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Sunday, September 7, 2014

Really Big Dinosaur Discovered

Discovered in Argentina, Dreadnoughtus schrani weighs in at a very large 65 tons. This isn't the biggest dinosaur ever discovered, that honor goes to Amphicoelias fragillimus, which was nearly twice as big, and there are a few others who outweigh Dreadnoughtus, but this discovery is different, because the number of bones discovered is much higher than with other big dinosaur finds. The size estimate for Amphicoelias fragillimus is based off of only one incompelete vertabra, which has since been lost. How they managed to lose such a big fossil, who knows, but it happened.

This skeleton is much more complete, with 45% of the total skeleton found, and 70% of all the types of bones found. Before this, the most complete large sauropod find found 15% of the total skeleton, and 27% of the bones. The high level of completeness of the skeleton allows for a reasonably accurate estimation of its size and weight.  The scientists were even able to determine that the specimen they found wasn't fully grown yet, so Dreadnoughtus got even bigger. And at about 75 feet long, it was already pretty big. I imagine that this skeleton will definitely end up on display in some museum, after all, it would be quite a centerpiece to any dinosaur collection, and since the skeleton was so complete, not a lot of guesswork would need to be done in order to approximate what it looked like.

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