Thread: Dinosaur that weighed the same as a Boeing 737 is biggest ever found

It’s official: an Argentine dinosaur as heavy as a Boeing 737 is the biggest ever discovered.

The behemoth weighed more than 65 tons and perhaps as many as 77, a new study says. That makes the animal not just the biggest known dinosaur but also the biggest known land animal ever. Only a few whale species are heftier — and this dinosaur’s bones show it was still growing.

Scientists have christened the gigantic vegetarian Patagotitan mayorum, in honor of the Argentine region of Patagonia and the Mayo family, owners of the Patagonian farm where a worker stumbled on the fossil in 2010. The titan of Patagonia is described in scientific detail for the first time in this week’s Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The study also sheds new light on how and when dinosaurs went from big to truly gargantuan.



Patagotitan, which was some 120 feet long, has some competition as the world's biggest dinosaur. Tantalizing scraps of bone hint at species that are more massive still.

“I don’t think the record we have now will hold forever,” says study co-author Diego Pol of Argentina’s Egidio Feruglio Museum of Paleontology. But “so far, out of the dinosaurs … we can recognize as valid species, we don't have any (others) as big as Patagotitan.

Pol and his colleagues excavated fossils of six different Patagotitan specimens from the Mayo family farm. The 150 bones include examples of 30% of the animal’s skeleton, which to scientists is almost as mind-boggling as the animal’s weight. Many other dinosaurs in the so-called Titanosaur group are known from mere scraps of bone.

“This is clearly a very, very large animal, and there’s a lot of it, and that’s an extremely rare thing as these animals go,” says Matthew Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the find. “Patagotitan is going to continue to yield insights into anatomy and biology and even the size of these giant titanosaurs for years to come.”

Already Patagotitan, which lived some 100 million years ago, has shown that even the most humongous animals were sociable. The six specimens found at the Mayo ranch were found in a cluster, and several had died at roughly the same time. So Patagotitan seems to have returned repeatedly to particular sites, perhaps drawn by water or food.

Already Patagotitan, which lived some 100 million years ago, has shown that even the most humongous animals were sociable. The six specimens found at the Mayo ranch were found in a cluster, and several had died at roughly the same time. So Patagotitan seems to have returned repeatedly to particular sites, perhaps drawn by water or food.

Pol does agree with Lamanna that the discovery of more complete fossils could reveal unsuspected relationships between titanosaurs. That would require scientists to rearrange the family tree, which could overturn the finding that nearly all the biggest of the big sprang up together. But however they evolved, the biggest titanosaurs all seem to hover right around the same size as Patagotitan, he says.

“We don’t have a clue, even a fragment, of bones that are much larger than these titanosaurs,” Pol says. It’s likely that a lucky scientist will someday find an animal larger than Patagotitan, but “it seems we may be getting closer to the maximum possible body size.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...und/546630001/

Was it's head intact?

Pretty cool

^ The party you support thinks this is hogwash and that the world started 6000 years ago.

Yeah that's cool, I remember I had a dinosaur plastic toy of one of those types of dinosaurs when I was a kid. It used to make a growling sound and vibrate. My big sister said it was too loud and confiscated it. I found it again a year later in the bottom draw of my sisters wardrobe. It smelled funny so I washed it and got it out at dinner time, to the surprise of my red faced sister.

Originally Posted by misskit

has shown that even the most humongous animals were sociable. The six specimens found at the Mayo ranch were found in a cluster, and several had died at roughly the same time.

Scientists jumping to conclusions again. They weren't sociable, it was an all out brawl to the death.

^That's funny Wilson.

Jaysus, Wilson...Does yer sister read TeakDoor?...

A long time ago I read a study about the limits in size an animal can get, both small and large.
The square cube rule plays a major part, but in particular egg-laying animals are limited because for an egg shell to be strong enough to support the weight of the embryo, there comes a point where the shell is too thick for the chick to get out.
I wonder if these large dinosaurs were programmed to break the shells of their clutch?
A mouse the size of an elephant would collapse with broken bones. As the animal gets bigger, the bones have to be bigger exponentially, not proportionally, thus these dinosaurs must have had more bone to muscle ratio than an elephant.