The skeleton is still far from complete but paleontologists say what they’ve found suggests the dinosaur may be more than 120 feet long

A paleontologist excavating a 98 million-year-old fossil which may belong to the largest land animal ever. Researchers first started unearthing the creatures remains in 2012 at the Candeleros Formation in the Neuquen River Valley, Argentina.

he fossilized bones of what may have been the largest animal ever to walk the Earth are slowly emerging from the ground in Argentina, reports Amy Woodyatt for CNN.

Beginning in 2012, paleontologists set about excavating a hulking set of 24 vertebrae as well as elements of the pelvis and pectoral girdle from the Candeleros Formation in Argentina’s Neuquén Province. At first, it wasn’t clear to researchers what they’d found, only that it was enormous. Now, in a new paper published this month in the journal Cretaceous Research, paleontologists say the remains suggest a type of long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur called a titanosaur, potentially the largest ever unearthed.

They can’t yet speculate as to whether the gigantic bones belong to a known species or something new entirely, but, per CNN, the team says that the specimen could be even bigger than a 122-foot, nearly 70-ton titanosaur called Patagontitan.

Researchers have dated the new specimen to around 98 million years ago, reports Harry Baker for Live Science.

“Given the measurements of the new skeleton, it looks likely that this is a contender for one of the largest, if not the largest, sauropods that have ever been found,” Paul Barrett, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the study, tells Live Science. “This new skeleton provides yet another example of sauropods pushing at the extremes of what’s possible with respect to maximum animal size on land.”

To reach a conclusion regarding the behemoth’s species and more accurately estimate its size, researchers will need to keep digging. David Bressan reports for Forbes that load bearing bones such as the femur and humerus would go a long way towards facilitating such estimates.

“It is a huge dinosaur, but we expect to find much more of the skeleton in future field trips, so we’ll have the possibility to address with confidence how really big it was,” Alejandro Otero, a paleontologist with Argentina’s Museo de La Plata and lead author of the paper, tells CNN via email.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dinosaur-unearthed-argentina-could-be-largest-land-animal-ever-180976813/?

Impressive.

Bubblecar said:

Impressive.

Very.

Lots of claimants for biggest dinosaur.

Whatever happened to Amphicoelias, by the way? It hasn’t been mentioned lately and was originally estimated as much bigger then this new dinosaur.

Amphicoelias. “Early estimates for the length of the animal in life were between 40 and 60 m (130 and 200 ft) long. Due to the incomplete nature, such lengths–the longest of any known dinosaur and sauropod–were largely ignored. In 2007, John Foster suggested that the differences usually cited to differentiate Amphicoelias altus from the more well known Diplodocus are not significant and may be due to individual variation. Foster argued that Amphicoelias is probably the senior synonym of Diplodocus. In 2018, Kenneth Carpenter renamed Amphicoelias fragillimus as the new genus Maraapunisaurus, and reclassified it from Diplodocidae to Rebbachisauridae.”

Although known since 1877, a very limited number of fossil bones have been recovered, and some Amphicoelias bones have been permanently lost, which doesn’t help.

mollwollfumble said:

Lots of claimants for biggest dinosaur.

Whatever happened to Amphicoelias, by the way? It hasn’t been mentioned lately and was originally estimated as much bigger then this new dinosaur.

Amphicoelias. “Early estimates for the length of the animal in life were between 40 and 60 m (130 and 200 ft) long. Due to the incomplete nature, such lengths–the longest of any known dinosaur and sauropod–were largely ignored. In 2007, John Foster suggested that the differences usually cited to differentiate Amphicoelias altus from the more well known Diplodocus are not significant and may be due to individual variation. Foster argued that Amphicoelias is probably the senior synonym of Diplodocus. In 2018, Kenneth Carpenter renamed Amphicoelias fragillimus as the new genus Maraapunisaurus, and reclassified it from Diplodocidae to Rebbachisauridae.”

Although known since 1877, a very limited number of fossil bones have been recovered, and some Amphicoelias bones have been permanently lost, which doesn’t help.

1 m = 1 square?

Diplodocus mural by Mark Witton, and an interesting article in which he discusses the decisions he made in this reconstruction.

http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2018/02/

mollwollfumble said:

Lots of claimants for biggest dinosaur.

Whatever happened to Amphicoelias, by the way? It hasn’t been mentioned lately and was originally estimated as much bigger then this new dinosaur.

Amphicoelias. “Early estimates for the length of the animal in life were between 40 and 60 m (130 and 200 ft) long. Due to the incomplete nature, such lengths–the longest of any known dinosaur and sauropod–were largely ignored. In 2007, John Foster suggested that the differences usually cited to differentiate Amphicoelias altus from the more well known Diplodocus are not significant and may be due to individual variation. Foster argued that Amphicoelias is probably the senior synonym of Diplodocus. In 2018, Kenneth Carpenter renamed Amphicoelias fragillimus as the new genus Maraapunisaurus, and reclassified it from Diplodocidae to Rebbachisauridae.”

Although known since 1877, a very limited number of fossil bones have been recovered, and some Amphicoelias bones have been permanently lost, which doesn’t help.

Maraapunisaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation of western North America. It is known only from what has sometimes been estimated to be the largest dinosaur specimen ever discovered, originally named Amphicoelias fragillimus. Based on surviving descriptions of a single fossil bone, scientists have produced numerous size estimates over the years; the largest estimate M. fragillimus to have been the longest known animal at 60 metres (200 ft) in length and with a mass of 150 tonnes (150 long tons; 170 short tons). However, because the only fossil remains were lost at some point after being studied and described in the 1870s, evidence survived only in drawings and field notes.

More recent studies have made a number of suggestions regarding the possibility of such an animal. One analysis of the surviving evidence, and the biological plausibility of such a large land animal, has suggested that the enormous size of this animal were over-estimates due partly to typographical errors in the original 1878 description. More recently, it was suggested by paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter that the species is a rebbachisaurid, rather than a diplodocid sauropod. He therefore used Limaysaurus instead of Diplodocus as a basis for size estimates. This resulted in a smaller, 31 metres (102 ft) animal, and he dismissed the idea that there must have been typographical errors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraapunisaurus