A dinosaur 26m long, 9m tall, weighing 59,000kg and still growing when it died, it was among the largest land animals that ever lived — so big its discoverers are calling it the Dreadnoughtus.
Its skeleton, unearthed in the Patagonia region of Argentina, is the most complete ever found of one of these gargantuan dinosaurs, scientists reported on Thursday.
A team led by Kenneth Lacovara, a paleontologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, describe the fossil in the journal Scientific Reports.
Photo: EPA
Even what remains of the bones is huge.
“We’ve got 16 tonnes of bone in my lab right now,” Lacovara said.
The better known Apatosaurus dinosaur — once commonly called Brontosaurus — weighed only 34,000kg; for comparison, an empty Boeing 737-900 weighs about 42,500kg.
Photo: EPA
Lacovara discovered the fossil in 2005, along with a smaller Dreadnoughtus. It took four years to excavate the skeletons, which were shipped to Philadelphia by container ship, then several more to prepare and study the more than 200 bones of Dreadnoughtus, representing 45 percent of the skeleton. That includes most of the vertebrae of its muscular tail.
Scientists say Dreadnoughtus lived sometime from 84 million to 66 million years ago, but the bones have within them softer tissues like tendons preserved, and the team is trying to extract proteins and possibly DNA.
It was one of a group of sauropod dinosaurs known as titanosaurs. Most of the gargantuan members of titanosaurs are known from only a few bones. The more complete remains of Dreadnoughtus, including a 1.83m-tall thigh bone, enabled a more definite estimate of the mass.
The researchers performed laser scans of all of the bones and published 3D models of each. That could allow other paleontologists to study the fossil from afar and even print 3D replicas of the bones. Lacovara and his collaborators are undertaking additional research to use the models to study how Dreadnoughtus moved.
Its full name is Dreadnoughtus schrani — for the Dreadnought, the almost invincible World War I-era battleship, and Adam Schran, a technology entrepreneur who helped finance the research.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion