Giant dinosaur unearthed in Argentina

They just keep getting bigger. The latest dinosaur to be discovered was 26 metres long and seven times as heavy as Tyrannosaurus rex . Named Dreadnoughtus schrani by the team who found it, the bones belonged to the largest known land animal whose size can be reliably calculated. And it wasn’t even fully grown.

The 77-million-year-old Dreadnoughtus skeleton was found in south-west Patagonia, Argentina, in 2005, and has taken several years to analyse. While other giants from Patagonia are known from a handful of bones, almost half of the Dreadnoughtus skeleton has been recovered. What’s more, the fossilised bones are in such good condition – even revealing where muscles attached – that the skeleton could provide unprecedented insights into the biology, movement and evolution of the group of huge plant-eating dinosaurs it belonged to, called the titanosaurian sauropods. Learn more here, here, here, here or here.

Tags: Paleontology