Scientists Have Discovered ANOTHER ‘Biggest Dinosaur Ever’
Remember last May, when we told you that scientists had unearthed the biggest dinosaur ever? It was very exciting! Well, prepare to get even more excited, because a new team discovered a dinosaur they think is bigger than the titanosaur species found months earlier!
The new dino's name could not be more badass: The team that discovered it in Argentina are calling it Dreadnoughtus — which essentially means "fear nothing." Forget T-Rex. This is now the best dinosaur name. The Dreadnoughtus lived about 77 million years ago and was 30 feet tall, 85 feet long and weighed about 130,000 pounds, or 65 tons. That's heavier than a Boeing 737. That's freaking huge. And the man that led the team that discovered the dino — Kenneth J. Lacovara, a paleontologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia — wants everyone to know it's definitely the biggest. “What we can say with certainty is this is the biggest land animal that we can actually put a number on,” Lacovara told The New York Times. Not only was this guy giant, the bones showed that he was still growing when he died. Amazing.
Lacovara is sensitive because of the dino that was also found in Argentina. That dino (still unnamed), according to the experts on the dig, clocked in at 130 feet long, 65 feet tall and 77 tons. However, the problem with this dino is that there were very few bones found. That means a lot of guesswork. "One problem with assessing the weight of both Argentinosaurus [the previous titleholder for biggest dino] and this new discovery is that they're both based on very fragmentary specimens — no complete skeleton is known, which means the animal's proportions and overall shape are conjectural," Dr. Paul Barrett, an expert from London's Natural History Museum, explained to BBC News at the time.
This is where Lacovara has the advantage. His team found more than 200 bones, which accounted for 45 percent of the Dreadnoughtus' skeleton. The team also has about 70 percent of the giant dino's skull. "It’s a pretty good one,” Patrick O’Connor, a professor of anatomy at Ohio University, told NBC News. "Most often they’re not anywhere this complete. I think they put together a solid argument. I think it will engage a lively debate."
Hey, we're all for a lively debate about dinos. For example, why was the Dreadnoughtus so damn long? Lacovara said this was so that it could stand in one place for hours and just eat and eat. Its long neck would allow it to reach a wide swatch of trees and plants. So Dreadnougtus was not only awesome, he was sort of lazy. In other words, he was like your best friend in college. See? This is why we love dinosaurs.
[Image via Flickr - Kevin Dooley]
