both Argentinosaurus and this new discovery is that they're both based on very fragmentary specimens - no complete skeleton is known, which means the animal's proportions and overall shape are conjectural.

 

"Moreover, several different methods exist for calculating dinosaur weight (some based on overall volume, some on various limb bone measurements) and these don't always agree with each other, with large measures of uncertainty.

 

"So it's interesting to hear another really huge sauropod has been discovered, but ideally we'd need much more material of these supersized animals to determine just how big they really got."