As heavy as ten elephants, the biggest dinosaur that ever lived
BONES belonging to the biggest creature ever to have walked the Earth have been found in a quarry, experts say.
The dinosaur, known as Patagotitan mayorum, weighed at least 62 tonnes and measured more than 115ft from nose to tail.
It lived 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous period in what is now Argentina. The sauropod, a huge plant-eater with a long tail and neck that stood on four legs, weighed about the same as ten African elephants, Earth’s largest land dwellers.
A ranch workman called Aurelio Hernández discovered the giant bones in 2012 and it took three years to excavate them and a further two years for laboratory analysis.
Vertebrae and rib bones were among the finds recovered from the quarry at La Flecha ranch, Chubut Province and now described for the first time. Its thigh bone alone is 8ft long and weighs half a ton.
Paleontologists found 150 fossils belonging to at least six dinosaurs, who died in a floodplain before being preserved in mud.
Just like in a crime scene they took notes of each bone’s exact position and condition. Analysis shows the species had a probable maximum body mass of 70 tons.
It is therefore more than 15 per cent heavier than Dreadnoughtus, the largest ‘titanosaur’ from which a thigh bone and forearm bone have been preserved. Although some estimates have given another Patagonian titanosaur, Argentinosaurus, the title of biggest land animal ever, these have not been based on limb measurements and may be unreliable. Vertebrae from Argentinosaurus suggest it was 10 per cent smaller than Patagotitan, said Dr Jose Carballido and Diego Pol, from Argentina’s Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum who led the excavation team. They wrote in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: ‘The above-mentioned body mass estimates, as well as these vertebral comparisons, places Patagotitan as the largest known dinosaur species.’
Pol said: ‘For the first time, we can assess how these giants were built, what adaptations they had in their anatomy, how they could cope with such a massive weight.’
The ancient giant gets its name ‘mayorum’ in honour of the Mayo family, owners of the ranch, who hosted the 15-strong excavation team during the dig.