After several years in anonymity, the largest titanosaur in the world was baptized in August 2017. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B collected its name, Patagotitan mayorum , and details about its anatomy. The dinosaur weighed about 70 tons and was almost 40 meters long. By raising his neck, he could reach a height similar to the seventh floor of a building.
This giant from the distant past that commands great respect, was discovered in the province of Chubut in 2013 and its name, Patagotitan mayorum , is due to: “Patago” for Patagonia; “Titan” for the Greek deities and “mayorum”, in honor of the Mayo family, the owners of the “La Flecha” ranch where the unprecedented fossils were found.
Among the details revealed in the study on the six specimens discovered (whose fossils were practically intact -something not very common-), the researchers were able to determine that this giant that lived 101 million years ago, weighed the equivalent of 14 African elephants, 69 tons and 39.5 meters long, as if we put two tow trucks, one behind the other. Characteristics that make him the largest creature to ever walk the Earth.
The legendary Tyrannosaurus rex “look like dwarfs when you put them next to these giant titanosaurs. It’s like when you put an elephant for a lion,” explained Diego Pol, co-author of the work.
Examining these fossils was an interesting task for the experts involved, since it is not common to find titanosaur fossils, much less that they are in good condition. The remains of ‘LaFlecha’ met both and unusual qualities.
“ By the second campaign we had already realized that the bones that were appearing corresponded to different individuals of the same species, who had died at different times, perhaps several years apart. Analyzing the bones it caught our attention that all the individuals were adult animals, but young. They were still growing slowly. If one had to compare them with a human, it would be an 18-year-old person, “ explained José Luis Carballido, co-author of the study.
Kristi Curry Rodgers, a paleontologist at Macalester College who was not part of the study, praised the work, stating that the fact that the Patagotitan bones show signs that they have not completed their growth “means that there are even larger dinosaurs out there without being discovered. “.
One of the curiosities that paleontologists highlight is that they believe that, despite the enormous length of the dinosaur’s neck, it is most likely that they walked with their necks parallel to the ground to feed without making much effort with the body (on the contrary than giraffes).
The skull of the Patagotitan mayorum is a mystery. Not surprisingly, it is the most difficult piece to find in many sauropods and especially in titanosaurs. “ We only found one tooth from these spoon-shaped animals, “ Pol said.
Why were these dinosaurs so big?
Cretaceous. 101 million years ago. South America, a region inhabited by dinosaurs that evolved independently of the rest of the world. “Other very large species of approximately the same age have been found in Patagonia and one of the things we discovered is that these giants were closely related to each other, they belong to the same clade – a grouping that contains a common ancestor and all its descendants- “Diego Pol explained.” That tells us that something special happened for these species to have developed extreme gigantism. This Patagonian family broke the mold. “
The big question is how these dinosaurs got so big . One of the hypotheses that is being considered has to do with the environmental changes that occurred in that area and that led to a more diverse and abundant flora availability, which means more available food resources.
Since the beginning of 2016 , a full-scale replica of the Patagotitan can be seen in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (USA) of such a great dinosaur.
Reference: Carballido JL, Pol D, Otero A, Cerda IA, Salgado L, Garrido AC, Ramezzani J, Cúneo NR, Krause MJ. 2017. A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution amongst sauropod dinosaurs, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, August 2017.DOI: 10.1098 / rspb.2017.1219
