Human-sized pieces of fossilized bone belonging to the giant sauropod appear to be 10-20 percent larger than those attributed to Patagotitan mayorum, the biggest dinosaur ever identified, according to a statement Wednesday from the National University of La Matanza’s CTYS scientific agency.
Among them, Patagotitan mayorum, also from Argentina, weighed in at about 70 tonnes and was 40 meters (131 feet) long, or about the length of four school buses.
Alejandro Otero of Argentina’s Museo de La Plata is working on piecing together a likeness of the new dinosaur from two-dozen vertebrae and bits of pelvic bone uncovered so far.
The quest for more body parts, buried deep in rock, continues. For scientists, the holy grail will be the large femur or humerus bones, which are helpful in estimating a long-extinct creature’s body mass.
“We have more than half the tail, a lot of hip bones,” said Carballido, who also worked on the classification of Patagotitan a few years ago. “It’s obviously still inside the rock, so we have a few more years of digging ahead of us.”
“We suspect that the specimen may be complete or almost complete,” he said. “Everything depends on what happens with the excavations. But regardless of whether it is bigger (than Patagotitan) or not, the discovery of an intact dinosaur of such dimensions is a novelty.”