Fossil dino discovered in Argentina might have been the largest-ever animal on dry land
“He’s just big-boned, alright?”
The remains of one dinosaur unearthed in Argentina, while yet unidentified, could have belonged to an immense creature.
Argentinosaurus huinculensis, a closely-related species of the new dinosaur. Image credits Nobu Tamura / Wikimedia.
Paleontologists have discovered the 98 million-year-old titanosaur in northwest Patagonia (the tip of the South American continent) in the Neuquén Province. The trove included 24 vertebrae from the tail, alongside elements of its pelvic and pectoral girdle, found in sedimentary deposits in the local Candeleros Formation. Titanosaurs, as their name suggests, were immense animals; believed to have been the largest animals to have ever walked on land.
Fluffy Pterosaurs Have Reignited Debate on the Mystery of Dino Feathers 16/12/2020
was one of the earliest known dinosaurs with feathers. Photo: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia, CC BY SA 4.0
When fossils of the oldest known bird,
Archaeopteryx, were first discovered almost 160 years ago, the find created a puzzle that has troubled palaeontologists ever since.
These fossils were celebrated for their chimera-like combination of supposedly reptilian features (such as a bony tail and jaws with teeth) and those seemingly unique to birds – in particular, feathers. They helped demonstrate that birds actually evolved from dinosaurs.
But they also presented a major evolutionary problem. The prehistoric feathers were indistinguishable from those of birds today. So it wasn’t clear how or when feathers evolved, and in what kinds of ancient beasts.