Giant Dinosaur Unearthed In Argentina

sciencehabit writes Researchers working in Argentina have discovered the most complete skeleton of a titanosaur, a group of gigantic plant-eating dinosaurs that dominated the Southern Hemisphere beginning about 90 million years ago. The new dino, named Dreadnoughtus schrani, was 26 meters long and weighed about 59 metric tons—that is, twice as long as Tyrannosaurus rex and as heavy as a herd of elephants. That puts it on a par with other well-known giants such as Argentinosaurus (but it's four times as large as the perhaps better known Diplodocus). The researchers say that the beast was so big it would have had no fear of predators. And it was about to get bigger: A close examination of the fossils, especially its back and shoulder bones, indicates that the animal was still growing when it died.

Predators

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know about no fear. The way to hunt giant animals is with pack behavior. And if they could hobble one of these suckers and get it to fall over ... well, there's no way it would ever be able to get back up again with that kind of weight. This is the kind of beast that would have to spend its life standing.

Giant Dinosaur FOSSIL Unearthed In Argentina

[jpellino]

Unless the original headline is accurate, in which case get Michael Bay on the phone.

Re:Predators become Parasites?

[Drishmung]

Brian W. Aldiss [wikipedia.org] wrote a story about this [smithsonianmag.com] many years ago.

Re:Probably just never stopped growing.

[phantomfive]

They can look at the shape of the skull, the number of bones in the neck, things like that to determine the species. I don't think palaeontologists would be tricked by a dinosaur being a different size.

Video

[chameleon3]

Nice video with the researcher here [youtube.com]