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.
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