Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Toerannosaurus
Dinosaur foot dug up is the biggest one discovered yet
THIS kind of baaa-d hair day would have anyone looking sheepish.
The fella got a close crop after being found covered with several years of growth in Australia.
Farmer Graeme Bowden, from A DINOSAUR’S foot measuring more than three-feet wide is the largest found to date.
The bones belonged to a planteating animal similar to the Brachiosaurus, star of the film Jurassic Park, scientists confirmed yesterday.
It comes from the sauropod family of dinosaurs, which had long necks and tails and were the largest animals to roam the earth.
“Bigfoot”, found near Mount Rushmore, confirms brachiosaurs lived over a huge swathe of North America, from eastern Utah to northwestern Wyoming, 150 million years ago.
Study co-author Dr Emanuel Coonabarabran, New South Wales, removed 66lb of wool – more than six times the average fleece.
He said: “He’s light-footed now. Would be nice with the price of wool to have about 2,000 of them.” Tschopp, of the American Museum of Natural History, said: “This is surprising. Many other sauropod dinosaurs seem to have inhabited smaller areas during that time.
“There are tracks and incomplete skeletons from Australia and Argentina that seem to be from even bigger animals, but found without feet.
“This beast was clearly one of the biggest that ever walked in North America.” The foot was excavated in 1998 but has been the subject of study for 20 years. The findings were published yesterday in Peerj journal.
Researchers from the US, Switzerland and Germany used 3D scanning to help compare the specimen to feet from different dinosaur species.
They confirmed it is the largest dinosaur foot found to date. Study co-author Dr Anthony Maltese said: “It was immediately apparent that the foot, nearly a metre wide, was from an extremely large animal, so the specimen was nicknamed Bigfoot.”
He added the outcrops in Black Hills, Wyoming, where it was found could hold more huge skeletons.