A newly unearthed titanosaur might just be the largest dinosaur on Earth
What could be scarier than Godzilla, the fictional monster and star of a new movie at the top of the box office this weekend? How about the real dinosaur that once roamed Earth with the thighbone seen in the picture above? That’s the femur of a newly unearthed species of titanosaur, a type of long-necked, long-tailed sauropod that lived 95 million years ago. Scientists believe that it is likely the largest dinosaur ever known. But don’t be afraid—sauropods were herbivores, or plant-eaters.
MUSEO EGIDIO FERUGLIO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Paleontologists from the Egidio Feruglio Museum recently unearthed more than 200 fossils at this desert site in Argentina.
Still, titanosaurs were enormous creatures. The newly discovered species, which is not yet named, probably once reached 131 feet in length and 160,000 pounds, or 80 tons, in weight. José Luis Carballido is in charge of a team of paleontologists at the Egidio Feruglio Museum, which excavated the fossils in the desert in Argentina. "It's like two semi trucks, one after another, and the equivalent of more than 14 African elephants together in weight," Carballido said in a statement from the museum.
Carballido and his team found seven huge dinosaurs among more than 200 fossils at the site in the province of Chubut, Argentina. A local farmworker let the museum know about the fossil-filled area in 2011. Excavating, or extracting, the largest fossils was a complicated process. It required the use of backhoes and bulldozers.
Eating Machines
GETTY IMAGES
This illustration depicts an Argentinosaurus dinosaur, another type of plant-eating titanosaur sauropod.
How did these vegetarian dinosaurs get so big? To find out, scientists like Martin Sander, at Bonn University, in Germany, have studied the dinosaurs’ fossils and looked at living creatures with features similar to the extinct species. They’ve discovered that the huge dinosaurs were built to eat.
Sander says a sauropod’s capacity to grow big started with its ability to eat without chewing. The dinosaur made the most of mealtime by scarfing down its leafy greens without pausing to chomp on them. "If you're not a chewer, you just pick off plants and chase them down and digest them," Sander told TFK in 2011.
Not chewing also had an important effect on a sauropod's shape. Without the molars and jaw muscles needed for chewing, a sauropod's head could stay small and light. Having a little head allowed the sauropod's neck to grow extra long.
The long neck, says Sander, was a sauropod's most important feature. It enabled the dinosaur to reach plants near and far without lugging its heavy body around. By eating quickly and constantly, sauropods grew to be the biggest land animals on Earth. And that is no small feat!
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