New Largest Dinosaur
Ok, 2020 wasn’t enough to digest in unbelievable stuff like covid lockdown, monoliths, and many more, 2021 has started its era of discovery. The first month itself comes with the discovery of 98-million-year-old fossils in southwest Argentina as stated by scientists, this could be the new largest dinosaur ever discovered.
According to a statement, Wednesday from the National University of La Matanza’s CTYS scientific agency, human-sized pieces of fossilized bones were discovered which belonged to the giant sauropod.
Sauropods
These new largest dinosaurs named Sauropods are long-tailed, long-necked, largest plant-eating terrestrial creatures to ever exist.
And belonging to this category is the Patagotitan mayorum, also from Argentina was 40 meters long (131 feet) and weighing around 70 tonnes.
The person responsible for assembling the fossils found is Alejandro Otero of Argentina’s Museo de La Plata to recreate the new largest dinosaur from two-dozen vertebrae and bits of pelvic bone found.
According to the university statement, he published a paper for the scientific journal Cretaceous Research on the unidentified dinosaur.
Excavation Continues
The quest continues for the body fossils which are buried deep down the rock. Scientists can easily estimate a long-extinct creature’s body mass with the help of the holy grail will be the large femur or humerus bones.
According to paleontologists Jose Luis Carballido of the Museo Egidio Feruglio, massive fossils were brought into sight in 2012 but the excavation work started in 2015.
Carballido worked on the classifications Patagotitan a few years ago and said that more than half the tail, a lot of hip bones have been gathered. And they are positive to find the rest of the body in the rock and years of work lies ahead.
98 million Years Old Fossil
Alberto Garrido, director of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Zapala added that the skeleton was found in the layer of the rock dating to some 98 million years ago of the Upper Cretaceous period. A complete fossil is hopefully to be found. However deeper excavation can be full of surprises as to whether it is bigger or not but the finding is itself full of novelty.